I know this is cliche - classic, a girl talking about body image issues and weight and beauty. But let’s just add another one to the mix, shall we? What could it hurt?
This is hard and embarrassing to write, but here it goes.
I remember comparing my wrist size to other girls in elementary school and thinking: Why are my wrists so much bigger? Why are my legs stockier, more muscular? Why is my nose not petite, why are my lips so puffy? Why am I different?
When my body began the tumultuous changes of puberty and adolescence, I found things were changing in ways that I wasn’t very happy with. What was already big, became bigger. My metabolism changed, and all of the sudden I was putting on weight where I didn’t have weight before. While other girls were blossoming into walking goddesses, with perfect bodies, faces and hair - I was walking around completely ashamed and disgusted with how I looked, I covered myself in frumpy clothing and completely rejected my feminine identity.
I didn’t think I was a woman. I didn’t think I deserved to be one. Women were small. Dainty. They were flitty - with tiny wrists and delicate thighs and little noses that balanced a perfectly measured jawline. I was too muscular, too heavy, and too ugly to be a woman, and so I stopped thinking of myself as one. I knew myself as Emmie, and my identity began and ended there. I was some formless, genderless creature with a pretty good personality and a few talents.
I never dated in high school and a lot of college. I had plenty of crushes, I had desires to be with men and to have relationships. I was often the girl boys would come to to talk about girls they were interested in and how to win them over. I’d give them advice and walk with them every step of the way, praying to one day be the object of such intense affection. I would watch boys chase after girls with longing: knowing full well and accepting that because I was overweight, because I wasn’t traditionally pretty, because I didn’t shine brightly in my femininity - I didn’t deserve the same attention. Up until I had my first boyfriend at age 20, I never thought it was possible for a man to find me attractive and worthy of love -- and even then, I didn’t believe him. And I stayed with him much longer than I should have because I literally thought he was the only man on this earth who would ever love me as a woman who was overweight.
Living as a fat girl meant that I was always acutely aware of my weight everywhere I went. I would avoid going shopping with my friends because it was embarrassing to watch them fit into all the cute clothes and nothing would fit me. I would always know if I was the fattest person in the room at parties or hangouts, and I would feel better if there was someone else who was my weight or heavier. I would hold my head high when people would make fun of me or tell me they only wanted “skinny” girls and then I would go home and cry for hours. My weight never left my mind - it was always there, defining me, stripping me of dignity and of my femininity and my joy in life and in myself.
I just accepted this was my reality - this is was my destiny.
It took me years to realize why I felt this way. Society (even Christian society, I would argue especially Christian society) subtly and also not so subtly tells women that the most important thing we can offer to the world is our beauty. The thing that defines us, sets us apart, makes us worthy... is our beauty. Our bodies. Our hair. Our faces. Our lips. Our curves.
And beauty is especially beautiful when it is small, delicate, fragile - when it doesn’t take up space. When it doesn’t have stretch marks, when it’s hair isn’t frizzy, when it’s tummy is perfectly flat and it’s breasts are perky and proportioned perfectly.
So what happens when you aren’t beautiful AND you’re a woman?
This has been my life for practically my whole life. But a few years ago, I finally decided I was going to change everything and redefine how the world saw me, and within a year I had lost 70lbs. For the first time in my life, people were saying I was beautiful - that my body was beautiful! I could fit into clothes my friends were wearing. Men finally took notice of me. People told me I inspired them. My mom said I looked like a Barbie doll.
To the world, I was making it. I was fitting into the mold they wanted me to fit into. I was sexually appealing and not just a frumpy, best friend. I was one of the girls. I was noticed, I was approached, I was seen as desirable. People wanted to be like me, people praised me for my self-control and my hard work. People followed my Instagram.
What people don’t realize is, it was never enough. It started off healthy and with good intentions, but it eventually became a consuming obsession that furthered my belief that I was not worthy. Even at a healthy BMI, the fat girl lurked in my head and my heart and told me it wasn’t good enough. I still had cellulite, fat arms, a round stomach - I needed to do more. I needed to lose more. I needed to be a wisp in order to be a woman.
What people don’t realize is, a year ago, I was lucky if I ate one meal a day. I would wake up in the morning and weigh myself, and if I didn’t lose weight, I would refuse to eat the whole day and just drink coffee and juice. If I ate something bad or drank something bad, I would punish myself and not eat at all the next day and then force myself to walk seven miles with a long sleeved shirt on.
