Body image tug-of-war
My body and I are what you might call frenemies.
There are some mornings where I'll catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror after I get out of the shower, legs freshly shaved but hair freshly unwashed (who doesn't love a double-lined shower cap to save some prep time?), and as I pass the reflection, I'll think:
“Huh, this isn’t that bad. I'm doing ok for 40.”
I’ll think, “I look halfway decent for not having worked out in 18 months,” because for three years prior, I biked and power-yoga’d so intesnsely that it became physically and emotionally dangerous, and the only way I could get myself out of the downward spiral was to stop everything cold-turkey.
I'll think, “OK, my body isn't terrible, considering I ate 2 slices of pizza last night, and didn't even contemplate taking a laxative after, or restricting myself to a liquid diet today to make up for the calories,” which I celebrate as a victory after recovering from several years of disordered eating that coincided with the overexercising.
I might even think “How about that? My highly salon-maintenanced hair, which has endured various color and highlight routines since I was 25 (thanks to inheriting my dad's early-onset-gray-gene), looks relatively shiny and healthy today.”
On these mornings, when I stare into the magnifying mirror perched on my bathroom counter to check the status of any errant eyebrow hairs (I'm a daily tweezer), I'll say, sometimes audibly to no one besides myself and Tobe, my 16-year-old tabby cat, "You know, my skin’s pretty clear right now. Sure I have big pores and dark circles under my eyes a little bit of dry skin on my forehead and nose, but I mean, who doesn't?"
Those are the good days, and there are many of them. They are the mornings when I think that maybe I'm doing this aging thing right, as if there's also a wrong. When I have an inkling of hope that my lifelong track record of everyone thinking I'm 10 years younger than I am might actually hold up through the trials of middle age, as if that's the biggest hurdle that life is going to throw at me.
Of course, though, there are also the other mornings.
The mornings when catching a glimpse of my post-shower self in the mirror elicits an audible sigh of resignation from the deepest parts of my asthmatic lungs; the cavernous places that are reserved specifically for loudly and dramatically punctuating my self-criticism.
On those mornings, I'll slowly turn my body from side to side, grimacing at the rounded silhouette lines of my stomach reflecting back at me. Pinching the pillows of squishy skin where there once used to be tight, firm surfaces that I liked to imagine everyone envied, but I’m sure most people probably never even noticed.
I'll scrutinize the flat expanse of skin that stretches across my chest, above my non-god-given C-cups (well worth the money), where I used to used to revel in being able to see the edgy contours of my clavicle and just the faintest lines of my ribcage, but where now the only things visible are blotches and freckles.
I'll catch the bottom swirls of my hair draping along my collarbone, marvelling at how long it’s grown (my hair’s been short-and-shorter since my youngest was born, and he's 8). But then somehow, as if I’ve just used-up the one moment of self-appreciation I’m allowed for the day, I snap right back into scrutiny mode. My eyes keep scanning upward, looking for all the flaws that are hiding in plain sight above my shoulders, because of course I know they're there, and of course I know they’re begging to be witnessed.
My face, for whatever reason on one of these less-than-mirror-loving mornings, will usually seem dull, muddy, red, and unkempt. And so the admonition starts all over again.
"Why is my skin so BLEH? Are the 3 serums and two lotions and prescription strength retinol and dermatologist-recommended moisturizer not enough?"
I’ll keep scanning higher still, until I reach the salt and pepper roots that insist on calling my head home, despite the fact that I chemically subdue them every six weeks, “Why the fuck does my hair grow so fast"?” I recognize that this is a problem most women would love to have, but for me, it feels like a curse.
From here, my tirade will usually take a hefty leap downward and move from my head to my arms, since I’ve already bad-mouthed my decidedly un-bony chest, so that one’s been checked-off the list.
"I used to have such defined biceps.” I can still see the muscles when I flex, because what else are you supposed to do when you’re examining your arms in the mirror? But everything around them…it’s like over-kneaded pizza dough.
"How did I let myself get like this?"
After all the poking and sighing and resignation, it's not long before I feel like I shouldn't even bother putting on the barely-measurable speck of makeup I usually wear (under eye concealer, mascara, brow pencil, done) because what difference will it make? And maybe I also shouldn't bother getting this marshmallowy body dressed because no one else needs to be subjected to looking at my rumply mess. My bed is a pretty decent place to spend the day, thankyouverymuch.
