If you have a choice between love and acceptance, which do you choose?
Sonya Renee Taylor
[Sorry - this post has A LOT of personal pronouns] Almost a year ago I took a mauling axe to my bathroom scale. I have had a very problematic relationship to the numbers it reported since I was a young adult, and I'd had enough. Mostly, I'd had enough of the conversations I was having with brilliant, talented, high-achieving women in my life, all of whom seemed to be on a diet, constantly talking about what they "could" or "couldn't" eat, and linking their humanity to a dress size. I needed a tangible rejection of that obsession.
I also know that as a group, these women and I were/are striving for an ideal that we all knew was never going to be attainable. Even if gravity's effect on my body (measured in pounds) reached some mythic ideal, I was never going to have J Lo's butt, Michelle Obama's arms, or an abdomen free from a hatch-mark of scars and stretch marks. I was never going to escape my chronic illness. I was never going to have perfectly-aligned teeth.*
That "not good enough" body I could never escape shows up in so many ways. It shows up in how I walk, and how I smile, and how I slouch into theatre chairs. It shows up in not wanting to buy quality clothing when I gain weight, then over-investing in smaller sizes when I shrink. It shows up as gratitude for being wanted instead of fidelity to my own desires. It shows up as thinking "f-the-world, I'll eat what I want," shame eating, having low energy and erratic moods, and berating myself.
Of course, smashing the scale did not undo five decades of conditioning. I still look at my saggy belly with disgust. I have spent way too much energy and focus in the last 11 months suffering under the lashes of comparison, both with other bodies and with prior (thinner, smoother, stronger, sexier) expressions of my own body. I wore my two-piece swimsuits all summer, but I did it with the reassuring hum in my mind that "there will be someone fatter at the beach." Judge and compare. Judge and compare. Judge and compare. I had let go of a stone, but I was still dragging a sledge of judgement and self-hate, and a growing recognition that I don't have the tools or knowledge to get out of that yoke no matter how long I avoid the scale.
Until, maybe, today. Today I listened to Brené Brown's podcast with Sonya Renee Taylor, author of The Body is not an Apology. I knew there would be richness in this podcast, so I set aside other distractions, got out my journal, and attempted active listening. I rewound moments when my mind drifted. I played over and over the truly perspective-shifting statements. And, I felt hope. Hope that all women (truly, all people - the body hierarchy is not just female) can let go of the idea that our bodies are a reflection of our wellness, our happiness, our desirability, our value, and our lovability.
Spending one hour listening to a podcast can no more retrain me than smashing the bathroom scale did, but now I have a spark of hope that retraining is possible. I am not interested in body positivity. I am interested in being a whole, loving, loved human. What I find especially powerful in Taylor's work is her linking of body politics and social justice. I'm not going to explain that link as I don't understand it clearly enough yet, but hearing that the cultural belief "some bodies are better than other bodies" is the basis for racism, misogyny, ableism, homo and transphobia, etc affirmed my discomfort with diet culture and body privilege. In Taylor's words,
All of our systems ... of oppression based on the body are attempts to navigate the ladder of social heirarchy.
If someone - some body - is better than another, that 'other' is equally inferior. The system is inherently one of oppression. Which, by extension, means that redirecting my energy from my measurements and dress size can be a personal act of freedom, justice, and resistance. That is inspiring for me. I can't wait to buy and learn from Taylor's book, and to carry that learning with me as a guiding light in this strange and new land. Oh, I'd still like to look like a model. I want to have the strength, stamina and agility for adventures with my grandson as he grows. As I age, I'd like to continue travelling without worrying about my health. I want, again, to experience sex without embarrassment. I also want to do all those things without linking them to my value as a human being, being trapped in comparison, or contributing to the oppression of other people. I choose radical self-love over self-acceptance - or at least I will with practice.
You can listen to the podcast here:
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