I was an admittedly ugly child.
Sure, I cared. I wanted to be the pretty girl, I wanted to be the skinny girl, I wanted to be the desired girl. But what I wanted more than any of that was to
be the intelligent girl with interesting things to say. I wanted to be the girl
that people took seriously. So yes, I knew I wasn't attractive, I thought about
it every so often, and I didn't really care that much.
My parents got divorced when I was
in the fifth grade. Before the divorce, I had attended a Catholic school. I’d
never been to a public school. So when I experienced public schooling in sixth
grade, I had a major culture shock. I think it’s pretty safe to say that public
school kids lose a majority of their innocence sooner than Catholic school
kids. Or maybe that was just me. Regardless, everything from attitudes, to
sexual and drug knowledge, to body images were different. Switching from private to public schooling was the first of
many times my worldview had been reshaped.
I don’t remember exactly when I
first went to church camp. I’d honestly never thought about the idea of church
camps while in Catholic school. Why go spend a summer at a camp for God when
you spend every Friday and Sunday bored out of your mind for him? But my dad
met my step-mom around the same time I entered the public school system. Church
camp had been a part of her and her kid’s lives for a few years at
that point I think. Naturally, my dad, brother, and I joined in this ritual
soon enough.
The first time I went without my
parents (I was with my soon-to-be-step-sister Nikki), I had a huge attitude
about the whole thing. I still identified as Christian, no doubt about that. I
think I just had a hard time playing nice with others. I remember feeling
hugely superior and above all of the activities they were doing. (In all
fairness to little me, looking back, I still get a weird feeling about it all). Once I started to adjust to the
culture of camp a little more, I got more into all the little rituals and
activities. Or at least I pretended I was. In reality I was just attempting to
smother the little cynical voice of reason in the back of my mind. It was once
the Stockholm Syndrome had set in that I experienced The Body Shaming Beach
Ordeal.
The councilors took our cabin (or the part they were responsible for)
down to the beach after sunset. They told us to pick out a rock, whichever one
we wanted but fairly large. They then distributed permanent markers and told us
to write ten things about our bodies that we don’t like. TEN! I distinctly
remember another girl asking “What if we can’t think of ten things?” to which
one of the councilors replied, “Try your hardest.” So there I was, on a dark beach with a
rock and a sharpie in my hand, digging deep for the most mentally harmful activity I’d been asked to do in my entire life up to that point. I think I got about
three things down before I ran out of ideas. How many body parts are there? How
many things can be wrong with a person? Most of all; why did I have to piece apart
my body for these people? I didn’t get ten things down. I waited until our time
was up.
After they were done scribbling body hate, the councilors instructed everyone to read their list aloud. I waited for my turn and found out just how many pieces a body can be broken into. As I listened to the insecurities of my peers, I evaluated myself. Did I like my eyes, my hands, my thighs, my feet, my pores? Who knows? I hurriedly scribbled some of these things on my rock before it was my turn so that I’d have the appropriate number of awful characteristics to share with the group. This whole thing was humiliating. There’s no other word for it. But the way they presented it made it feel as if we were performing some super secret ritual designed to bring us closer. They read some bible verse about loving ourselves and then told us to go to the end of the dock and throw our rocks as far into the lake as possible. This was to symbolize us releasing our bodily hatred and letting God love us the way we were. Of course it didn't matter that I didn't actually hate myself.
After they were done scribbling body hate, the councilors instructed everyone to read their list aloud. I waited for my turn and found out just how many pieces a body can be broken into. As I listened to the insecurities of my peers, I evaluated myself. Did I like my eyes, my hands, my thighs, my feet, my pores? Who knows? I hurriedly scribbled some of these things on my rock before it was my turn so that I’d have the appropriate number of awful characteristics to share with the group. This whole thing was humiliating. There’s no other word for it. But the way they presented it made it feel as if we were performing some super secret ritual designed to bring us closer. They read some bible verse about loving ourselves and then told us to go to the end of the dock and throw our rocks as far into the lake as possible. This was to symbolize us releasing our bodily hatred and letting God love us the way we were. Of course it didn't matter that I didn't actually hate myself.
Now, I’ll admit, I felt free throwing
that rock. In that short amount of time, some part of me had submitted to the
fact that I was supposed to hate my body. In the following days, that night
stuck with me. I couldn't shake the insecurities that everyone around me had. I
felt like the abnormal one for not feeling the same way…or maybe I did feel
the same. I mean, my thighs were pretty
huge. Right? In the time that followed, I looked at my body a lot more. I
started to pick it apart. I no longer lived in a body. I lived in my head and possessed
arms, legs, a stomach, feet, hands, hair, eyes, and so on. I stopped
questioning the advisability of hating yourself. It became a fact, underlying
everything I did. And when life got really rough a few years later, I took it
out on my body. I ate poorly if I ate, and I did other reprehensible things to
myself that I won’t recount for fear of people attempting the same.
I've come a long way since then. I
don’t purposefully punish my body for anything anymore. In fact, I love myself.
I love my body. I’ve recently realized that this concept is revolutionary to
many. It makes me sad that we live in a world in which bodily confidence is the
weird stance. It makes me absolutely
sick that we live in a world where girls punish themselves for things beyond
their control and for enjoying themselves. It makes me angry that summer camps,
and indeed adults in general, feel the need to push young girls to be ashamed of themselves. I don’t know if I’ll
ever be a parent but if I am, I’ll make sure that my little girl (or boy!, boys
are susceptible too) knows that she or he is loved and that your body is meant
to be lived in and not reviled. In fact, bodily hate is such a construction of the Middle Ages. After
the Renaissance shouldn't we be over all this shit?
By now you've probably realized that I spend too much time on Youtube. So I've decided to include some Extra Credit Viewing. I love Laci Green and feel that these two videos are a wonderful commentary on body shaming and societal expectations.
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