Learn to Love Your Body by Loving Your Inner Self: Pt. 1

A Woman’s Life Journey of Body Acceptance

Part 1 of 3: Beginning of Beauty or Beast?

I came across a wonderful article in the March 2012 Real Simple magazine about a women’s journey in resolving her body image and recognizing her beauty (check it out; see resource below). It got me thinking about our individual paths of body acceptance as women throughout the life span.

 As toddlers, we start to have an awareness of how our body moves and feels in relation to others’ movement, unencumbered by what the world says about beauty.  As we grow as girls, we begin to take on messages from our family, environment and society that tell us what we “should” look like.  This starts very young even at the pediatrician’s office, with the monitoring of our BMI, which very rarely takes into consideration our body build and heredity.  We begin to see our bodies in relation to other bodies. We start having a “body grade”!

The first time I remember awareness of my body size in comparison to others was in kindergarten. Our class was doing a circular movement activity, running with flowing scarves.  I remember enjoying the movement and the beautiful colorful scarves, but then for some reason beginning to notice how awkward I felt moving and how big I felt as I moved.  I remember feeling self conscious and thinking I was ugly.  I remember a little boy saying something to me about my clumsiness and size that day.  In the developmental world of my young brain, as a concrete thinker, my thoughts became a fact in my mind, “I am fat, big and clumsy!”  This memory set the stage for the rest of my life, feeling clumsy and big in comparison to others.

As women go forth into puberty, our bodies rapidly change.  No wonder we can develop body image distortions!  We cannot even catch up with ourselves before our body changes again.  As a pre-teen, a memory of body awareness stands out in my mind as a marker.  My first boy-girl dance of the seventh grade in 1969!  I remember exactly what I wore and how my body felt.  I was torn, once again, between the glorious feeling of my new dress and how much I liked it, the excitement of going to my first dance where I hoped to actually dance with a real boy, and the insecurity of wondering what would I do if I actually got asked to dance! (I had practiced dancing in front of the mirror over and over!)  When I got there all I felt was  FEAR….which then led me to focus on how big I felt and once again, how clumsy in comparison to others.  To secure that thought, no dance came my way!  Hmmmm…..do I see a pattern here?

 Strategy:

Start a Life Map of your body image, starting with the earliest memory you have about your body.  Note any ambiguous feelings about your experience of your body.

Explore with journaling about the experience and noting phrases and words on your Life Map.

Use media of your choice: Poster paper, computer graph, journal, markers, pens, crayons, digital images, and collage.  Make it as simple or as detailed as you want, but remember to focus on patterns that you see.

~  Author: Susan Miller, PhD, LPCS, NCC, BCPCC

Resource:  “Beautiful, in Every Single Way” by Elizabeth Berg, Real Simple Magazine : March 2012