Confidence—
The most complicated relationship is the one we have with ourselves. We have heard this before. I know it to be true.
Can we talk about confidence for a minute? Recently, I have been very annoyed by a blogger I follow on Instagram. Sounds silly, why follow her if she annoys you? Well she loves to talk about relationships and self-struggle. Two of my favorite topics. I do like listening to her point of view. What annoys me is that she is a 6’0 tall blonde with hair down her back and a seemingly perfect athletic body yet, she constantly talks about how she struggles to show a picture of herself in a bathing suit. I want to tell her to shut the f*** up. What I need to do is have the confidence in myself to relate this type of comment to my own insecurities from my past. Clearly, even people who have it all going for them in the ‘looks’ department get self-conscious too. Insert eye roll here.
However, I have been naturally very thin my whole life….the kind of thin you don’t want to be in 4th grade when someone tells you that you’re so skinny you should just die. The kind of thin you don’t want to be when in middle school when the asshole guys tell you have an eating disorder because this was a country school where everyone was corn fed, and your body doesn’t match. No one looks like you. The kind of thin where I was outwardly verbally assaulted on the streets of Chicago by complete strangers for being thin and existing. Comments from outside of a bar when I was walking by, or even outside of a Chick-fil-A while holding a bag of food-I had a man walk up and get in my face just to tell me that I made him sick because of the way I looked. I just stood there in complete shock. When I looked to my right I noticed a couple had seen the whole incident and looked just as shocked as I was- I was paralyzed and couldn’t move. Who does that to someone they don’t even know? He might as well have punched me in the face. I could have been going through a struggle, a sickness or I could just be naturally fucking thin, and either way do not deserve some random psycho shouting in my face on the sidewalk. I am by no means too thin these days. I do not, and never did have an eating disorder. The thing is that I am in my 30’s and thin – I have never been on a diet in my life, and truly don’t think this is my struggle in life. Sorry? I have others. If this somehow offends you – at this point in my life…I don’t fucking care. I am me. I have worked hard to love my body. I have worked out hard to get the muscle tone I now have. I am a dancer and used to have instructors look down on me for not having the proper body that I needed to have.. even though I was thin! Back then it was more muscle tone- and stronger this or stronger that. I did develop complexes about my body from years of the skinny/scrawny comments. The dance life forced me to overwork my abs and develop pelvic floor dysfunction from years of doing it wrong, and doing it too much. Did I always love my breasts, my butt or my hips? Absolutely not. Did men still tell me I had a great body? All the time. Funny how we think we want male approval, until we get it and realize it doesn’t fix all of our own jaded thoughts on ourself when we look in the mirror.
I have gotten to a place where physically I feel like I look like a woman. The most important thing to me is that I am healthy, happy and I appreciate my thin body. I lack the struggle of battling my weight like so many others deal with everyday. Especially as we age – the battle with weight and how we feel about it can become a challenging self conversation. Is it better to be thinner in your 30’s than it is at 15? I think it is. Only because of the confidence I have in my 30’s, not letting anyone step into my space to judge me in my face. I think half of those comments came my way back then because I didn’t have my mental guard up against that kind of behavior. Now it is the way I walk, and the way I talk- it is in how I look at others. No one gets away with judging me without my permission these days. My point is that plenty of women could be looking at me and thinking I want your body! As I got older and over the years I have actually heard that a million times. Very flattering, but somehow, I still find a way to look at someone like the blogger and think- How dare she have a body complex, she is perfect! It’s that confidence we all struggle with, wanting to put it off on others and assume they are better than us in some way. The circle that never ends when we can’t take a compliment and just leave it at that, but having to say: I’m ok, but look at how much better she is! We all have these internal and external voices that are constantly judging us. We all have our own definition of the perfect body too. I think it would be best if we kept that judgement to ourselves. You don’t have to tell someone they have a too big or too thin anything. That’s them-and you are you. No one is happy in their skin all the time. We actually work our ass off getting to a place of self-love. Staying there- that is a life challenge that never goes away.
Do The Best Version of You 