Looking for Truth In All the Wrong Places
I was 10 when I discovered my cellulite. It was in the back of our family suburban while on a two-day road trip to Texas to see my cousins. Per usual, I was slouched down in my seat, resting my knees on the back of the front bench, walkman on, bare feet dangling, Umbro shorts sticking to the skin of my thighs in spite of the occasional puff of air from the A/C. It was business as usual, and looking back, it was also the last time I remember not giving my body’s appearance a second thought. When I sat up and plopped my legs down on the seat so I could grab something off the floorboard, there they were, staring me in the face: dimples on the side of my smooshed thigh—not of the smiley, cute variety. The cottage cheese variety. I. Was. Mortified.
That one small discovery bossed me around for years afterward. First, it was just a low whisper suggesting I wrap a towel around my legs at the pool. It taught me how to cross my legs in just the right way whenever I wore shorts. When I hit my teenage years, it got louder. And bolder. It wasn’t just telling me how to look anymore, but what I could (and couldn’t) do. Who I could be. I hustled hard to follow its rules, and I kept myself small the way it wanted.
I don’t have to tell you it’s ridiculous how early in life body image issues can become a thing—or that they’re even a thing at all. But the reality is that, especially in American culture, they are. While most of us know that fact on some fundamental level, I don’t think we give it due credit for restricting people from self actualization. The truth is that so many of us can’t even imagine our full potential in any area of our lives, because we’ve been letting an uninformed and misleading inner voice call the shots for so long. We might submit to the story it feeds us that if we can’t measure up on the outside, there’s no way in hell we can measure up on the inside either. And if we can’t measure up, well—then who are we to offer anything to the world?
When my clients come to me with the hope of losing weight, my first instinct is to ask them why. What is it they hope to gain from losing weight? If the answer is that they want to feel better in their own skin, I’m not here to judge. I’ve been in that place, too. But I hope that in their journey with me, they find that their “why” shifts to a more positive one: that they love themselves enough to take care of their already beautiful, God-given bodies. I want them to stop hustling to meet an impossible physical standard and start realizing their full potential as human beings that can make valuable and unique contributions to the world around them. We all have something we’re here to do in our lives. How many of us are telling ourselves that we’re not allowed to do it?
I’ve come a long way since I was 10. Are the body image issues gone? Not completely. Sometimes I still spend a second too long looking at myself in the mirror. I’m not proud of that. I can tell you, though, that they don’t dictate my choices anymore. They don’t decide my worth. Now that I’m in charge, I’ve learned so much about who I really am and what I can actually do. I’m still learning, which is sometimes scary and sometimes invigorating. My most important takeaway so far is that I’m done living small. I want nothing more than to live bigger, louder, and more honestly while being of service in the best way I know how. As it turns out, my cellulite (which I still have, by the way) doesn’t matter. It’s a small physical part of me. As are my bumpy nose and my baby-fine hair. None of these traits have any bearing on my abilities or my purpose in this life. Go figure. I’m almost ashamed that it took me until my late 30’s to understand that to my core. Hopefully, my kids are faster learners.
