I watch the young girls at the swimming pool. How they cover up their bodies with t-shirts and shorts. I don’t. I wear my swimsuit and am filled with discomfort the entire time. I watch us all walking around. Uncomfortable. Sticky. So worried.
I know how all this started. I was one of those young girls. I was awkwardly chubby. In my head i thought there was a pretty chubby and i didn’t even have that. I wasn’t even good enough for cute chubby.
And of course looking back now that is so ridiculous. I was perfect. Like all little girls. Little boys. Somewhere at a young age someone filled my brain with negative talk, put the idea in there that there were different bodies. That i was going to be fat. That i was fat. That everyone else was better than me. Perhaps it was peers, probably not.
I grew up in a fat hating family. I grew up chubby in a fat hating family. Make of that what you will. It took me years and becoming a parent to see the flaw in that thinking. It took having children who are a million ways of perfect to realize how wrong that was. It took being a mother to see the cruelty. I tell my kids every single day that they are beautiful and wonderful and to run around in their swim suits. To have fun and enjoy the gracefulness of their own bodies.
I read running magazines. I’ve never read hobby magazines before. Every issue has a supremely fit woman on the cover in a running bra and shorts. Looking fabulously fit. “I want to look like that.” “When i am a marathon runner i will look like that.” Not really. I’m still imposing that same old thinking on myself. It never really goes away. Does it? I am still not “Cute Runner.” I am a mother of four runner.
Same old thinking.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I know exactly what you’re saying, the way that we criticize our bodies for things that are beyond our controll like having birthed more than one child, our age and plain old genetics. Maybe it is our generation that has us thinking that unless we are “stick thin”, we are “fat”?
I found my self imposing my unrealistic ideas onto my daughter when she started to develop. I told her “oh Hayley, Im sorry that you’ve got stretch marks, make sure that you apply lots of cream and watch what you eat”. She was 10 when her first stretch mark appeared. And she replied, “they dont bother me mum, really they dont, Auntie K says that she has lots of them”. I am so disappointed in myself now that she is older and body image is more important to her. thank god, Ive changed and can say things to my children like “eat well and be active and you will be the shape that you should be”.
I just wish that sometimes I could give myself a break, we should all celebrate who we are and release ourselves from societies view about what we should look like.
Jess, you are beautiful just the way you are.
xofiona
This doesn’t linearly relate to anything you’re saying about being chubby (which I didn’t read fully about anyways), but I am at a “crossroads” in my life, where I can choose to “come up fighting” or “come up spreading [perhaps not completely honest] peace”, and I’m leaning towards the fighting. But anyways, the other day, when I was still hoping for coming-up spreading [hopefully sincere?] peace, a gal friend of mine told me that my option to move to this remote island where I have friends sounded good. She distinctly said “It sounds like it’s a place where you can invent yourself.” I just think it’s a beautiful coincidence, that you wrote both of those phrases, so near each other. And so recently. We are on the same page, love… and I’d LOVE to come up “spreading peace”. I’m a Libra with strong Pisces and Cancer affiliations, so I think that “peace” comes (almost TOO) naturally, to me. But it can also be my “achilles heal”. Maybe I need to walk right into the fire, ackowledge darkness and “evil”… and come up fighting.
Good love, to you ~
JC
“Come Up Fighting”
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