Body Neutrality
Brr, it was cold for my run today! 45 degrees and windy meant that I wore long sleeves, hat and gloves. The above picture shows a bundled-up Florida runner in January. But there’s another photo of myself that I want to talk about today: Look at that forward lean! Hey, my arm looks pretty muscular! BUT WAIT. What in the world is all that… lumpiness… on my left leg??? When I first looked at this photo I though “I can’t put this on the blog- my leg looks terrible!” But here it is, and the reason why I’m posting it is that I want to talk about body neutrality. From the age of ten onward, I struggled with body image. I developed early, got my period when I was eleven, and I had curves when other girls were still small and boyish. I interpreted this new shape of my body as “fat,” and I was also tall for my age, which made me feel big compared to other people. Furthermore, the natural proportions of my body are a longer torso and shorter legs- when I compared my legs to girls with long, skinny legs, I saw my legs as fat. I want to point out that I was never overweight, and nobody ever told me I was overweight. I was just uncomfortable in my body, and without knowing what else to do I thought I could re-shape it with diet and exercise. This was in the late 1970s and 1980s, and Jane Fonda workouts were big. I did Jane Fonda ALL THE TIME. Jane had the best of intentions, but her goal was to improve the look of your body. The subtext to that is, your body does not look good as it is. Workouts like that are a punishment for not having a perfect body to begin with. I did all of them- the Original, the Advanced, Jane Fonda Complete Workout, the Workout Challenge…. my teenage years were full of Jane Fonda. I started running in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. I’m sure a large part of it was that I thought it would help me lose weight, but there was also just something about running that appealed to me in a way I couldn’t explain. When I would hear other people talk about running I would think, I want to do that! I ran throughout that summer and then through my senior year of high school, and I’ve been running ever since- barring time off for injuries. But this isn’t a love letter to running- that’s a subject for a different post. What running did was let me experience moving my body for the sheer joy of it- without any ulterior motive, like to make my butt smaller- for the first time. It was the start of a journey toward body neutrality, and that journey took many, many years. A large part of it was running, part of it was having children, part of it was shifting the mindset of my workouts to building strength rather than hoping to change the way I look, and I’m sure a part of it was just becoming more mature. But at the age of 54, this is what body neutrality means to me: After decades of fighting to change, accept, stop criticizing- even to accurately understand what my body really looks like- I realized that I could simply walk away from the battle. I didn’t WIN, as in, I didn’t banish the negative thoughts forever and I don’t go around thinking how amazing my body looks. I just don’t think about it anymore, and it’s a tremendous relief. So am I saying I don’t care? Well, no. I do care a little, and I cared when I saw the cellulite on my legs in that picture. I wish my legs looked like Shalane Flanagan’s, in the same way that I wish I had a million dollars. I wish for a lot of things, like that my mom were still alive. But none of these things impact the way I live my life, or diminish my joy in it. I don’t waste time fighting tremendous battles in my mind over them. They’re just fleeting notions, and I’m too busy experiencing life to attach too much importance to them. I know body image is a tricky subject for so many people. I would be interested to hear how people feel about body positivity/negativity/neutrality. Any thoughts?