Liquid Mirrors
And the truths we devour
How much smaller Shall I shrink for you I twist my body bend my mind to avert your scorn appease your fury. Even if I could shrink to a flea I believe you would find my size too demanding. Maybe turn to water then, for you to drink when your throat becomes dust from all the ember that bleeds from your Being
I’ve been daydreaming of a world where no mirrors exist.
I take away the glass, the refractions off water, and the shadows that dance with our movements. I even wonder if I must hide away anyone that may offer me a glimpse at my own reflection.
In order to just — exist.
To move through a world with only our other senses to judge how we experience ourselves within it.
Part of me worries I would go mad waiting for what I knew was trapped in those hidden reflections. Another, hopes I would finally be able to hear my own body, to live out my own desires, not through my choices just to be desired. To hear what my body might hope for, what she might need from me to show how much I love her, allow her to show me all she wishes we could be.
And then, I am back in that room, in front of my mirror, with a body I did not want and a body that probably does not want me.
The body did not ask to be shamed. It did not ask for relentless scrutiny or to be compared to a body it will never be, a body it was never designed to be. No, the body asks nothing, but to carry you from this room to the next, to act as your navigation through this life, and all I give it back is endless restrictions and a venomous tongue until I am sure she will breakdown from neglect.
Maybe there was a time that I loved this body and all that it provided me. Maybe when I would come home covered in grass stains and wore dresses just to twirl under the trees — before whatever poison flows through generations leeched into me. I wonder if my body misses those days too, where she was my partner, not my enemy.
I know I am by no means alone in my body hatred.
I know that entire industries are founded on getting you to believe that you are not enough unless you buy into it.
We are curious creatures trapped in the examining of our own image, but how far back was the curiosity dipped in that poison? How long ago did we decide to view our flesh as something to be punished, rather than nurtured?
I remember one of the first times I hated my body.
It was summer, I was maybe 12 years old. I wore shorts that day because it was one of those sticky upstate heats that slowed time. I just came in from exploring ants hills and flowers, and was about to head upstairs when my mother came into the room. She looked at my shorts, reached out and tugged on them. She sighed, and said “looks like you have my legs.”
That was it.
It was so small. So simple. Not necessarily good, not necessarily bad. But, that’s how she saw me.
I had the one feature of hers that made her sigh.
Something in that sigh dripped with generations of self-hatred that I find myself trying to expel even now.
That’s where we learn how to treat our bodies — our parents.
And who taught my mother that her body was not *right*? Who told her that her legs were something to be ashamed of and to be worried that her own daughter would inherit?
And who taught her mother?
I want to follow this hate all the way down the line until there is just one person to blame who might suck back this poison that keeps festering within us.
But a woman is a changeling, always shifting shape
Just when you think you have it figured out
Something new begins to take
What strangе claws are these scratching at my skin
I nеver knew my killer would be coming from within— Florence & The Machine
And I do mind, resent really, all the years I’ve wasted trapped within this liquid mirror and these damning thoughts.
I resent that my understanding of my appearance is directly tied to the actions I take and the people I interact with in any given day.
I resent my constant shapeshifting.
One day I can grow and shrink over 4 dress sizes depending on if I went to the gym or not, or if my mother mentioned something about my hair, or if I saw a picture I wish didn’t exist.
A secret talent, really.
And I resent how the idea of not consuming food has slowly consumed me. How one good appearance day could be shattered by the calories I would watch add up on whatever nutrition app I was attached to at the time.
How these liquid mirrors have allowed me to devour a deep knowing that no matter how my appearance may shift, the reflection is never what it needs to be.
I could be stranded on a mountain, fighting for my life and still worrying about if my arms would be too big when the paramedics found my body.
Earlier this month I read Butter by Asako Yuzuki, a book of food, societal pressure on women, and murder.
The main character allowed her body to shift as she explored food and the lead on a story she was writing. She saw her body change and chose to accept herself despite the comments from colleagues, friends, even her partner. She chose to move through life with joy and curiosity instead of restriction and surveillance.
And it was one of the most triggering books I’ve ever read.
In one part she writes of a children’s story about tigers and jealousy. The Story of Little Black Sambo, about a young boy being hunted by a succession of tigers. The tigers argue over who should get to eat the boy, and begin chasing each other around the tree. Fueled by jealousy and their own ambition, they chase each other so fast that they turn into butter. The boy’s father then takes the butter to be used in the pancakes he makes that day.
That’s what it feels like to hate your body. You are so focused on proving your self hatred that you just spin, around and around, until you become nothing more than a melted version of yourself, to be used by whomever comes along and wishes a taste.
I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.
— The Picture of Dorian Gray —
While Yuzuki was bringing out my own fear of my body changing, I thought of how reading The Picture of Dorian Gray had brought me some sort of comfort. How the idea of damning your own soul in the prison of a painting was more acceptable to my mind than the idea of gaining weight and being less desirable just from enjoying food.
But, isn’t it kind of poetic of the human experience that a story written in 1890 still applies to a lot of how people feel today? The desire to rid yourself of aging, the burden of our own fragile beauty.
