Body Image and Elastic Pants

A woman stands in front of a mirror, considering her own body. She examines herself with a critical eye that she believes is neutral and honest one. "I know I'm not as attractive as other women," she thinks, with an internal sigh that insinuates she has internalized this as fact. She wonders if she will able to look at her reflection and think of it as beautiful, or if she will ever meet someone who will tell her that she is in such a way that she believes that they truly mean it. Instead she looks away.

This scene could easily be from a PSA on building self esteem, or an article in a magazine about the deteriorating state of body image, or a movie where the heroine eventually meets someone like Colin Firth in Bridget Jones' Diary who likes her just as she is. In reality, this is me, brushing my teeth before bed, letting my mind wander as I stand tethered to the bathroom sink for two minutes.

I remember the first time I had this revelation about myself: In the first grade, when I noticed the cute, popular girls in my class wore outfits I saw at the store but thought were for littler kids, because they were different than the ones I had from the "big girl" section. None of them wore the elastic waistband stirrup pants my mom bought for me, and they were glowingly tended to by classmates and grown-ups alike. At the ripe age of seven, I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t look like them, and definitely wouldn’t get the kind of preferential treatment that I saw them get because of it, and leaned into being the smart girl instead.

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This week TIME magazine reported that WW (formerly Weight Watchers) has announced Kurbo, "a free nutrition and weight-loss app for kids as young as 8." It's marketed as a way for kids and teens to build healthy habits while overseen by a health coach. "The fun app keeps you on track...your parent's don't!" the website boasts. "You'll like the videos, challenges and cool hacks, too." It uses a Traffic Light system to categorize foods and the dashboard prominently features a large number showing how many 'red' (read: bad) foods you've logged for the day.

I'm not a nutritionist, or a child psychologist, but I can imagine what sort of impact this would have had on my younger self. I can imagine that little girl in elastic pants, already sensing that her body set her apart from her peers, and adding to it the shame of having an adult she loved tell her that something about her was bad and needed fixing. She was a child who already got anxiety-induced stomach aches during gym class at the thought of publicly failing at a game because she wasn't as athletic as the other kids. She ate pretty well — I can vividly remember the pediatrician being surprised at how infrequently our family had pizza, fast food, or soda compared to other children in the 1990s — but that wouldn’t have mattered. Giving that little girl an app that told her food like the homemade pie her grandma made for her birthday or the chicken nuggets her dad splurged on as a Friday night surprise were bad and that she shouldn't be eating them would have made her miserable. She would have felt so guilty for eating 'yellow' foods even though that was what her family could afford put on the table. In trying to boost Little Wesleigh's self esteem by making her healthier this app would have have instead plummeted it in the opposite direction.

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And the thing is, while I have been plus-sized for the majority of my life, I didn't have as tough a time with body issues as some. I never actively hated my body, or suffered from any sort of disordered eating. I was mostly indifferent to it. My dad would remind us that in the long run looks would fade and your character was the most important part of you. My mom never put me or my sister on a diet as children because she had also struggled with being a chubby little girl and didn't want to put the same pressures she had faced on her daughters' shoulders. We were encouraged to play and do physical activities but never pushed to as weight loss motivation. My relationship with my body and weight and food was a bit complicated but could have been a lot worse.

Don't get me wrong, it was still hard. It was hard to grow up in an era where women's fashion revolved around spaghetti strap tank tops and mini skirts and I had to shop in the Gloria Vanderbilt section at Macy's to find jeans that fit. It was hard going to a specialty store to look at the five prom dresses available in my size when my friends went on fun shopping excursions with their moms. It was hard enough being a teenage girl while overweight; it would have been a million times harder if I had also grown up constantly tracking my food and worrying if, somehow, I was responsible for the way other people saw and treated me, and was only making things worse.

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This is why my heart breaks for the little girls who will be handed this WW app. Instead of seeing themselves through their own eyes, they will start to look at and judge themselves through the fun-house mirrors that are society's ideas of what their bodies should look like. Just like my seven year old self, they will look at themselves and determine that they won’t measure up.

