body image issues
I don't know why it happened, why I got blind-sided by self-loathing yesterday. I caught a glimpse of myself, reflected in the television, it was down-hill from there. Not too much later, I saw my arm, slack, flabby. I started to bawl. I doubt my self-image issues are any worse than those of most women. It's just that the vast majority of the time I don't see myself. And as I walk down the street, I don't think of myself as fat. But the BMI says different. The scale says different. Lots of other people say different. But then again, my husband loves me and tells me I'm beautiful, and I want to believe him; even more than that I wish I was strong enough to believe him. And serendipitously, I started reading the book I chose for this month's book-club "Good in Bed" by Jennifer Weiner. It's not what it sounds like. It's about a "larger woman" whose ex-boy friend writes a column in a national magazine, whose chief topic is our heroine. She is irate when he writes an article "Loving a Larger Woman" and though it is slightly misguided, it is also sweet and sincere, and disturbingly dead on, not only to the feelings of our fair heroine, but to mine, and, I suspect, a great number of other women, as well. I found the following paragraph particularly apt:
"And now that it's over, I don't know where to direct my anger and my sorrow. At a world that made her feel the way she did about her body-no, herself-and whether she was desirable. At C. (our heroine), for not being strong enough to overcome what the world told her. Or at myself, for not loving C. enough to make her believe in herself."
It's a blow to my self confidence to admit that the pressures of the outside world influence my opinion of myself. I'm a strong, educated woman, I shouldn't care about our societies closed-minded opinions of beauty, or what a woman should look like, and yet I do. And that reflects more on me then on society. So it's a double whammy, not only do I fall far short of societies ideals of beauty, I also fall short of my own ideals for my strength and self-confidence. This is not comforting.
I started the book yesterday taking the train into SF, and I finished it this afternoon while my experiments incubated. And yet I don't feel much better, and I don't know why!
"And now that it's over, I don't know where to direct my anger and my sorrow. At a world that made her feel the way she did about her body-no, herself-and whether she was desirable. At C. (our heroine), for not being strong enough to overcome what the world told her. Or at myself, for not loving C. enough to make her believe in herself."
It's a blow to my self confidence to admit that the pressures of the outside world influence my opinion of myself. I'm a strong, educated woman, I shouldn't care about our societies closed-minded opinions of beauty, or what a woman should look like, and yet I do. And that reflects more on me then on society. So it's a double whammy, not only do I fall far short of societies ideals of beauty, I also fall short of my own ideals for my strength and self-confidence. This is not comforting.
I started the book yesterday taking the train into SF, and I finished it this afternoon while my experiments incubated. And yet I don't feel much better, and I don't know why!