What people don’t realize is, I would walk and walk and run and run and bike and bike and lift and lift, and I wouldn’t feel satisfied in myself unless my entire body was sore and depleted of energy, and I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep unless my stomach was grumbling out of hunger.
What people don't realize is, I would become so hungry that I would binge eat alone in my room and then I would be so full I would throw up. I spend the next week in shame, not eating, until the vicious cycle started all over again.
I was the smallest I’ve ever been, and I was so unhappy, so depressed, so CONSUMED with how I looked and what I ate, so obsessed with getting smaller - that I was wasting away body and soul .
But hey, at least I was finally healthy.
At least I was finally beautiful to the world.
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| I remember this day - I didn't eat anything all day and then went to salsa class and felt like I was going to pass out. |
All of you have probably noticed that this past year I have gained nearly half of what I lost back. Yeah, it's been a tough year... my ministry work fell completely apart, I had a terrible, terrible reoccurrence of crippling depression and severe anxiety that made me want to sleep my life away, I was sick over and over. But I was also dating a boy who liked me as I was and I allowed myself to FINALLY AFTER TWO YEARS eat BREAD and ICE CREAM and NOODLES!! Oh my goodness I hadn't allowed myself to eat food like that for years! I was falling in love and happy to drink bubble tea (even though the sugar count is ridiculously high) with a man that wasn't going to base his love for me on how small my waist was. And pretty quickly, the weight crept back on.
It has been hard bearing people's comments, their worries about my weight gain, or realizing that I know what they are thinking: "She let herself go." But I got to say, in the midst of this past year, I have felt deliriously happy and devastatingly broken, but I haven't felt obsessed with how I looked. I just had too much happening, too much going on, too much at stake.... and while yes, I did push my health to the back burner, I also think this year saved me from something that would have been far more unhealthy and deadly that gaining some weight back. I was 100% on the verge of having an eating disorder, and my spiritual life was wrapped up and consumed with a false lie about where my worth was found.
Gaining weight back has forced me to come face to face with the very question of my worth and my value and my identity. Am I somehow less worthy now that I've gained back twenty pounds? Has my value diminished as the number on the scale rises? In a world that says I don't deserve to be desired or seen as a woman or pursued or loved for who I am - for being unideal in both my beauty and my weight, I know that I have to be brave enough to look it in the face and say: "Hell no. You are damn a liar. I refuse to listen to your poison." Even when everything else is screaming otherwise.
What's harder is looking into my heart and soul, which has been twisted to believe these lies for so so so so so long.. and speak with the same loving kindness that the Creator that formed my being speaks into me- sometimes, only a whisper: "Emmie, baby girl. You are so much more than what you look like. You are so much more than your weight. Your flesh will fail, it will grow old and wither away, but when I look into your soul, I know it will sustain, it will not fade away. It only grows stronger, more beautiful, with every day and with every trial and with every victory. Your worth is found in Me alone. And when I look at you, I DO see a woman. A woman whose strength, passion, fire and resilience means more than her pant size every could."
How do you deal with losing weight and gaining weight as a woman in a society that says it is all that matters?
You tell society to shut the hell up.
You remember what is true. You fight like hell to find balance, to heal your inner wounds, to develop a healthy relationship with food, exercise, and your body image. You win, you fail, you win, you fail and in every moment, in every breath, you are LOVED. You celebrate a body that has been fashioned and made WELL. You talk to your body and your self like you talk to your lover. You pray and you pray and you pray. You come against the lies of the darkness and the world, and you refuse to bow down to them. You fall and you get up again. And you climb to the top and look down and refuse to go back to where you were, but sometimes you do, and that is okay. You can always walk back up again.
I know more about God and about myself and his love and my love on this side of the journey. And I know that as life moves on, as I grow more and more into myself, it will continue to be filled with struggles. That's life. But isn't beautiful that the struggles birth beauty more sustaining than what the world claims is beautiful?
Today, as I seek to live a healthy and balanced life, that is what I cling to.
Not wasting away.
Not being beautiful in the eyes of the world.
Not becoming an "ideal woman."
Not reducing myself.
But resting in all that is me, all that is beautiful, and how loved I truly am.
