I am very much behind the body acceptance movement. I think it fits in just right with feminism, and wider issues of disability and trans acceptance. Every week, on my Saturday-Is-Catch-Up-With-Google-Reader-Day, I read inspiring posts from FA/BA bloggers, all living the change they want to see and combatting the misogynistic size-obssessed media as well as their own issues with how they look and how they feel about how they look.
And I love it, I really love that these people exist and I don’t fail to find them inspiring.
And yet I feel so unable to begin my own body acceptance. I have improved, I don’t think I am overweight anymore and I sit pretty healthily at a size 12-14. I no longer binge eat. I can look at myself in the mirror without crying. I have taken clothed and nude photographs of myself with good results, both in terms of their aesthetics and their positive affect on me psychologically. But I do not feel that I can accept me, how I am, right now. Without any extra exercise, without thinking “if only I lost that little bit off my thighs”, without feeling guilty for eating fatty foods, without feeling wistful for when I was slimmer, without wanting to cover myself up in clothes. I can only understand how to feel better about myself if I lose weight, but I also know that even if/when I lose weight that it will not be enough, and that I’ll aim to be slimmer.
I simply cannot imagine how to begin accepting how I am, without moving towards a goal of fitness, or a slimmer size, or whatever. How could I accept how I am, static, without any movement towards being better, smaller.
I know that my body is meant to be curvy and muscly. I despise the aesthetic standards that are put upon us, I despise the fact that I presume that people would prefer me if I were slimmer and I despise the fact that I care about what people think of how I look. I face a constant battle between my rational, feminist mind who knows all this is patriarchal bullshit and my social conditioning and embattled self esteem that still values how I look over who I am.
But maybe this is just the beginning. It will be hard, it’s taken me 10 years to look in the mirror and not want to cry. But I’ve done it. And by no means am I beyond hating myself, but I’ve come a long way. I can do it, and this is the start of me accepting me. For who I am, for how I look, whether smaller or larger, fitter or not, in sickness and in health.
