Thinspirational

I wrote this post last week. It didn’t seem quite right but I think I’ll post it anyway. It’s kind of long but I hope you’ll hang in there.
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“Bodies are bodies.”

--A lesson learned not from dental school, but from working in a hospital. Maybe there isn’t anything overtly profound in that statement but it has been a real epiphany for me. There is something inspirational about seeing the body at work, even at times of illness or injury in young, old, ugly, or pretty.

I used to think that parts of the body (especially my own) were ugly, weird, abnormal, or even gross.

I’ve since learned:

People have fat rolls, blemishes, wrinkles (or one day will). Most people don’t look like super models or celebrities (and the ones who do are so weird they often get paid millions) and many people aren’t even overly attractive. And yet, all bodies are beautiful. Beautiful how they heal themselves. In how they regulate a multitude of hormones to keep things like growth, fertility, water balance, and blood sugar under control despite a barrage of environmental change. The simple way the body is able to rid itself of waste and toxins. Even an old and frail body failing after a life of living. All of these things are so normal we don’t usually even think about them; and yet are quite extraordinary if you take a moment to appreciate -- when they don’t work, life is hard. We are so lucky to have our bodies that allow us to be here even living this life and especially for the times our bodies work just as they should, despite how they look.

So, I got angry, or at least quite annoyed, when I learned yesterday that my body doesn’t measure up in yet again one more way. I’ve known about thunder thighs and muffin tops, among other body flaws to lament, but who knew, all this time, I’ve been missing a thigh gap?



I actually noticed I didn’t have a thigh gap in high school. But I didn’t know then that this was another failing of my imperfect body, along with my double chin tendency and a few aberrant hairs. Evidently, even though the thigh gap is something that anatomically cannot be “achieved” by most women, this is the new goal of skinny perfection. I was fascinated by this new body fashion and did some research, only to learn other things that were wrong with me of which I was ignorant, like “hip dip” and my lack of pointy hip bones or collarbones. Forget that I have a strong mind, a healthy heart, reliable kidneys, 20/20 vision. I’m not bow-legged and I have the “wrong” hip angle.

Luckily, I am a strong and enlightened woman who knows better than to buy into that kind of junk.

Or am I?

 

I’ve been bothered by the “thinspo" trend online for awhile. There are hundreds of posts and images online with photo-shopped pictures of body builders with sayings like, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” (you must not have tried Abe’s cakes!) and collages of celebrities, “Her arms, Her legs, Her abs. If I am strong enough, I will get there!” It is disturbing to me that we (we being women in general) are so often striving for something that is so unattainable. It is easy to say that I can look but not touch, smoke but not inhale, and think I am above falling prey to these images and philosophies: I’m 30 years old, not some 13 year old girl trying to obtain a ridiculous trend like a thigh gap; yet I know I am susceptible to these messages just like any teenage girl.

I keep telling myself if I weighed only 5 pounds less I would be that much more happy. I realized only recently that even when I was “skinny,” I didn’t like my abs then, either –my belly always seemed to stick out too much, at least since it was pointed out to me my freshman year of college by a roommate and a boyfriend.

Of course being healthy and fit and making your body the best it can be is great. But I think it is damaging to think you can copy and paste celebrity body parts to obtain after a few sessions of P90X or think that if you only had enough will power you could look like Kate Moss. Most people can’t look like Kate Moss—that’s why SHE’s famous. And I promise, no matter how much I work out, I will never have abs like Jessica Alba or arms like Jennifer Aniston. I will always have Erin arms, toned or otherwise.

Now, back to the thigh gap.

I am used to comparing myself to photo-shopped images. Years of unrealistically thin magazine photos and ads have taught me that I will never measure up to my own warped standard of beauty. But telling me that my thighs need to be strangers and that I can’t have a little concavity in my hip line when we all know very well that is probably not possible for most women past puberty makes me mad. Not only does it seem we are trying to look like teenage boys with six packs and large breasts, now it feels like we are being told that one of the very things that make women womanly are no longer okay-- hips. That wonderful pelvic tilt that makes life possible for everyone on earth through the miracle of childbirth is no longer an acceptable fashion accessory.

(As if it is something that can be changed with the seasons.)

Leave my hips alone!

That was my mantra today at dinner.

I somehow forgot all about how good skinny tastes or looking like a celebrity when I ate my own weight in crab rangoons today at the Chinese Buffett. And I certainly didn’t care about my thigh gap.
I feel sad that so many young girls do. If only they could see and remember, “Bodies are bodies, too.”

Now, if only I can remember, as well.