…Everywhere we go.
This is the time of year where many people start making their New Year’s Resolutions about dieting. Most of us (lucky ones) have spent weeks ingesting our own body weight in holiday cookies, turkey feasts, and mugs of spirit-spiked eggnog, and now we’re all feeling a little… well… stuffed.
As I sit here struggling with my own life-long body image issues, which are only exacerbated by a burgeoning pregnant belly that I have no control over, I think about how much energy I spend hating my body — and how very little I spend on loving it. It’s so easy for me to look in the mirror and zero in on my cellulite, or puffy arms, or dimpled knees, and think about all the food mistakes I’ve made in my lifetime. A few weeks ago I caught myself telling Hyphenated Husband that I was “too ugly” to sit for holiday card pictures with the kids, and Jonas overheard me. He started saying “Daddy! Mommy is ugly!” and in that moment I felt like The World’s Worst Mother. What kind of issues am I going to pass on to my children, especially my soon-to-be daughter, if I keep up this negative body image rhetoric?
The problem is that we, as women, are not “supposed” to feel good about our bodies. Every day we’re confronted with Size Zero models with airbrushed skin telling us that that we are all too… something. Most of us will never look like them, and we’re not ever supposed to, because if we did then they couldn’t sell the impossible image to us anymore. And it’s this time of year, especially, that purveyors of diet plans and fitness equipment spend millions trying to remind us how fat we all got over the holidays… just in case we didn’t already feel bad before the festivities started.
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But I say we all do something just a little different. Instead of buying into the Fat Phobia that’s so common around the New Year, how about we all look in the mirror and find some things we LOVE about ourselves? How about we stand, buck naked, in front of a full-length mirror and zero in on the parts of our body that we love, or that our partners love?
And I want us to do more than that. I want us to say (type) those things out loud. I believe part of the reason that women in our society don’t completely love ourselves, or feel comfortable in our own skin, is that we think we’re not allowed. If we ever admit to feeling good about a certain part of our body, then it’s seen as narcissistic. If we don’t constantly join our friends in the “I’m so fat” chorus, then they look at us suspiciously as if we’re full of ourselves. It’s hard to break this habit. I’m a proud feminist who should know better than to participate in this socially-programmed self loathing, but yet here I am, doing it to myself every day. Every. Single. Day.
But I’m giving myself, and everyone who reads this, permission to say out loud, “Every day I wake up and I’m so thankful that I was born with _______ part of my body.” Or how about, “My partner is obsessed with my _______ and it secretly makes me feel so freaking hot.”
I will start — But first know these two things:
A.) This is not easy because I spend a lot of time telling my husband how “gross” I feel every day. He, on the other hand, LOVES my body, and uses every opportunity to tell me so. He especially loves my pregnant form, so much that it seems he can’t keep his damn hands off me any time I’m with child. I shoo him away from me because I (probably) think that women in my condition aren’t supposed to feel sexy, or be seen as sexy.
B.) I’ve put on 18 lbs of pregnancy weight, and I’m only (nearly) 25 weeks, which puts me a little ahead of the curve. So while I’m actively trying to feel better about my body the way it is, I admit that I AM ALSO now trying to cut back on my nightly piece(s) of chocolate cake, and replace them with a bowl of cereal or a piece of fruit instead. That may sound like dieting, but I think it’s just reigning in an egregious snacking habit that isn’t really healthy, regardless of the numbers on the scale.
But whether or not we personally decide to replace our daily treats with fruit or granola, it’s time to really love what we were given, and to not be one goddamn bit ashamed about it.
So without making a million apologies for how egotistical this may sound, here’s what I love about my body when I allow myself to do so:
My feet. They are very good feet. My husband has a “thing” for them. He’s never had a foot fetish, but he stares at mine when we’re doing the deed — and I totally get it. They are hot. My feet – yes, my feet, are hot. 
My ass. Sir Mix a Lot was talking about me in that song. I have got a juicy booty. It’s certainly less badunkadunk than Kim Kardashian, but I have always gotten quite a bit of good attention from the opposite sex for the junk in my trunk. This is also another part of my body that my husband totally gets off on. My butt makes him salivate, and that makes me feel voluptuous. He doesn’t even see the cellulite that I focus on. Perhaps it’s time to start looking at it through his eyes a little more.
My pregnant belly. As much as I complain about it, I love the way I look when I’m pregnant. I feel like a maternity super model. My pregnant bellys grow all out in front, and have (so far) netted exactly ZERO stretch marks in 2.5 pregnancies. I often mistake my pregnancy discomfort with a real hatred over the way my body looks (I mean, let’s face it, it’s hard physically to feel like a land whale and not also think you actually look that way too.) But when I look at belly pics of myself, I think “Damn – I was made to do this.”
And now it’s your turn. Leave a comment, or write your own blog. Tell the world (and yourself) what you unabashedly love about your own body, and — here comes the hard part — remember that when Jenny Craig is running their post-holiday “You Ate Too Much This Christmas” commercials.
First of all, thank you for this post. I am 26 weeks pregnant and fighting off comments already of "are you sure it's not twins?"
Here is what I love about my body:
-my strong hands
-my larger than normal boobs
-my hourglass figure
-my uterus
My husband would tell you that I have a sweet ass, and I like to hear that, especially as it seems to grow at a faster rate than my belly.
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