BLOG: Body image trial by fire
Elisabeth Andrews is a writer with the Indiana University Office of Media Relations.
One year ago, the thought of putting on a swimsuit had me sick with self-consciousness. These days, I hurry out to the pool without so much as a towel to cover me. But this is no weight-loss success story. My body hasn't changed, but somehow my feelings about it have altered, after a year of venturing onto the pool deck -- first shyly, then boldly -- and observing that no one pointed, laughed or ran screaming from the room.
I know very few people who are happy with their bodies, almost none of them women. It's not a question of size; the most attractive women I know are also the most anxious about their appearance. As for me, my weight is as normal as it gets: according to the National Institutes of Health, I am smack in the middle of the "acceptable" weight range for my height, and could gain or lose 20 pounds and still be in the clear. But as we all know, the "ideal" body type is not the least bit "normal."
Like most women, I have spent my adult life intending to lose weight. I've always felt as if my lean, gorgeous body were just around the corner, waiting for me to catch up. I had only to fit in a little more exercise, resist the nightly chocolate cravings, commit to more movement throughout the day, and then I would shed the extra pounds and finally inhabit my "real" body.
So the shame I felt about the softness around my hips and my stomach was tied to the idea that it wasn't supposed to be there. My true physical destiny was buried beneath this awkward, out-of-place layer of flab. I imagined that everyone else saw my shape the same way, clearly divided between the parts that were entitled to their existence, and the radioactive "extras."
Pools and beaches had been off limits for years, but my marathon-battered body craved a lower-impact form of cardiovascular exercise. So last fall I screwed up my courage, dug out my Speedo -- and stayed covered til the last possible second with a big, fluffy towel.
The ordeal only lasted from the shedding of the towel to submersion in the pool. Once in the water, I felt safely concealed and was able to focus on swimming from one end to the other. I was relieved to find that this skill, neglected since childhood, emerged more or less intact. I completed my workout feeling strong and stretched, in contrast to the dense-and-wobbly sensation that follows a long run.
I returned to the pool the following week, and again the week after that. Although I dreaded the moment that I would fold my towel and leave it on the bench, I noticed the sting of the unveiling gradually lessening, as if I were becoming numbed to the discomfort. The shock was wearing off. I was building up immunity to my embarrassment.
I also began to resent my instinct to cover up as soon as I climbed out of the pool, as this left me with a wet towel to take to the shower. Accordingly, silly as it sounds, I started wearing the towel to the pool when I was dry and carrying it back to the locker room when I was wet.
I wish I could say it was only a short step to getting rid of the towel altogether, but in fact my dry/wet system lasted most of the year. Even so, I noticed that my retreat to the locker room became more bearable each week, until eventually I had forgotten to think about how much I hated it.
I am not sure when exactly the transition happened, but by the time the outdoor pool closed and my swimming workouts moved indoors again, the towel and swimsuit had become divorced. The towel's role, I now felt, was to wait patiently in my locker for its turn after the shampoo and conditioner. The swimsuit took on the same significance as my shorts and running shoes. It was my workout outfit, and in it I was well-dressed.
Somehow, through this process of withstanding the perceived humiliation of exposure, I seem to have likewise inoculated myself against the critical self-commentary that was once a constant drone. It is as though my body has proven to me that it is okay just as it is, that it functions fine in polite society.
Without my noticing it happening, the lines dividing my "ideal" body from my present body have dissolved; washed away, I suppose, in the endless laps back and forth in the pool. I feel like Pinocchio, granted his lifelong wish: I'm no longer in pieces, but a whole person, at last.
