Maybe you'll never "love your body" (and that's OK)

Monday, I admitted to a major meltdown. I joked (or bitched) about being kitchen-less before a beach vacation. The subtext was that I like to clean things up with my diet before the whole bathing suit situation. That same day, a colleague’s Instagram post caught my eye. I should preface this by saying this person is awesome. I had the pleasure of meeting her during our recent California/Expo West trip and she’s funny and smart and none of what I’m writing is about her…just about something she wrote.

Let me set this up:

The photo I referred to shows this nutritionist in a jog bra. What’s interesting was her commentary on showing your stomach. The stated intent was to show her followers she understood this was a thing (showing your stomach).

I’ll stop for a minute and say while abs may be the ultimate reveal, many women don’t like “showing” in general. It could be insecurity about a certain body part (arms, thighs or abs are common) and it’s also possible it stems from personal preference. In my case, I have way more A-line items in my closet than body hugging ones.  And if I’m being totally honest my Instagram feed is never going to be filled with photos of me especially not sexy photos. And this is not a judgement about people who have  a ton of selfies (OK minor judgement).

The RD I referred to explains she loves her body and is unfazed by bathing suiting but didn’t always feel that way. In her effort to diffuse body anxiety she assures readers “it gets better with age, you will evolve, mature…three will come a day where you don’t care if you ate pizza the night before you get into a bathing suit.”

I think things struck a chord as I had just articulated my pre-beach mindset. I am over a decade older than this person;  I think I've evolved and matured but wearing a bathing suit isn’t "thoughtless" to me. From counseling clients all these years, I know that sometimes body stuff fades with age, we can laugh at it more, be more accepting. Other times, with aging bodies, previously body confident women (or men) get more self critical.  I watched an episode of The View yesterday and the gorgeous, ageless, super fit J-Lo saw a photo of herself and uttered, “I was chubby there.” They gave her major shit for that comment but it came out.

I wholeheartedly agree with the author of the post that we need to be kind to ourselves. But I want to point out that it’s not a failing if you’re 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80 (I have an 80-something client who is very mature and still pinches her body fat and grimaces) and think about being in a bathing suit or wouldn’t rate your body a 10 on a 1-10 scale…it may just be who you are. I can say I’m a thin person, I like who I am and there are many days I feel great in my clothes. But I will note when I feel distended in the same way I’ll watch a clip for work and think about things I could’ve done better. Maybe self-acceptance comes in all different flavors.

What do you think about this? Are you more the happy naked flavor or semi-sweet on the whole thing?  Do you think it's ok not to love your body (by this I mean be 100% in love with every part)? 

*I love that my body works and every time I go for a walk or a run thank God I am capable of this...that's not what I'm referring to.

Lena Dunham and The Beauty Experiment

Many more "girls" look like this than any Victoria's Secret model

I don’t read Playboy, I’m not informed enough to know whether people do “read” Playboy but I read an interview they did with Lena Dunham. In this piece, she is asked what she would do if she woke up in the body of a Victoria Secret model.  Lena mentions she’d be freaked out “I don’t want to go through life wondering if people are talking to me because I have a big rack. Not being the babest person in the world creates a nice barrier.” As I read, part of me admired how grounded she sounded but a much larger part of me thought yeah right and I wouldn’t want to have a house on the beach in Hawaii, what would happen if there was a storm? This was all before I had ever seen a single episode of Girls. Let me be honest, this was before I binged on HBO on demand’s first two seasons of Girls.

Have you seen the show? I know I was late to the party; Girls follows a group of 20-something friends living in Brooklyn. As much as I hate using the word, it feels like an “honest” glimpse off dating, work, friendship and all the messiness involved with finding your way. The characters are quirky, the main character Hannah is played by Dunham who also directs the show. Dunham is often undressed. There’s nothing unique about that except for Dunham’s seeming total lack of self-consciousness about her body. In one episode, Duhnam plays ping pong in her underwear in the way a young child would before they realize clothes are worn for certain activities.

Let’s be clear, Dunham’s body is very average. This is not the busty, bronzed, groomed and posed world of Victoria’s Secret. This is basic underwear, lumps and bumps, the things we all tend to cover up. I work with women all day long and I could not figure out where such a lack of body angst comes from. After all if you create a show, you can decide when and how often you disrobe.

