A BALANCING ACT FOR THOSE WITH BAD BALANCE: BODY IMAGE

I’m in Target picking up groceries, that, for the first time in over a decade, are chosen specifically to nourish me. The aisles ache with years of deprivation, a subconscious mantra plays in the way I grasp, put back, and stare at each product with a weary anticipation. Down the aisle, I hear a mother with her two sons, emphatically stating that she needs to find things with “no calories”, as if entranced, frantic, to which her young boys robotically chant back, “no calories, mom”. I walk past them, admittedly stumbling sideways, lopsided, due mostly to the fact that I chose a basket instead of a cart to carry a week’s worth of groceries, but also in unison to our nauseatingly off balance diet culture that has made it almost difficult to bat an eye, at a young mother pre-programming her sons to idealize food as good, bad, and frightful — calorie labels with great big fangs, thorns and a blinking red warning sign. Vessels for energy? I admittedly juggle between the two, like a faulty but determined circus performer does. Next act? Our societal perception of body image. I’d love to naively shout to the world “food is fuel! Love your body!”, and have solved what is an evidently painful battle for many, innocently tilting my head in question to the overwhelming prevalence of eating disorders, disordered eating, or why America keeps finding herself on new diets that send her into a cycle that makes her more and more resentful to her body, and our diet industries’ more and more grateful for her resentment. However, i’m not a dietician, nor am I immune to the choir I am preaching to, and I cannot diagnose nor proclaim to have the correct synopsis for tapping even the tip of this sugar-free, “body-positive unless __”, deprived, ice-burg that we do our best to disguise within heaps of “fit teas”, “cleanses”, and other fancily embroidered names for fancily detrimental starvation diets.

A humanity that clings to a disorder disguised as balance, instead of finding the balance, within which would put diet industries out of business, instead.

I often wonder what other people see when they look in the mirror. The story behind the first time they got stretch marks; pink lightning strikes upon thighs, climbing vines, that signal health, growth, bounty? Rolling hillside, or rolls? Failure? Just marks upon skin? Strength or gluttony? The definitions they place upon the face of words that are the difference between a good day and a bad day, to many, by the flashing-blue-light-on-a-box that states our bodies’ gravitational force — proclaiming that we’re a force to be reckoned with, or that we just need to force ourselves through the day until we “can be”. What about the first time you weighed yourself, felt too big, too thin, were made aware of your body by a well meaning loved one, realized six Oreos was “too many”, thought six Oreos was too few, or decided to eat “clean” just for “fun”. Did you even care at all? The cliff that sits with open arms, welcoming some into it’s downward spiral and redirecting others to spiral into a new train of thought, unfazed. I often wonder what I see when I look in the mirror.

At eight-am, I may be thin, then large, then slim, vast width, met with the delusion of nine and ten. At eleven, I am my thigh gap. At twelve, I’m my lack thereof, or the revelation that it’s disappearing, gone, absent, in the same grocery aisles I once created it in. I am clay, sculpting and contemplating each curve. A stone that resists my touch. A camera roll filled with images of my body, puzzle pieces in an attempt to conceptualize what my puzzle actually looks like. Body dysmorphia, And throughout the day I am every continent, and then the entire world combined, and once night comes, I am a memory card filled to the brim with a preoccupation with limbs, the physical sensation of growth that defies it’s innate meaning: To grow is to “undergo natural development by increasing in size and changing physically”. We admire the way our gardens grow, when we water them, our children, our accomplishments, our bank accounts, others — why do we hardly admire the physical concept of that growth when it comes to what’s in the mirror? We are a society obsessed with shrinking. A romanticized, glossy magazine cover, a weight loss add, the guise of strength named will-power, envying smaller sizes and waists but forgetting we’re more than how we fit into our jeans, the love affair of two thighs, or rather the sunlight shining through. Self proclaimed winners if we’re getting thinner, praised for skipping meals if we look good. There’s no problem if we look good. Right? Funny, how we don’t flock in admiration to our gardens when they shrink, our children, our accomplishments, our bank accounts, others — why are we the exception? And I stare at a pile of jeans that I am neither growing into nor growing out of, an in between as I am off balance, after trying to balance too long, finding a new one with my body as it both punishes me for years of abuse, and rewards me for a month of love, with the numbers that I’ve used to quantify my worth, that individuals around the world measure their level of worthiness with, jean sizes, when they’re made to fit the flesh around our abdomens, not the circumference of our capability as human beings.

It’s far too easy to roll our eyes to the superficiality of this vanity — after all, it’s a tear drop in an ocean of struggle and hardship, mental energy that could be far better utilized, that instead gets placed into a deluded turmoil — of swearing yesterday’s cookie dough has baked itself into your hips, deciding whether to have the dinner you’re privileged enough to possess, the able-body you’re able to run in — into the capacity to help create change. But from the inside looking out, most who struggle deeply with body image are deeply aware of the ridiculousness of the preoccupation, the millions of things that could be done with the collective minutes spent abhorring a mirror image that does nothing to make world change. Don’t blame the struggle, blame the perpetrators. Blame our diet industries, our perpetuation of the problem in the face of our potential to be the change. Don’t blame the seeds for how they grow, blame the environment that has grown them. For our future young individuals growing up in the face of unattainable ideals, for the young ones, and old ones, currently struggling, for things that deserve our focus far more than weight, for the way real food tastes, for the young boys, and their mother, who are programmed to equate calories with shame. For the ones who find it hard to go about their day, when their body is growing and expanding before their eyes, in real, and imaginary ways. This struggle is real. This struggle is valid. Our awareness to our presence in the problem is our exact vessel for making change within it. Our future will see itself in the mirror image we have painted for ourselves, it is within us to slowly find a way to come to the revelation that our reflection is a canvas, with uneven strokes and lines, a piece in a museum — we do not state that the piece is too “red” but rather, interpret what each shade means. What will our canvas say? We are art. We are human. We are not a reflection, but rather, how and what we reflect upon the world.