I want them to be able to enjoy food and not resent it for what it has or hasn’t done for them. I want them to exercise because they found an activity they enjoy and not because they have to meet a move goal. I want them to never have that moment where they look around and think that they are not as worthy of attention or affection because of their size.

I want them to look at themselves in the mirror while brushing their teeth and not even wonder if they’re beautiful, because they already know it to be true.

What Romance Novels Have Taught Me About Love

Don’t tell anyone that I told you this, but —

I really love historical romance novels.

It feels a little embarrassing to admit. I have an English degree! I should like classics or modern fiction or something! But, the heart wants what the heart wants — and this heart loves sappy love stories set in vaguely 19th century England.

I gobble them up. I like to read them on my iPad, partially for the convenience,  and partially because that way I don’t have evidence of them lying around the house. I usually devour a book all in one sitting (or lying, I guess, since I am usually either on the couch or in bed), typically late at night, staying up until the wee hours of the morning to reach that inevitable happy ending.

That’s one of the things I love about them: there’s always a happy ending.

No matter what drama goes down over the course of the story, there is probably going to be an epilogue with a happily ever after and a baby. It’s inevitable. At least, in the kinds of series I like to read, it is; my favorites are the “sweet and clean” (yes, they’re really called that) ones that tend to start with a marriage of convenience, feature plenty of PG-13 safe make outs, and have some conveniently placed chapter breaks. It’s fine. I’d rather not have the Harlequin-style...imagery (once you’ve heard the word “flower” used in that context, you kind of wish you could bleach it from your brain). I’m perfectly content with the type of romance novel you’d be fine sharing with your mom or middle school niece.

Anyway, the series I’m into right now is by an author named Bree Wolf, which cleverly weaves all the books together by introducing friends and siblings and spinning off stories that all exist in the same universe. It’s like the MCU, but instead of superheroes they’re all nice people in Victorian-era London. Much less explosions, much more tea.  

While all the characters and their plot lines are much different, there is admittedly a formula to these types of books, and in this particular series it manifests as a marriage early in the book that either one character or the other is reluctant about, and unfolds as one or both of them come to realize that they actually are worthy of love, and learn to accept the affection shown to them.

And I think it’s this aspect that keeps me coming back, why I’ve sped through five of them and am glad there are more:

I love reading about these relationships where someone who feels unworthy of love finally, finally believes that they were wrong.

Because, if I were a character in one of these books, I know I’d be the reluctant one. Are you sure you want me? Am I really the right one? Do I actually deserve all of this affection and devotion? Am I worthy?

Sometimes I lie in bed after finishing one of these books, still thinking about the epilogue full of glowing couples, and wonder, will I ever have that? I know they’re fictional people, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling a tiny bit jealous of their happiness. Will I ever have that kind of warm, open, affectionate marriage? Am I worthy?

I think wrestling with that question is one of the most basic and universal parts of being human. We all just want to know that we’re worth being loved. And that we’re worth it not because of the things we’ve done, the awards we’ve earned, or the goals we’ve accomplished, but simply because of who we are.

It’s also one of the hardest things to learn as a human. If I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure I completely believe it yet. I want to. I want to know that I’m totally, completely, utterly worthy of love.

But it’s hard to feel worthy of love when you’ve never been in love, or never been in love with. It’s hard to feel worthy when you’re never chosen. It’s hard to feel worthy when someone tells a new couple “if anyone deserves love, it’s you,” and you wonder if somehow being single means you weren’t as deserving.

I know someone who periodically posts on Twitter the simple phrase “You are worthy of love.” No explanation, no context, no caveat, because none is needed. It’s a fact. Period. And every time I see it, it hits me like a punch in the gut, or a catch in the throat, because I always need to hear it. It’s easy for me to believe that other people inherently are worthy of love. Of course they are. But me? Specifically? I am worthy? That’s a concept that can be hard to wrap my mind around.

So I turn to these sweet and clean historical romances, and watch as the characters slowly accept their worthiness, and realize that they are enough, that they do deserve to be loved. I think about the fact that I am not alone in feeling this way, and that I can someday fully accept my worthiness, too.

And if it takes a titled Englishman with a townhouse in London to help accomplish it, I’m definitely not going to complain about it. 💜