And how tempting is it to believe that we can take control over that image and the passage of time? Time writes our lives along our skin, and may we feel powerful if we were able to erase what has been etched along it.
Maybe it’s time that I’m obsessed with. Trying to find the evidence of something that none of us can truly see, but all live within.
Or maybe it’s control. A desire to have more control in my life and attaching my idea of it by fixating on the way I am perceived in this world?
I mean, humans have always been interested in their own image and altering it in some capacity.
Like, as much as my own body image holds my attention, I am ecstatic that I did not have to live through the corset fashion of the 1820s.
After that time, it is no wonder that body dysmorphia was first recognized in the 1890s. The generation after the corset wearers.
Before corsets, it was famines and viewing someone heavier as less moral. And before that it was religious to see your own flesh as a sin.
*sigh*
White women have been out here hating their bodies from the very beginning.
And how soon should women dislike their form?
I remember a clear shift. The shift from when I was a kid to when I was judged as a woman. It flooded my life almost instantly. Overnight, tackling during recess was no longer acceptable, but seen as too aggressive for a girl. Getting grass stains was no longer fun, but now said something about my desirability. Boys started telling me I was too strong for anyone to like me. They would comment on my appearance, how to be prettier, what I needed to change to be acceptable.
What was once games between friends became a contest I didn’t know I entered.
To be desired.
Is that all my body is worth?
My whole life has been a constant wave of judgements by those around me, letting me know just how I should be showing up in the world.
It is so much easier to fall to these judgements and chase a fix and finally be up to some standard with no origin. It’s as though choosing acceptance for yourself, as you are, is now the most rebellious thing we can do.
I have been on the fence of getting a nose job since I was 15. I was ashamed of any side-profile photo of myself and wanted to feel soft pretty instead of “strong-featured” like I was often told. Telling someone they had strong features always felt like the nice way of telling someone they stood out in a way that people weren’t really sure if it was good or not.
Then earlier this year, I was at my friend’s house watching a movie with a group of people, where this girl turned to me and told me she loved my nose. I laughed, hard, and she responded, “Seriously, I love that you have a real nose. I’m sick of people getting surgery for the same thing.”
At first I reached for mild offense like I usually do the moment my nose is brought up. But, I realized how genuine she was being. I never thought a “real” nose would be a source of pride, but the older I get the more I see acceptance as the way to find love for myself.
Hayley Nahman mentions that radical acceptance in her Dear Baby column. Moving away from some checked box that would be finally loving our appearance and into living in an acceptance of ourselves. So essentially, acknowledge your insecurities…and do, nothing about them.
Cosmetic surgeries, fitness goals, and corsets are all the same. They are all centered around businesses steeped in sexist, ageist, racist ideals that only prosper if women feel like they are not enough without these purchases.
Even if we may never know where it began, the way businesses are trying to push product today are causing a surge of insecure, body shaming experiences where people are more worried about how they are perceived online than how they may experience life. And the way to grow these sales is by making each one of us feel isolated in our own rumination with our bodies. It is by making each of us feel we are the only person that thinks they are not enough or like their cellulite, thighs, arms, or nose have no place in this world.
Could nurturing acceptance be the answer? Naming our insecurities and knowing we are worthy despite it all?
I desperately want to make peace with my liquid mirror and dance as it moves regardless of the shape it takes.
Release the mobilizing force of dissatisfaction and turn to the softness of trusting who I am.
I want to focus on my function not my aesthetic.
When I don’t give myself goals or see myself as useful in some way, I tend to hyper-focus on how I may look. If there is no goal attached to the gym, I get focused on achieving the look that I am someone who goes to the gym frequently. I workout my insecurities, not improve my strengths. To give myself a diversion, I joined a volleyball league. And am looking into dance classes. And searching for volunteering options. Maybe a marathon (probably not).
Something to show myself that my vessel matters. My body is worthy and deserves to take up space during my time here. Good space. Useful space.
As I’ve been dealing with this incessant body checking, I found Ilona Maher.
A rugby Olympian who shows how functional her body is and refuses to bow down to any societal pressure to be smaller in order to see herself as beautiful.
On all her posts, there are thousands of moms talking about how their daughters look up to her and want to be strong like her, to love themselves like she does.
It is both humbling and expansive to know that an Olympian has struggled with body image and chooses acceptance.
And seeing where I was just a month ago to now makes me hopeful for this shift in perspective.
After a month of goal setting a community building, I am back to eating carbs and handfuls of chocolate chips, and seeing just how hard I can hit a volleyball. Slowly, I’ve found myself shifting towards cultivating experiences instead of achieving an aesthetic. Doing things for the sake of it, and enjoying the fuck out of it while I’m there.
I currently don’t have any solution to be kinder to my body other than setting goals for myself and trying to focus on my functionality, so I’m sure I will swing back into a deep loathing at some point. And I still do body checks in the mirror every morning and worry about that fucking arm jiggle, but maybe that’s part of what it means to be human.
To be human and is to exist in deep insecurity, yet choosing to trust that you are worthy.
In spite of it all.
- Deanna