A Woman’s Life Journey of Body
Acceptance Please join
us for our three part blog series on Women and Body Acceptance. Learn about strategies and resources to
support healthy body image in women.
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:
Visit us again for Part 2: Teen Body Blues.
~ Susan Resource: “Beautiful,
in Every Single Way”
by Elizabeth Berg, Real SimpleMagazine March 2012 |
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