I only feel pretty after I workout

body shaming myself since 1998

I don’t know when it started. The need to be seen. To be invisible. To feel worshiped. To be ignored. I don’t know how I got it in my head that I was better off as the strong and silent type, the wilting flower to Nicole Kidman’s smoldering temptress. I’m not sure when I decided being pretty was more important than feeling full, that being good was better than being right, that your comfort was always more important than mine.

I think it’s probably always been there.

It would be easy to point to any number of societal pressures as the root cause, and that would be accurate. But it would also be accurate to say that I came to this conclusion alone. That I liked the way I slid into my grandmother’s size two bathing suit when I was sure I was a size six. That I liked to see my hipbones stick out when I twisted my body this way and that, sucking it in until I could almost fool myself into looking like the girls on TV. That the praise I got was worth the things I didn’t say. That being quiet earned me its own kind of power, even if I was the only one who knew.

Because when you’re invisible, you’ll do almost anything to feel in control.

So sure, pizza crust for dinner and half a bagel for breakfast and lunch might seem like a warning sign now, but then, it was just survival. And maybe you didn’t notice when I’d pick apart the food like Cassie from Skins taught me, or the way I’d suck my stomach in, then push it out as punishment for having no self-control. These things were always there. It’s just when you make yourself small, no one notices. And that’s sort of the blessing of it. And the curse.

It’s not as if I think about this a lot. It’s just that it’s always on my mind. In every movement, every decision, every item of clothing I wear. Every piece of food I pick up, drink that I carry. Every ten minutes of extra exercise, every quarter mile longer I run. These are my choices, and they’re just a part of me. I’m not sure I’d recognize myself without them. So it’s ok, really. I’m not that hungry. I’m just saving room. I’m just trying to be healthy.

*Note: it must be said for anyone reading and concerned: I am not struggling with an ED nor do I want to make light of or condone them. Like most women I know, this was something I struggled with a lot when I was a pre-teen and teen. But food and my body are also something I think about all the time. I don’t have any girlfriends who haven’t poked at their belly in the mirror, pushed it out just to “prove” how “fat” they are, skipped that dessert, starved themselves a little, let themselves go down a horrible, ugly rabbit hole of shame for eating the extra piece of pizza or nourishing their bodies when hungry. Who haven’t felt weak just for existing. This piece is meant to be an honest portrayal of what it’s like to live in these thoughts. What it’s like, as far as I can tell, to be a woman, every day.