Be Comfortable and Breathe

For years, many of us have tried, usually with little or no success, to portray a certain image and we have been brainwashed into looking outside of ourselves to decide exactly what that image is. We have been told how to dress and how to feel about it. I recall being in seventh grade and feeling simultaneously excited and nervous about starting ballroom dancing classes. Shortly before the first lesson, my mother presented me with a garter belt, nylon stockings, a girdle and a long line bra. Imagine that! Seventh grade and already I had to fuss to hide every bulge and jiggle. My emotions, as I recall, were mixed. Partly I was excited to make my grand entrance into this mysterious grown up world and partly I was horrified. I remember the flesh of my thighs overflowing the tight little stocking tops and I remember smiling through my misery as I tried to look absolutely beautiful gliding across the dance floor. What was to be a magical, wonderful experience turned into a strained and difficult one. Did you ever find yourself in such a predicament? Were you ever dressed to match an image that didn’t quite fit? Did you ever eat to soothe those emotions?

We do not live in a culture where we are encouraged to be creative. We do not celebrate differences in body shapes, sizes and styles and we do not learn to love and appreciate our bodies as unique and beautiful no matter how large or small. Instead, for the majority of us, we are shown how to hide our curves and “flaws.” This is unfortunate. Our self-esteem certainly suffers and we might go through our entire lives feeling unacceptable, inadequate, unattractive, constricted and ashamed.

A number of years ago I attended a women’s music festival in Michigan. Thousands of women attended the week-long event and no men were permitted on the festival land. The summer weather was deliciously warm most of the time and the majority of the women wore little, if any, clothing during the day. All ages were represented. There were little girls and elders, and there were women from many different countries. I saw women of all shapes, sizes and colors. These women walked freely about the land and appearance mattered little. I thought what a beautiful sight it was to see these women moving about freely, uninhibited by social expectations or clothing constraints.

Now I know we can’t all walk around without our clothes on. Nor would we want to. Buying clothes that please us is fun. We can choose colors and materials that we love and think of our own needs when we purchase clothing. We can dress for comfort and still look stylish. One of the reasons we may overeat is because we fall short in our vain attempts to look like the models we see. If we try to emulate these women, who are perpetually young and unrealistically thin, nearly all of us will fail. Please do not dress to look like or be someone else. Be yourself. Be comfortable and breathe. Choose what suits you.

About body image

How do you view your body?

Most of us see our bodies unrealistically. Often we are not even aware of them. We can go through days and weeks never giving a conscious thought to our bodies. It is easy to take them for granted. We don’t always pay attention to how our bodies feel and we don’t view ourselves realistically. Try this: Stand in front of a mirror first thing in the morning before you have eaten anything and look at your body. Now, go eat a bite of something, like a cookie, and come back to the mirror. Do you look different? Does your body look noticeably larger? Most of us will see ourselves as larger than we did just moments before. Intellectually we may know that one small bite of food cannot double our weight in less than a minute, but our perception changes dramatically anyway. This is a clear example of distorted body image and most of us suffer with this to some degree.

We cannot see ourselves objectively. Most of us look at pictures and see only the areas we are unhappy with (and in exaggerated ways). Our hips or bellies may look enormous to us at the time. Later, when we see the same pictures, we may see them differently. This depends upon how we are feeling about ourselves at that time. I often ask women who come to see me to bring in pictures of themselves as children and/or as adolescents. We look at these old photographs together and often women, who thought they were fat at the time, are able to see that they were, in fact, average weight children. For most this is a surprise and, for some, can open the door to looking in the mirror a bit less critically than they have in the past.

How we see ourselves has much to do with how we feel about ourselves. The more we focus on the negative in our lives, the more negatively we will view images of ourselves. It is vital to change negative attitudes into positive ones. Our perceptions of ourselves can be grossly inaccurate and they change as our feelings about ourselves change.

So give yourself a little extra nurturing and see if you don't look just a bit better in that mirror. You may be surprised!

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