Authentically Me

All my life I’ve been told how to be a woman. I’ve been told how to look, how to act, how to speak, how to feel. I’ve made myself sick over comparisons between myself and other women. I’ve gone on ridiculous diets and participated in an absurd amount of exercise in order to achieve what society portrays as the “perfect body”. I’ve bent over backwards for others because I thought that was how I achieved love. As Daya sings, I’ve “sat still and looked pretty”. I’ve molded myself to what society believes a woman should be.

I grew up going to church every Sunday morning and every Wednesday night. As I’ve now learned throughout my adult life, Christianity is about your relationship with God - not your relationship with your purity and your body, but as a young teenage woman, I was taught otherwise. At church functions that required swimsuits, girls were required to wear one pieces or tankinis whereas the boys were allowed to wear their normal swim trunks without a t-shirt showing as much skin as they liked. If you showed up with a bikini, you were given a t-shirt to cover yourself up. I believe this was to protect the boys from being tempted. We had something called “purpling” that was also enforced into our minds aka when a guy (red) or girl (blue) touched by any means (hugging, hand holding, etc.) it was considered purpling. Again, something I never quite understood, but followed the rules regardless. The church I grew up in was heavily protectant towards males. I had to be careful with anything I wore as I did not want to “tempt” any boy. Side note that I’ve learned throughout my years of being here on this Earth and interacting with males: they are going to think about sex regardless of what you wear. It doesn’t matter what the hell you wear or don’t wear. It’s how we are wired as humans. It always blew my mind the amount of time we spent on covering up women’s bodies and protecting the male mind. Wasn’t church supposed to be a place for the broken to heal and to find grace in God, our always-forgiving and loving Father? It sure didn’t seem like it. Purity culture was a huge topic of interest in my middle school/high school days. Everyone who went to church was wearing a purity ring (for those of you who do not know, this is a ring that symbolizes you are waiting until marriage to be intimate with someone), so I felt called to join in. Not only did I wear this purity ring, but I flaunted it alllll around. Oh, I wore that thing on a chain around my neck, so that everyone knew I was a “good girl”. Now, before someone comes at me about waiting until marriage to have sex - I absolutely applaud you for making that decision for yourself. That is absolutely beautiful and respectful! I by no means want to offend anyone. But, that decision was not for me and I now know (after years of feeling guilt and shame) THAT IS OK. Was I made fun of by kids at my public high school? Yup. Was I called a “prude”? Yup. Were rumors STILL spread about me - calling me a whore and that my ring was a coverup? Yup. Did wearing a purity ring make me feel any better about myself as a woman? Not really, no.

For a very long time, I’ve felt an incredible amount of shame and guilt for the experiences I’ve had involving my body. Whether it’s showing a little more skin in an outfit or a bikini I’ve worn on vacation or interacting with a male partner, I had never really felt comfortable. I felt guilt if I had any sort of thought that was not pure. I felt guilty if I looked at a picture of a shirtless male. I’ve felt immense guilt and shame after sleeping with someone. I’ve always felt the need to cover myself up and hide my body from the world as I was taught it’s inappropriate to show yourself. We were taught that your body is a temple, so treat it as such. Well, who’s to say my temple doesn’t have a few dents and dings and decorations? I know I’ve placed a lot of emphasis on what I’ve learned in church, but don’t get me wrong, high school, social media, and other things were just as influential on my body image as the church. As a 12-year-old girl in 7th grade, I was called down to the office for wearing a skirt, which was actually a skort, only to be told my skirt was not fingertip length. Meanwhile, there were guys walking around the hallways with sleeveless shirts that showed the majority of their chest inside the shirt. Something didn’t quite seem right there.

From such a young age, as a woman, I was taught to feel shameful about my body. Society has always placed so much emphasis on how women are supposed to look, feel, act, talk, live, etc. Social media became popular around my middle school days, but it never really affected me until after college. It used to be a place to show our creativity with our top 8 pals and our song of the week on our profiles (shoutout to Myspace). Nowadays, social media has become a feeding ground for comparisons, followers and who can get the most likes on posts. As women, we are, unfortunately, wired to compare and contrast ourselves with other women’s bodies. If we don’t look like a size 0, 5’11” model, then we find unhealthy ways to achieve society’s view of perfection. I am heavily guilty in the comparison and unhealthy dieting area. I’ve starved myself to achieve what I thought was the “perfect body”. I’ve worked out longer than I should have because I thought that would melt away the fat that I saw on myself. I’ve gotten into situations with men that I thought would make me feel better for so many reasons that only ended in more self doubt and heartbreak. For so long, I’ve been wrapped around this image of perfection only to find out that my body will never be society’s version of perfect.

When 2021 rolled around, I told myself this would be the year I stopped obsessing over my body image. There’s a difference between feeling and looking healthy versus obsessing over a number on the scale or a number on a piece of clothing. Women’s sizes are ridiculous. They make no sense and ladies, you’re best not even worrying about your size because chances are you’re going to be a different size in every piece of clothing at every store. Those numbers mean absolutely nothing. YOUR SIZE DOES NOT DEFINE YOU. Please, read this as many times as you need to because every single word of that sentence is true. I made the decision to have pictures taken by a sweet and incredible friend from college (see below). I’m going to be honest - I scheduled that appointment when I felt incredibly confident about my body a few months ago, but the morning of my shoot, I had not felt as confident. As she set me up for my first photo, she had said to me that my body is her ideal body (BTW, Taylor, if you’re reading this - your body is KILLER and beautiful…you literally brought an incredible life into this world!). We then had a conversation about how crazy it is that this is how women’s brains work because I had told her my body is definitely not what I would consider an ideal body. In the moments to follow, my mindset instantly changed. Ladies, if you do one thing in your life, do a boudoir shoot with Taylor. I have never felt more beautiful, empowered and confident in my body than I did during our shoot. For so long, I have fought off demons inside my mind telling me that I am not skinny enough, pretty enough, blonde enough, tan enough, tall enough, muscular enough, sexy enough and so many more “not enoughs”. Throughout these last six months of 2021, I have been continuously reminding myself that my worth DOES NOT come from my body image. My worth is not determined by a number on the scale or a size on a piece of clothing. My worth comes from God and my God has given me this strong, beautiful body with curves and muscles and an incredible mind to do and feel and conquer really hard things. Ladies, if any of you need any sort of reminder, here it is: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL REGARDLESS OF YOUR SIZE.

I no longer feel guilty or shameful for what my body has gone through. I no longer choose to hide myself because it may “tempt” the male species. If a male is tempted, that’s his own damn issue not mine. We need to stop focusing so much on hiding ourselves for the comfort of others and instead, educating each other on how to be respectful towards everyone. As women, it is not our job to protect the male’s mind. They are humans just as we are, so they are going to think what they think regardless of our body size or our body image. I love my body for every inch and curve that it has as well as all the experiences it’s gone through. I am proud of the work I’ve put in, physically and mentally, to get to where I am in my self love journey. I am beautiful and strong regardless of my size. My size does not and will not ever define me. I feel comfortable and free to be authentically me.