A Long-winded Analysis of My Self-Loathing

I have a confession to make:  I hate my body.  I always have.  When I hit the glorious age of 12 and entered middle school I was skinny and had the curves of a box.  I wanted boobs.  What I had was bony elbows and washboard ribs.  I was also inches taller than everyone else, including every boy (which nails the coffin shut).  I couldn't keep the boys away from teasing me about what I didn't have, and though girls would say they wished to be as skinny as me, they actually got attention from boys for what they did have (the preferable attention of the two - or at least to a sprout like me).   Boys called them.  They didn't call me.  This led me to the one and only clear conclusion.  I wasn't pretty.

And thus began my dislike of myself.  Sure, I liked that I could eat whatever I wanted, but I would have traded it all in an instant for pants that came down to my shoes, actually needing a bra, and not always being heads above other people.  Wear a swimsuit with confidence?  Not a chance - it was just another reinforcement that I was not pretty.  I was not like everyone else and everyone would see it.  I mean, you can't stuff a swimsuit.

So I hid behind bulky clothes - not particularly hard in the 90's and the Midwest's propensity to gravitate especially to the baggy side of the decade's fashion, but I did so even more than most.  And I never got over my self-loathing.  "If only I was shorter I would be happier."  "If only you weighed more," I told myself and was told, "you would fill out and look better."  Imagine, a young woman ever saying that!  Well, I got part of what I wished, only 15 years later.  I have gained weight, but weight has a tricky way of never channeling to the places you want.  In fact, it congregates in ways that I do not like.  I am still heads taller than most, and was told more than once in college by guys that they would date me if I was shorter.  If my weight was right, my height was still wrong.  Needless to say, that didn't help with my self-loathing, and then loathing myself more because I was doing most of the damage to myself underneath my frizzy, curly hair.  During my short stint as a Catholic during my infancy,  I definitely learned how to feel Catholic guilt - that I was (and am) horribly selfish, prideful, and should feel overwhelmingly guilty because I haven't had the struggle with weight that others have, yet I'm still not happy.  This is my cycle:  Feel bad - feel guilty - try not to think about it for a while. Wash.  Rinse.  Repeat.

This spring I began the bane of many women's existence - finding a swimsuit.  I spent hours online trying to find something decent, affordable, attractive, and made for my long torso (I'm a bit limited around here).  Something that would magically make my cellulite disappear.  Something that would cover the love-handles and thighs that ripple like a water bed.  And then I would spend too long in the mirror, telling myself how those suits would never look like that on ugly, imperfect me.  I actually ended up finding two that were great, but when it came time to wear them a month ago the whole critical deconstruction thing started over again, all the while pretending that I felt fine so that another person with image issues would go to a swimming pool with me.  Pretending worked...a little.

I came across a few articles in some recent searches to find others like me, one of which that stated that people aren't sure what a real woman's body is really supposed to look like anymore because of the [fabricated] standards of beauty persistent today.  I believe this to be true because I don't even think that I do, and this led me to consider my own hate of myself.  I don't think less of other women's 'imperfections'.  In fact, there are many things friends and coworkers hate about themselves that I see as being perfectly normal and desirable.  I have always been impressed with women - young and old - who play on the beach or by a pool without seeming to care that their legs don't look like the latest celebrity or their belly isn't flat.  And then I promptly don't pay attention to them anymore because it doesn't matter to me what they look like because they are normal.  AND I know full well that media images are almost always doctored, but unfortunately  I am not that indifferent and forgiving about myself.  Why?  I have spent more time hating myself, worrying about what other people think about the way I look, when they probably don't even care.  I sometimes want to cry when I get complimented on the way I look because I instantly tell myself two bad things for every one I get.  I don't see in the mirror what other people seem to see.  In this way I am sad for myself.

I know there is something very wrong with that.  I want to change though, and have been giving myself pep-talks for months now.  This weekend I was in Las Vegas and decided I would get some pool time in at the hotel where I was staying.  I was scared though.  There were a lot of people, none of them family and only one of them a friend who wasn't in a swimsuit herself,  it's Vegas and there tends to be a lot of skin and plastic, and they all would certainly be staring at me and thinking how bad I looked.  But then I looked at them.  They weren't even looking at me.  They were talking with their friends.  They were playing with their kids or each other.  They were reading their papers and checking their text messages and sipping fruity drinks and sunning themselves with their eyes closed.  But so what if their eyes weren't closed - THEY were all shapes and sizes and textures.  And they were not ashamed.  So for a few hours (and after a few deep breaths) this weekend, I stopped being ashamed too - or at least pretended.  It kind of worked.  And I kind of can't wait until I can stop caring again.  It will still be scary though.  But if you want to ride a bike, the person behind you has to let go.  Afraid of dogs?  Get one.  Deep water?  Jump in.  Practice, practice, practice.

My height hasn't changed to my advantage.  I get fewer calls from guys now than I did in middle school.  Clothes are still not cut for women who are 6'2".  But I am determined that I will like myself someday.  Though I'm still using training wheels, I started the journey this summer.

**P.S.  I am not compliment fishing.  Just being honest in sharing my neurosis - isn't that part of blogging? ;) **