If I'm lucky, and it's not a Tuesday or Thursday, I take the tiniest amount of solace in knowing that I'll be working from home, and that I can hide most of my clumps and cracks behind the blessed shroud of a video camera. If it's a weekend, well, it's a 50/50 bet on whether I'll make the minor effort to look presentable, or decide that the good folks at Costco (and my husband) can just deal with my sad visual reality, like I am resigned to, as well.
I wish I knew why some mornings are better than others. Why I’m able to recognize the beauty instead of the flaws, and show myself the same grace I purposefully try to show others. But I don’t know. I’m stuck in a constant game of body image tug-of-war, and it’s exhausting. (Hell, I’m exhausting myself just writing about it.) I know I’m hardly the only one who’s trying to get a toe-hold on the more upbeat side of the line in the sand. I don't think I've ever met another woman who hasn't wrestled with how she feels about her body at least at some point in her life. Maybe it isn’t the ever-changing curves of her stomach she reviles, but the solid thickness of her workhorse legs. Maybe it isn’t the rosy skin on her face she wishes was brighter, but the teeth she always tries to hide in pictures.
There’s something that feels decidedly American about all this to me. We’re taught from a young age that with enough effort and patience, enough perseverance, enough education, and of course—enough money—we have the ability to do / change / become / create / fix anything we set our minds to. When you grow up in a culture that practically worships the phrase “anything is possible,” how can you not look at yourself in the mirror and think—
“Huh, having a smaller waist is possible. Having clearer skin is possible. Having more defined muscles is possible. Having magazine-worthy hair is possible.”
By its very nature, being told that you can do / change / become / create / fix anything means that there’s something wrong with the way those anythings are right now. We’ve been trained to look for what’s wrong, to find the next project to tackle, or the next transformation story to write. At some point, though, we realize that so much of what we’d like to improve in the world around us is out of our control. So we turn inward. It only makes sense that if I can’t fix my daughter’s anxiety or change the Supreme Court’s rulings on abortion or save all the homeless kitties in Atlanta (there’s an amazing woman named Zoe who’s taking this one on), maybe the only way I’ll ever feel like I’m truly accomplishing something worthwhile is to try fixing myself.
—
Through all the therapy, and coaching, and reading, and classes, and self-compassion work I've been doing these past couple of years, I'm at a point where I’m able to recognize that my hard body image days are usually a tactic for avoiding something else. I know there’s usually a deeper issue that I need to investigate, whether it’s feeling overwhelmed at work, or disconnected from my husband, or physically tired because I haven’t granted myself the time and space I need to rest. Having this perspective has allowed me to start accepting the good body image days and hard body image days more equally, because I know they’re not actually about my body at all. While my appearance might be the recipient of my pity or praise, none of it is really about what I look like. And all of it is fleeting. Just like health or youth or money or sex, neither the good moments nor the hard ones will last forever.
That doesn’t make the hard days any less hard, though. My lows are still low, and can cast a formidable shadow on how I move through my daily routines, and how much energy it takes to show up for my colleagues or my kids. But with time, I'm slowly getting better at moving through the clouds without getting swallowed by them. Not looking in the mirror as often, and turning-off my self view on video calls, helps. So does thinking about what I'm going to DO that day, or how I want to FEEL, rather than what I'm going to look like, or how other people might see me. Deep down, I know no one really cares what I look like on any given day, anyway. We all worry more about ourselves than anyone else, yet it’s that exact truth that keeps us caught in this vicious tug-of-war. It’s a hell of a cruel irony.
On the days where I feel like I look relatively decent, I'll try to celebrate the little things, like the joy of noticing that a midlife chin-zit magically cleared up overnight, or the fact that I still fit into my favorite leggings (of which I have 5 pairs, because they're now the only pants that are comfortable). I appreciate these cheerier moments, but acknowledge that just like the hard ones, they won't last forever, either. So I simultaneously try to relish in them AND not give them too much power. The same way I don't want to fall into an endless ditch of self-criticism, I also don't want to get sucked into a whirlpool of clinging to something that inevitably will be gone tomorrow.