While away last week, I read The Beauty Experiment. The book’s author Phoebe Baker Hyde was living in Hong Kong with her husband and young daughter. She felt she was overly distracted by the trappings of appearance. For one year she goes on a beauty fast foregoing makeup, buying new clothes, paying for haircuts, hair removal- you name it. The premise was if she was fixated on her looks, what else was she missing?  In some manner, when Hyde frees up time previously spent on makeup application and shopping she feels liberated. In other ways, new insecurities flourish with a bad haircut, old clothes and no “concealer”. At one point in the book when Phoebe shares the concept of her experiment with friends, one friend replies “you’re not one of those women”.  While she may not have ever been covered in jewels and decked out every day when it comes to that critique or as Hyde calls it “The Voice” most of us are “those women.” Whether it’s appearance, parenting or related to our professions, we can relate to Hyde’s frustration  “the distance between me and the person I needed to become seemed insurmountable”. As with Dunham, in The Beauty Experiment I saw something real, something most of us don’t share that much or aren’t proud of.

I was disheartened while reading a scene when Hyde looks through teenage pictures of herself and laments that her boyfriend-less, chubby 16 year old self and her 30-something self are in many ways the same. I would hope that The Voice is softened, at least a little, with age. This week, we were away in Mexico. I’ve mentioned it before but Mexico was the first vacation I took with my then boyfriend and now longtime husband Marc. At one point in the trip, Marc joked “oh my god do you remember yourself then?” How could I forget, I ran laps around  “the trail” the size of a tennis court because I was losing my mind without a gym and changed multiple times before getting dressed to go out. Almost 20 years later, I remember my blue bathing suit and bad beach hair but cannot name the hotel we stayed in. 

Why did he marry me?

  Last night, as we sat with the boys enjoying our last guacamole of the trip and a not-so-Santana-ish mariachi Oye Como Va a young and lithe college-aged woman jogged past our table.  On a street full of restaurants, she stuck out like a sore thumb. “What- she just has to get in a workout before going out” Marc observed. There’s hope for the Mexico jogger. While we had an active trip, I didn’t go to the gym the whole time. I may never be a “Lena” but “The Voice” is very different than it was in college.

Do you worry you spend too much time thinking about your appearance? How do you think you become “a Lena”? Do you find your “Voice” has changed over time? What would your Beauty Experiment or “fast” look like? 

Are you as comfortable naked as Helen Hunt?

Last week we saw a movie called The Sessions. The film is based on a short story written by Mark O’Brien. Mark suffered from polio as a child, remains immobile and visits a sex surrogate. I had never heard of sex surrogacy but let’s just describe it as physical therapy for other parts…Helen Hunt plays the sex surrogate and while I have all sorts of thoughts about this profession, I was more intrigued with Hunt’s nakedness. Helen Hunt doesn’t have a nude scene in the movie, she’s nude for most of the movie and seemingly totally at ease.

On the Today Show Hunt said, “all right, all right for God’s sake, I’m naked. People keep saying this is a ‘brave’ performance and I keep thinking ‘brave’ means ‘naked’”.  I’ve written before about the naked locker room people (and how I am sooo not one of them) but while naked for covered-up types like me is “brave” I am thinking for the naked-and-happy club naked is sort of natural. 

Hunt also said “my role in this movie is to come in and give the audience a glimpse of what it would be like if we dropped all our strangeness about sexuality.” Where does this strangeness about sexuality or nudity come from though? Is a comfort level in the buff tied in with body image? If you feel better about your body are you more apt to sleep naked or parade around without clothes? A piece on Mind Body Green actually suggests time in front of a mirror naked as a way to reduce body hatred and improve self-esteem. I haven’t tried it yet.

I’m also intrigued by whether growing up in a naked house makes you more comfortable naked. Interestingly, I have a mother who was very comfortable (and still is) about her body. She didn’t parade around when I had friends over but didn’t ever seem in a rush to cover up either. You’d think that would make her children “free” in this sense but it didn’t. Is that our personalities or do you pull away from what you’re used to? Again not sure.

Matt Lauer said to Hunt something to the effect of as the film goes on you sort of forget she’s naked. This may just be really good acting but it would be really nice if we could all forget the discomfort and awkwardness that nakedness presents. There will be no “sessions” in my future or group nakedness (I didn’t mean it like that) but I do think body comfort is something to aspire to. Do you?

Have you seen The Sessions or heard about it? Are you a naked sleeper or locker room person? Why do you think some people are naked-and-happy? Is it from your family, where you were raised or is it individual? What do you think of the naked time suggestion from Mind Body Green?