I Fucking Love/Hate My Body

This morning I rolled out of bed and walked past the mirror in my bedroom, and of course I gave myself a little check out. Nothing too major, just made sure I hadn’t turned into Shrek overnight. And apart from the bedhead I was like, “Damn, who is she? She’s hot.” And I rode that confidence through the start of my morning.  

What did my morning compose of? I ate an apple and had a cup of tea, then went upstairs to get changed to work out. And as I did earlier in the day, I checked myself out in the mirror again. But this time, only 40 minutes after my previous assessment of my body I looked in the mirror and thought “What small whale has just walked into this room?”. I might as well be the “before” photo on my 600-pound life because I felt like a monster. I was shooketh to my very core because less than an hour before, I felt like a queen and I didn’t think anyone could convince me otherwise. Yet, here I was, poking and prodding my body as if that would change anything.

And my day went on like this. This endless teeter-totter back and forth and it was nauseating. After my workout? I felt like I belong in a lululemon commercial. After my shower? I felt like I had absorbed all the water I had just wash myself clean with. I felt like that blueberry girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Running errands with my sister? I was SNATCHED. By the time I was eating lunch? Chub-city. And it cycled like this all day.

While I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my boxers and a hoodie in my sisters’ room and looking down at thunder thighs, which I swear to God, 20 minutes ago were toned, tanned and ready to go.

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But why? Why do I cycle like this? To make sense of it all I am going to talk about something I learned during my degree: sensation vs. perception. Sensation makes a lot of sense. You feel your fork when you pick it up. You see the colour blue when you look at the sky. You hear sirens when an ambulance passes. Sensation occurs when your nerves collect information from your surroundings and send that information to your brain.

But perception is where things get more malleable. Perception is what your brain does with the information when it gets there. What does it prioritize as important? How does it change the information to make things more manageable to understand? And your brain does that, changes information, makes assumptions, fills in gaps with what it thinks should go there.

A perception example is if you put an off-white square in front of a yellow photo, your brain will probably see it as really white. But if you were to put the same square in front of a white photo, you will see that it is off coloured. The information in your environment and things you’ve learned in your life prior to that moment, all influence your interpretation of reality. But why the neuroscience lesson?

Because I know the reality of my body. There was no significant change throughout the day. Yeah sure, your body weight fluctuates slightly throughout the day, but not to the extent that I was seeing in the mirror. It wasn’t reality that was changing, but my perception of my reality changed repeatedly. Twenty minutes ago, my thighs were the same as they are right now, but something in my perception has changed. And even knowing all this, knowing that my brain is playing tricks, I still look down and say, “I fucking hate my body”.

What don’t I like about it? I don’t like how tall it is! I would kill to be two inches shorter, but I can’t. I want to have either curly or straight hair, not this in between situation I’m working with. I don’t like my thighs, they’re not cute. I want skinny girl thighs. I don’t like my feet. Both my parents have ugly feet and gave way to three children that have atrocious feet. I don’t like my booty, she’s real flat. No matter how many squats I do, she stays pressed tight against the back of my legs. I hate how long my torso is. Why must things be this way?

On the other hand, I fucking love my body. This morning when I woke up, I was being honest. My waist is pretty snatched. Both my sisters refer to themselves as “12-year-old boys” when talking about their bodies. I, on the other hand, am repeatedly told by my grandmother that I have “child-bearing hips and a tiny waist”, which I think might be the old-woman version of curvy. I like my boobs, yeah, they get in the way sometimes, but big boobs are kind of fun. I like my eyebrows, I never really have to maintain them, they naturally have a really defined shape. I love my eyes, they’re 100 different colours and I appreciate them. I lowkey, have nice hands. They’re not spidery, not chubs; narrow without being too narrow, you know?

So, here’s my dilemma. I love and hate my body. Half the time I don’t understand why I’m not a model and the other half I could literally bury myself out of embarrassment for living in the body I live in. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to change your body in healthy and attainable ways. My sister finally has me working out during quarantine, because I think despite all my whining, it is important to take care of yourself. I think it’s okay to strive for better and for healthier. Set physical goals: be able to do a pull-up, lose five pounds, run a mile without vomiting. But this beating down that I do on myself day in and day out is not okay. My body is badass.

My body holds the muscle memory to play guitar, it sings, it skis (both the snow and water variety), it has walked me all over the world, beaches in Greece, streets of Munich and Berlin, downtown Toronto and Vancouver. My body can (but has not yet, don’t worry Mom and Dad) grow a baby. HOW COOL IS IT THAT MY BODY CAN CREATE A SECOND BODY?

So, improvement is okay, but I need to remember to recognise that the way my body looks right now, in this moment, is okay. That it’s okay I don’t have teeny tiny, narrow hips like my sisters, or that I’m not 5’10” or that my hair isn’t pin straight, and my feet are nasty little fuckers. My body just wasn’t meant to be that way. And I need to learn to accept that I can’t run a half marathon, or lift 1,000,000 lbs, or to be honest, probably 100 lbs, but that if I want to do these things I have to work on them and progress will be slow.

I was born with imperfect skin that gets eczema and hair that never falls the right way and I don’t look like the girls on my Instagram feed. And that’s okay. Maybe tomorrow I will wake up and look in the mirror and see a garbage can with arms and legs, but I also can see a damn treat and I think a lot of it is my choice. I think a lot of it is my perception of the situation.

From me, with love, to you,
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-Victoria 

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