Loving Your Body Is Possible, But Not How You Think
I am watching the original Disney Cinderella for the first time in twenty years with my four year old. The dreamy song, “So This Is Love” comes on, where Cinderella and Prince Charming are ballroom dancing surrounded by a haze. They don’t “sing” the song- their lips don’t move- it seems like the song is happening in both of their minds. I watch this with my eyebrow raised. I think, “You’re not in love, you’re in lust. Or, at the very least- you are projecting love onto this person”. Now, criticizing the “Disneyfication” of romantic love is by no means a new concept- but this really made me realize how screwed we are.
If “this is love”- the royal, hazy, handsome savior who only has eyes for us- the one who is our “perfect fit” (or at least they find our shoe that perfectly fits)- what hope do we have for any kind of love? The other humans we try to be in relationships- our partners, our family, our friends, our selves and our bodies- never stood a chance. If “love” is here to save us from our circumstances, what do we call what we have with these other beings? I think the idea of love is what is actually breaking our hearts.
When my much desired daughter was born, it was the hardest year of my life. Granted, she was born towards the end of 2019, so the first year of her life was hard for most people, but her birth brought about more grief and anxiety than I have ever known, even outside of a global pandemic. I wanted to be a parent since I was a child. I would literally dream about a curly haired brown-eyed girl holding my hand with the feeling of my heart swelling. I wanted her in life so badly. Then she arrived and no warning could have prepared me. I tried to care for this hairy sleepless mush and waited desperately for that hazy “love” feeling to arrive. Of course every cell in my body needed to protect this life form, but the romantic dopamine response was not there. I would hold her bundled body in my arms and smell that sweet baby smell and cry at how hard it was- thinking I was broken for not being infatuated with her. I soon had the realization that I was projecting onto her. I wondered if she would be funny or sweet or smart or talented (spoiler alert- she is all of these things!) and I had yet to know her, so I was stuck with who she could be instead of being present with who she was at that moment. So I started getting curious. noticing the way she would be stare wide-eyed at a ceiling fan, or how she lit up around certain songs. I noticed her smile when I pretended to bite her nose and her giggle when my husband’s beard tickled her cheek with a kiss. How she really loved oatmeal and how her left pant leg always would ride up (it still does).
As she grew, and we got to know each other better, the container that I thought held my love for her one, two, three years ago is now even bigger than I could have imagined and grows every day. After this exploration, my new working definition of love is the privilege of being in relationship with another living being. It’s the presence of their wholeness, not the projection of how we want them to be, that makes love, love.
One of my earliest memories was wondering if my legs were “OK”. I grew up in the 90’s and early 00’s when any female character in media and every adult woman I knew hated their bodies. Self hatred was a bonding exercise. I would hear girls and women of all ages complaining about themselves so much that I wanted to fit in. Is my knee shape OK, are my legs the right size?, I would think. That seed of self criticism followed me into my early adulthood and snowballed into a full blown eating disorder. The rules in my head felt never ending. Only these foods, only at that time. No snacks. My disease morphed with different phases of my life. I will not divulge all of the buffet of ways I harmed my body and psyche, but all of this is to say that I know I am not alone in these experiences.
In my mid-20s, I was sick of hating myself. To reference another kid’s movie, Barb in Trolls 2 (the “bad guy”) flops herself on a couch and says “Hating things takes a lot of energy”. I was ready to focus my attention on anything else other than controlling my body. This was 2015 and there was a new movement afoot- body positivity. As mentioned, I was not alone in hating my body. A movement founded by fat, mostly black, queer folks had been co-opted by my fellow white straight-sized bodies. At that time, there was a message to *love your body*. The imagery was conventionally attractive, slightly curvy, mostly white women *in love* with their bodies. It evoked the same hazy, romantic infatuation as Cinderella with Prince Charming. Their body would save them from the diet culture pursuit of thinness and it would do no wrong. I was both a part of and empowered by this movement. I do believe the intentions were good, but the execution caused more harm. There was now a new measuring tape- not how thin you can be, but how much you loOoOove your body.
I ran a few Yoga and Body Connection groups after the pandemic began. I kept getting the question, “But how can I love my body”? At the time I did not know how to answer because I had yet to digest the lesson I learned from my daughter. The real question I have now come to realize is, “What is love?” If we are expecting our bodies and our children and our spouses and our friends to ‘save’ us, then, no, you will never love your body- or truly any of these other people. Love is presence, love is kindness, love is respect. Love is caring for a being even when they can’t reciprocate or thank us- yet. Love is caring for the hairy sleepless mush of our bodies when they need it. Love is building trust so that the other can actually give us that support when it’s our time to receive.
Just like I did with my daughter, I began to get curious about my body. She (by body) changed so much after years of recovery and then birthing a baby. I would notice the change in smell in my body oder, the way my side now folds when I stretch. The cute crossing of my front two teeth. When I realized that I can be present with my body as she is, I cannot believe how much I love her. I want to take care of her, be kind to her, listen to her needs and offer comfort and joy. My body has gone through a lot. I grieve the abuse and neglect I did to her though most of my youth. In the midst of my eating disorder, I developed type 1 diabetes. Every day I manage my pancreas and thank the other systems for doing their job. Loving my body doesn’t mean I am always thrilled with how she looks or acts, but is the presence and gratitude for what she is.
As we watch the spell break for Cinderella, with her beloved mice and dog morphing back from their illusions, I scoop my daughter and fold her legs in as she lay on my lap like she did as an infant. I sweep some hair from her face as she blinks her eyes away from the television towards mine. “Momma,” she says in the sweetest voice ever, “can you get me a cheese stick?” I kiss the softest forehead in the world and then pivot her body to a cushion on the couch to get both of us a snack. This is love.
