Be More than a Body (Uncovering Ideals)

Comparison is the Thief of Joy

I used to envy bodies that appeared noticeably underweight. Women with protruding collarbones and exposed rips and strips of landscape between thighs. I felt inferior next to female bodies with eleven- line abs and peach-emoji glutes and sculpted lats. 

Now, I see these bodies and think only of the time and energy these women put in to make them - and keep them; The enduring control and moderation day in and out. I think of the measuring cups and early mornings at empty gyms, of minutes counting painfully slowly on treadmill screens, of hungry glances at forbidden bakery displays of low cal beers as friends sip boozy margaritas. 

I was that girl. I had the thigh gap and the rib cage (but forever a pancake ass). I sipped Diet Coke, compulsively, recorded every piece of food I ate and ran myself into the ground, while my friends ran freely around the entertainment district, getting 3 AM Poutine after a night of antics, and living their best lives.

I was not happy.

So why would I assume that the woman with the washboard abs I saw running down the lakeshore this morning would be?

Moral of the story: It’s not healthy having so much of your self-worth wrapped up in what you look like. This practice, of finding meaning in the physics of my physicality, is only culminating in perpetual unhappiness.

Over the past few years, I have been learning to rewire that sense of identity, because I know continuing on with this mentality is only setting me up for a life of misery.

Slowly, my perception of what makes a body beautiful is beginning to change.

Walking through the busy Toronto Pearson airport coming home from BC, I see a family. Two cute kids, a boy and a girl, all gangly limbs and sun bleached hair. A dad with a receding hairline and scuffed sneakers holding all the passports and controlling an unwieldy luggage trolley.

And then there was the mother, brand new lulus and shiny Nikes. Toned and tanned biceps bulging as she carried  bag in one hand and a large Starbucks in another. She didn’t look happy. And she died today look particularly beautiful or attractive. Yes, she looked thin and fit as hell, as if she was getting ready to step on stage for a bikini competition.

But she didn’t look like a women excited about a week vacation wherever it was she was heading with her family. She looked like she was more anxious about the equipment the gym would have available and how many carbs would be in her meal on the plane.

I did not feel envious or inferior. I felt sad. I don’t want to be that woman. 

I don’t  want to have a body that makes it obvious I dedicate so much time controlling it and sculpting it to be that ideal. 

I don’t want to appear as if my greatest time and energy is dedicated to something as superficial as my appearance. I don’t want to look like I spend 10 hours a week in a gym, or eat nothing but vegetables and proteins , because that is not how I want to spend my life. 

I am not a professional athlete, a fitness model, or a social media influencer. My body has no value in terms of my career or my profession. The students I teach do not care about my muscle tone. I did not get hired by the school board based on the leanness of my thighs.

My teaching colleagues don’t come to me for tips on how to cook low carb or low cal or low fat. We go to the pub on Fridays and order beers and onion rings and rant about the crazy thing that kid did or said .

I find more value in sharing that experience, not the number of calories I missed by skipping the pub to hit a workout class. 

Not that workout classes and fitness are totally invaluable.I love my pole classes. I love teaching yoga and fitness classes . They just are not my daily priority.

My fitness now fits around the rest of my life.

That is what I want people to see when they look at my body. I want them to see me, the teacher, the friend, the spontaneous doer, the writer, the artist, the comedian. Nothing of which has to do with the dimensions or shape of my body. 

To the woman in the airport, I mean no unkindness.

I hope she experiences fulfillment and worth and meaning. I hope she has a life outside of the gym.

I hope she’s never created tension in her family, missing events or experiences that didn’t align with her physique goals.

I hope she never experiences the sense of isolation and inferiority that I did when I was hyperfocused on thinness, and fitness, and whatever I did, however much, was never enough.

I hope her kids grow up to value their bodies for all it allows them to do— NOT for the size it fits into or the number it reads on a scale. 

Are we done with this yet? How much could we each accomplish in this lifetime if we added up all the minutes and hours in a day we spent in pursuit of appearance ideals…

I write this post not to shame others for falling into this trap of comparison. I write it because still, even years into my recovery, I am still rewiring this fucked up way of thinking.

My body is more than acceptable by society’s standards. BUT, like 99 percent of us walking around this revolving mass of earth and matter, I am not in that one percent. (If I was, I wouldn’t be teaching for a school board without air conditioning, I would be getting photographed for a living.)

That does NOT mean 99 percent us us do not deserve to feel happy, or need to do or be anything but what we are.

We are the destination. We have arrived.