—-
A few Wednesday mornings ago, I was having a particularly good body image day. My collarbone-length hair was looking unusually lustrous and bouncy (I credit my new heated round brush for this feat of magic—where were you for the last 40 years?). I stood at the mirror for a couple of minutes, flipping and twirling my shiny locks, enjoying how soft they felt and indulging in this little bit of sunshine. I was squarely on the happy side of the tug-of-war rope—until I tilted my head down, just a smidge, and caught sight of the two inches of gray that were unabashedly sprouting from my scalp.
“UGGGGGH. What the fuck? It’s only been three weeks.”
And there went my sunshine.
For years (decades?) now, I’ve felt like a slave to my roots. When I’m not fixated on some other part of my body, my self-confidence often hinges on the state of my hair, which I know is shitty and superficial and ageist and ableist all of those things I would like not to be, yet here I am anyway. My initial instinct whenever my roots offend me is to rush for the at-home-root-concealer I buy from CVS for $12.99. It helps tide me over until my next visit to my stylist, when she’ll obliterate the gray in 30 minutes, paint-on some fresh new highlights, and make me feel reasonable pretty again. For a couple of days, anyway.
The same concealer instinct kicked in this time, but I didn’t act on it right away. Instead, I stood there for a couple of minutes, parting my hair in different places all over my head to assess just how gray I really am (the answer = really really gray), and had a different thought altogether.
“What if I started to let my naturally gray hair do its thing?”
“What if I stopped trying to fix?”
“What if I could learn to like it just the way it is?”
We live in a culture where gray hair, on women, is still pretty damn taboo. Men are considered distinguished with their salt-and-pepper styles. Women are considered old, like we’re just “letting ourselves go.”
Maybe letting myself go is exactly what I need to be doing.
I had an appointment with my stylist in another two weeks, so I decided to hold-off on the home-dye-job until then, and camouflaged my roots with strategically placed hair clips in the meantime. When I went for my appointment, which was supposed to be for a cut, color, and highlights, I sat down in my stylist’s hair and said, “soooooo, what do you think about letting my roots just grow out so I don’t have to deal with them anymore?”
She gave me the “are you crazy?” look pretty instantly, but then I think she realized what her face was doing, and backtracked with an “OK, let’s talk about it.”
We spent the next 45 minutes considering all kinds of different options, from just doing a lighter base color to help my roots blend-in more seamlessly, to doing nothing and letting them grow. She parted my hair every which way, investigating the extent of my gray the same way I had at home. She said that because of how much I have, and how dark my natural brown is that’s still peeking through, any kind of lighter base shade would still have me wanting to touch-up my roots pretty regularly. If I’m getting antsy having to do them every three or four weeks, I’m going to be just as antsy having to do them every six.
She had a fair point.
We talked for a while longer, and landed on a plan that would address what I was really getting tired of, which was the constant feeling of the in-between—
We’d take my hair to all gray, all at once.
If I can handle the starkly contrasting growth line for another 8 weeks, she said, she’ll spend an ungodly 8 hours blending the rest of my hair, strand by strand, to match my natural salt-and-pepper pattern. She thinks we can make it work, and actually make it look GOOD. She showed me photos of other women’s gray transformations, and the results were impressive. I just have to be OK with waiting it out until then. Even when I somewhat hesitatingly said “let’s do it!” I could tell she still was skeptical about me going all-in at 40 (she’s 48 and is sticking with her blonde). But she felt comfortable that if I was game for it and that was my decision, she’d be the one to make it happen.
So this is where I am right now: squarely in the center knot of the tug-of-war rope.
On one side: I can give-in to my overwhelming need to “fix” my hair with an all-day marathon salon session, but in the long run, never have to fix it again.
On the other side: I can embrace the fact that I will be stuck on the hamster wheel of hair coloring for another 10-15 years, and be ok with smaller fixes every 4-6 weeks.
I’m still not entirely sure which way the rope’s going to go.
I keep thinking that maybe, if I don’t get scared and run back to my medium-auburn-with caramel-highlights before the 8 weeks are up, I'll have one less physical attribute to obsess about, and can get more comfortable with the reflection I have now, rather than clinging to, or fighting against, the memory of the one I used to have…or wish I still did.
Maybe, if I can embrace my gray (whether all at once or more slowly over time), and my squishy body, and my unpredictable skin, and my varicose veins (did I mention those yet?), and the one incessantly rude hair that keeps popping out of a mole on the side of my face, I can let go of thinking of any of it as good or bad.
Maybe I can start just thinking of it as me.
It’s going to be an interesting 2023.