body love
About a decade ago, I met up with some friends to choreograph a dance just for fun. We met up in an apartment gym to utilize the mirrors there, and dressed in our most comfortable, dance-ready clothes, which for me - meant basketball shorts and a t-shirt. The friend I arrived with was wearing black leggings and a shirt, and when we got there - friend #2 said immediately, “oh my god, your legs look so good!”
It all happened so quickly. Her legs were covered, mine weren’t. I understood “good” to mean long, slender, thin. I concluded my exposed trunks were “bad,” and consequently not commented on.
All I could focus on for the next hour were my chunky legs in the mirror. I would look at her legs, and then mine, her legs, and then mine - each time, growing more and more irritated at my genetics. Ugh, I thought, no one ever comments on my legs. I wish I had “hot” legs. So unfair.
Looking back on this moment - I have so many options of what to blame this on:
The patriarchy enforcing white beauty standards on my brown body setting me up for deep failure from the jump
Women unconsciously enforcing the patriarchy by rewarding each other for fitting its rules
Society’s obsession with female thinness, smallness, barely-even-there-ness
It’s all compelling, because it’s all true, and it’s certainly influential.
But what this really boiled down to was my own inability to love my body.
You see - bringing awareness to all of the systems of inequity that got us to that moment made it “make sense.” Like, “ah yes, this all checks out.” But what it doesn’t do is shift me out of that mindset. It doesn’t help me not do the comparing. It doesn’t help me do much of anything, except for stoke my anger at all of the cards stacked against me.
What I know now is that - I have an ace card. I have the power to do something that makes the rest of it increasingly irrelevant.
The most impactful thing I could have done in that moment was just - stare at myself in that mirror with pure love. Compliment the things that I loved about my body. Witness the way that it moved, right in front of me. Double-down on what I had, rather than focusing on what I didn’t.
For longer than I’d like to admit - my default MO has been to clock all of the traditional ways other peoples’ bodies are “better” and “more beautiful” - as soon as they walk into the room. I use their bodies as a personal whip against my own - brandishing myself for all of the ways I got it wrong. It happens so fast that if I’m not careful, I won’t catch it.
For me, the antidote has not been the logic - understanding the politics of the country I was born into. For me, it has been: loving my body first. Taking a little extra time to get ready in the morning - not to “fix,” but to sink, to root down more deeply into my form. Lingering at my own gaze in the mirror. Looking into my reflection, even when I’m hunched over changing my clothes (ah!), and loving it exactly where it is at.
It’s maddeningly simple, because I wish I had done this years ago. Instead, I spent hours changing my hair into what it “should be.” Instead, I spent years wearing baggy clothes to hide the parts that were soft. Instead, I spent energy - so much energy - on what I wasn’t, while completely and totally missing everything I already was.
As hard as it was to grow up in a time when “thiccc” wasn’t yet cool - I think it’s even harder for the young women of today. My heart breaks - absolutely breaks - when I imagine them scrolling on their phones, their eyes glued onto other bodies, their love withering into nothingness for their own.
I think loving our bodies first is more than frivolous - it’s necessary. I think it’s irresponsible to do anything otherwise. I think embodying our skin-suits is a way of actually fighting the patriarchy. I think opting out is more urgent than ever.
Whenever I imagine that younger-me, obsessing over her friend’s legs - I plug one of my nieces into the scene. How would she feel, seeing me, hating the body that she so loves? What is the contagion of my self-hatred onto her?
Little people - the ones we know, and the ones that we never will - deserve the best of us, deserve a legacy that endures.
I hope you love your legs the way that you would a newborn baby’s.
I hope you keep your sight through the anger that stirs.
I hope you know that you are magic, just for being here, for existing.
I hope you choose clothes that honor your impossible form.
I hope you double-down on what you are, I hope you remember, I hope you don’t miss it.
I hope you do it.
For younger-you.
For us all.
