Summer of Freedom
TW: mentions of body dysmorphia, disordered eating
When I sat down to begin writing this piece, I felt like a fraud. One great big liar, word vomiting the thoughts and opinions I wish I genuinely believed. I wanted to write about a summer of freedom, claiming that I loved every version of me wholeheartedly and without apology. I wanted to write that I’ve learned to live in a state of body neutrality, embracing my bad body image days, and celebrating the days where I can’t get enough of myself. But that would not be honest, and I am committed to only honouring my real self instead of continuing to try to make myself palpable enough to fit into the teeny tiny sunny box my outside world has conjured up.
This past year has been hard. Like really hard. This is not a hot take; we have all struggled in our own way to varying degrees, whether it be financially, physically, academically, personally etc. But for almost all of us, the blanket struggle has been the impact Covid-19 has had on our overall mental health and mental wellbeing. If I am being honest, my personal struggles with food and body image have never been worse. And while I would not wish this on my worst enemy, I am in a strange way weirdly thankful, because it forced me to take a long hard look in the metaphorical mirror and reckon with the person I am and the person I am slowly becoming. I am sick of living this way. Of waking up everyday full of the familiar ache of self-loathing, fueled by crippling body dysmorphia and disordered eating habits. I cannot remember the last summer that I was not only comfortable in my body, but CELEBRATED it. As a 22-year old I struggle to accept that I no longer resemble my teenage self, but instead am beginning to occupy the body of a woman. I know where my bad body image stems from, but it has only been exacerbated by the images that I allow to flood my newsfeed everyday, and the thought patterns I make no effort to change. Our society’s definition of beauty is ever changing. We've been taught that body types and facial features are something that can be commodified, appropriated, and turned into a trend; but are only okay when they occur on certain people. When we say societal beauty standards are bullshit, we mean it. We all deserve to feel free and celebrated in the body we have.
Every year I promise myself “this is the summer I will love myself”, and every summer without fail nothing changes. I do not hold myself accountable to change my inner voice, or shoulder the responsibility of my own healing. I have become lazy and complacent to my own self destruction; I don’t know who I am without it. As women, we’re taught that it is normal to think these things, and that you should not like yourself. Most of us have been guilty at one point or another of resenting women who celebrate themselves and love the body they occupy. As women we not only do ourselves, but our community as a whole, a massive disservice when we fall prey to these sneaky, subconscious, internalized misogynistic narratives. It is our job to uplift the women around us and celebrate them even if we are struggling to celebrate ourselves. Their victory is not our loss, but rather a reflection of a collective win. Because each woman that dares to love herself in the face of the suffocating beauty standards our white, cishetero, ableist, patriarchal society has set before us is one huge step towards liberation for all of us.
So while I may not be where I want to be in my self-acceptance journey, I am one step closer because I am finally ready to start authentically doing the work. I am going to aim for no more negative self-talk. I am going to stop myself before I risk triggering the folks around me by spewing unnecessary hate about my body. I am going to embrace this version of myself because it is nothing more than an in between; like many, I had all of my usual coping skills and distractions taken away throughout the past fifteen months and have struggled to adapt. But I am determined to develop new ways of being, ones that do not depend on a gym or a rigid caloric deficit to claim “self-love”. I want to learn to love who I am at my core, and to embody that so deeply that it is reflected on my outside and how I engage with the world and the people in my life. Beauty is not just skin-deep. Our value sinks far deeper than the surface.
The biggest lie, in my opinion, that we’re spoon-fed, is that you can’t love somebody else until you love yourself. Who does this help? Self-love, for many of us, is a life-long and never-ending journey that will ebb and flow as we adapt to each new chapter of our life. We are not meant to remain static; we are meant to continuously grow and strive to be better than who we were yesterday in whatever way that means to you. In this life we deserve to feel free. We deserve to not feel shame about the body we live in, and instead thank it for everything it does for us. This life is short, and I no longer want to spend it consumed by the reflection staring back at me. Everyday is an opportunity for us to continue working on the relationship we have with ourselves, because it will be the longest relationship we ever have. We can cultivate the version of ourselves we wish our teenage selves knew. Instead of waking up each morning resenting the body I am in, I want to wake up each morning grateful to be waking up at all, excited for what the new day has in store; and the new version of myself that will come with it.