Body Image Matters

Friends, I have to tell you that I’ve started then stopped writing this post so many times. I wrote nearly half of this article last time before I abandoned it entirely. Today I’m feeling a little braver 😊 and so I restarted it again. I feel moved to share my journey to self-love and acceptance as it relates to body image specifically. I don’t know who needs to hear this or who this will encourage but I think talking about body issues is important especially amongst women.

Self-love, self-acceptance, and appreciating oneself are things that are close to my heart. I am intentional about these things. However, this wasn’t always the case. I struggled with liking, accepting, and loving myself quite a bit growing up. I did not appreciate myself for who and what I am. I had to learn and grow in these areas. In many ways, I’m still learning and growing. I haven’t “arrived” yet. As learning goes, it’s a continuous journey. I continue to learn and discover new things all the time.

Let me tell you about my journey from the beginning. When I was younger, I disliked the way that I looked. I felt self-conscious about it and had a long list of things that I wanted to change about myself. I started dieting at a very young age. When I say very young, I mean pretty much as soon as I hit adolescence. No matter what I tried though, I was never satisfied with the results. The one positive that came out of all my various diets is that I developed a love for vegetables, fruit, and other healthy options like unprocessed foods and whole wheat and whole-grain starches.

My mom was very supportive. She encouraged me to eat healthily and not focus so much on the way that I looked. Being the nurse that she is, she encouraged me to care more about my nutritional intake than my calorie intake. She counselled me against comparing myself to others whether they were family or friends or ladies that I saw in the media. The interesting thing is that I felt compared all the time and I hated it. My older sister is slim and looks different from me. People would often ask why we were so different if we shared parents as if sharing DNA meant that we were supposed to be homogenous.

One incident sticks out in my mind. A very misguided and immature guy went so far as to compare my sister and me feature-by-feature from our height to our complexion to our looks. I was a young adult by that time and I could tell that his comments said a lot more about him than they did about my sister and me. Nonetheless, it embarrassed me and hurt my feelings. The words stayed with me for a very long time. The unfortunate thing is that it wasn’t an unusual or isolated incident. I come from a community where people freely comment about others’ weight and looks.

If you grew up in an African community like I did then I think you’ll relate. It’s not uncommon for people to comment on and roast you about your weight or looks. You’ll hear words like, “Ah, Flo, hindava kusimba kudai? Maiwe, ende wasimba. Uri kudyeiko?” This translates to, “Ah, Flo, why have you gained so much weight? Goodness, you’re now overweight. What are you eating?” There are specific words used to describe overweight people which I won’t repeat here. It’s not that unusual to hear someone comparing another to a cow or a hippo to illustrate just how much weight they’ve gained. Some unkind people will even ask whether you’re pregnant if you’re female.

As if this is not enough, we live in an era where everything is overly sexualised especially women’s bodies. As a young girl who’d just hit puberty, I quickly became self-conscious about certain parts of my body because they attracted the kind of attention that I did not want or need. I discovered that some boys and even grown men felt free and confident to comment about my shape and what they liked or didn’t like about it. Others wouldn’t say anything about me to my face but would freely comment about other ladies in my presence which I felt was just as bad. I found the objectification of my body and the body of women around me hurtful and damaging to my confidence and self-esteem.

To be fair, it’s not only women that are overly sexualised or only men doing the objectifying. Guys experience the same thing. Women also objectify others. Some make all kinds of harsh comments and comparisons directed at other women and men as well. I grew up feeling the pressure and the desire to be toned, slender, and appealing. As much as I hated being compared, somewhere along the way I took on the voice of criticism and comparison. I used to watch TV shows about weight-loss and makeovers and vowed to do that for myself someday. I was going to “fix” everything that I didn’t like, enhance what I liked and create a better version of me.

Friends, I honestly cannot tell you when the shift in my perspective happened. It happened slowly over a period of time. I think the turning point was when I realised that I needed internal healing first. Achieving my target weight and body goals were not some kind of magic formula that was going to make everything okay. This realisation came when I read a book on the ultimate solution to weight issues by a popular psychologist. I grasped that no amount of external change was going to fix how I felt about myself. I needed to accept and love myself unconditionally.

This was not an easy thing to do. I’d disliked a lot of things about myself for so long. I was bullied in school for the way that I looked. I’d listened to the critical voices of other people over the years and had taken the criticism on. My voice joined my critics’ voices and I repeated the hurtful things that had been said about me to myself. I remembered a poem that I read when I was younger called “In the Desert” by Stephen Crane which goes:

In the desert
 I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
 Who, squatting upon the ground,
 Held his heart in his hands,
 And ate of it.
 I said, “Is it good, friend?”
 “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

 “But I like it
 “Because it is bitter,
 “And because it is my heart.”

It’s a very layered poem with a lot of symbolism and various meanings. It speaks of this creature that is seemingly human yet is debased and animal-Iike as it eats its own heart and delights in that. It reminded me of a Shona expression, kuzvidya moyo, which translates directly to “eating your heart”. It describes a state of being where you’re anxious or worried or stressed or overthinking and, consequently, deeply unhappy. Yet as bitter as it is to be in that state, I figured that it can actually become a comfort zone. Like the creature in the poem, you become a lesser version of yourself, changed by your mindset. As I reflected on this, I realised I had to unlearn disliking my body and even myself. I had to learn to love and accept myself unconditionally. I had to stop “eating of my heart”.

I found it easier to start by accepting myself just as I was. I resolved to accept my body even though there were many things that I didn’t like about it. I figured that it was mine and it housed my soul. I decided to love it and nurture it for that reason. Over time, with the help of a lot of therapy and the support of loved ones, loving and accepting myself became easier and easier. Exercising and eating well became more about health and wellness than the need to lose weight or look a certain way. Don’t get me wrong, I still care about my weight and the way I look. However, it is not the main driving factor for how I eat or exercise. I’m not as obsessive about it as I used to be.

When I catch myself being critical of myself or comparing myself to others, I correct course a lot quicker than I did before. The voice of criticism is not as loud and frequent as it used to be. The breakthrough that established me on my path to self-love, self-acceptance, and appreciating myself was my relationship with Jesus Christ. As I discovered more of who God is, I began to understand just how precious I am to him. The Lord who created me looks upon me and sees a good thing. He delights in me. He sings songs and rejoices over me because I am fearfully and wonderfully made by him. I do not look the way that I do by chance. I was beautifully designed that way!

If you’ve ever disliked yourself or felt self-conscious or unattractive or overweight or not good enough, I want to tell you that you do not have to feel that way. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are absolutely gorgeous in your uniqueness. Embrace it. You are loved and accepted unconditionally by God. You deserve to be loved and accepted unconditionally by yourself and by others as well. If you’ve ever been unkind or callous or spoken carelessly about the way someone looks, I urge you to reconsider your position. Make amends if you need to. Do not bully or judge anyone because of the way they look. Be kind. Be considerate. Be compassionate, please. Beauty is more than just skin-deep 🙂.

Love,