Perfection is a Disease

In which The Writer talks about body image

TW: body image, disordered eating

The full length mirror in my room eventually got swallowed up by the ever increasing number of books that I kept collecting. I got a second little cart thing and filled it with all the books that hard formed piles in spaces that I really needed…well space to move. I also needed them to not be so precarious. They ran the risk of toppling over and creating a heap of curled pages and bent covers on the floor in the middle of the night and scaring the shit out of me.

It took me almost no time at all to fill the new cart and then when the top shelf was full I sort of had a new shelf. And I utlised that new space and created more piles that went sky high and didn’t eat up any floor space. As the new piles gew they gradually obscured my view in the full length mirror. To the point where I could see half my body and even then because of the angle the mirror was resting against the wall at, I cut the top of my own head off a lot in my reflection. If I really wanted the full picture I had to scooch the mirror out from its behind the book cart and put it somewhere else. That was more effort than I could be bothered with so I rarely got the full picture..

The bathroom mirror was at such an angle that, again, I only really saw half my body and I had to consciously stand in front of it. There were no accidental encounters with my entire body or my reflection in full.

And so, for years, I have only caught myself in glimpses.

I’d see half my body in mirrors throughout the house.

I’d catch my reflection in windows in the street but not pay it much mind because windows warp everything. I’d walk past a full length mirror in a shop but I walk so fast that it went by in a blur and if I paid it any real attention it was usually because I was cuaght off guard by just how long my legs actually are.

I hadn’t realised it until it changed, but because I wasn’t being confronted with my whole reflection on a regualr basis I sort of slipped into a space where I didn’t have any strong thoughts or feelings about my body and what it looks like.

I used to hate being tall. And not only was I tall, I was also brown and had this hair that felt like it had a mind of its own (right now it needs double gel like products in order to do what I want it to - that is always changing). A part of my morning ritual when I was younger was sitting in between my dad’s legs on the floor while he brushed my hair back into a ponytail/braid combo. I was so clearly different to the majority of girls in my class and I wished that I wasn’t.

The only way I could think to stop standing out was to be smaller. My femur wasn’t going to magically shrink and get rid of all my height and so I had to be smaller in a different way. I don’t know how much of this was my thinking and how much of it was put on me (I go into that here) all I know is that was where I was at.

That’s where I resided for years.

Decades even.

It wasn’t all that comfortable, but it was where I lived and I got used to it. And in the getting used to it, it became comfortable.

Leaving that place was hard. I don’t know what exactly made me want to leave it. It had been my home for so many years. Rightly or wrongly (it was wrongly) it ws my comfort zone. But suddenly overnight it felt like the narrative wsa changing and now all women no longer wanted to look like a supermodel from the 90s sustained by cigarettes and air. It was all about being lean and toned looking. Having muscles but not looking too muscly. Having a six pack was all the rage. It was all about leg day and acquiring an arse that you can bounce a penny off.

I worked and worked and worked for that. I wanted to be en vouge and beyond that I wanted to not be skinny any more. I wanted to not be considered ‘underweight’ (BMI is bullshit, but for some reason, still the metric). I wanted, I wanted, I wanted.

I had to spend so much time justifying why I wanted this thing, this thing being gaining weight. And not just gaining weight, gaining muscle. I was already ‘perfect’ (I wasn’t). I already had the body that people wanted (most of it came from height). So many people said ‘don’t gain too much weight’, or ‘don’t get too muscly, you won’t be as attractive’ and I pretended that I was ignoring them.

But the truth is, I was still doing all the things that promised they would make me ‘lean and toned’. I selected the workouts that would promise me a bigger bum and tighter abs. Ones that would promise to flush out the toxins and minimise cellulite (this workout was Rebounding and when I started it this was the thing that they were using as a selling point HOWEVER, this workout is actually great cardio and it’s nicer to your joints).

I was slightly ahead of the curve it would seem because within the year people stopped being worried that I was going to get too muscly and started praising me for being ‘brave’ enough to strength train.

But, honestly, I had traded one obsessive thing for another. I was prioritising working out over basically everything else (the number of times I had to basically sprint to Old Street in order to catch the tube for King’s Cross so I could catch a train from St Pancras in a twenty minute window so I could see my ex-boyfriend was WILD (although on balance, I don’t regret it, that Friday afternoon session was one of my favourites of the week)).

It became my entire personality. I was doing five workouts a week no matter what. My muscles were always tired (I was terrible at recovery tbh). I was always tired. I was eating more that much is true. I was gaining weight that much was also true. I was finding a sense of mental clarity that I hadn’t had for a long time. It turns out that exercise can help with your mental health. What a concept.

Then, suddenly, I had to pivot.

I lost access to super heavy weights (part of me wonders if I could still do a 30kg leg track because I used to be able to do it in my sleep) and I could no longer work at the same rate that I had been for months.

It was disorientating at first. Practially overnight I had lost what was basically my entire personality (I was on the brink of transistion into coaching at the time lockdown kicked in).

It was confronting as well. More so then when I had made the jump from shrinking myself to making myself bulk up. I had to unlearn a lot of things. I had to learn to let go of a lot of things. I had to stop bullying my body in the name of health and achieving the ‘perfect body’.

But still, I would stand in front of my full length mirror and point out all the things wrong with it. There wasn’t really much else to do when you could only go out for one hour a day. I had been striving for ‘body positivity’ because that was supposed to be the goal, but I was never all that jazzed about being naked in plain sight (of myself or in front of others). There were too many flaws. I was more aware than ever of my wide-ish hips and my tiny boobs. My thighs sometimes look like they don’t belong to my body when they aren’t legging clad. The stretch marks on my bum were from them growing but they seemed to just make me think ‘oh you’re fat now’. The six pack that I was on the road to get seemed to disappear overnight. My arms became flappy.

I felt like I was becoming a blob of a person of the body positivity that I had faked up until that point shrivelled up and died along (try doing this whilst the white people in the world realised they might actually be a bit rascist and promised to ‘do better’. When I tell you I was tired).

I broke up with my boyfriend in the summer of 2020 and honestly, not having to think about what I looked like for him freed me up massively. As did the fact that I had to rebuild the foundations of my own self worth in the aftermath of that.

I had to really think about whether being strong and lifting weights is something that I want to do. And, on balance, the answer is yes. Lifting weights makes me feel good. There is something very satisfying about completing a superset and putting the weights down for a rest before going again. There is joy to be had from lifting a little bit heavier because you know you can take it and there is also something to be said for respecting that the body is capable of different things on different days (and yes, sometimes it is very cycle dependent).

I don’t feel compelled to have a six pack anymore. I don’t track macros or freak out about the fact that I don’t have a weight heavier than a 12kg kettlebell (that I hardly use anyway). I don’t work five times a week. Some weeks I barely work out three (and that came down from four because I lost the motivation to workout on Saturday mornings). Some weeks I only do Pilates, or yin yoga. Some weeks I do nothing. Or, more recently, I just do a quick ten minutes because it’s the movement that’s important, not the length of time.

In amongst all this I stopped striving for body positivity and just worked towards not giving a shit.

I think they call it body neutrality.

This has been challenged in recent weeks. There is now a mirror in the bathroom that is angled in such a way that you can see your reflection in the shower. I made a joke about this to R and she said hers is similar but when her glasses are off she can’t see shit so it doesn’t bother her. I do wear glasses but I can still see my body in near HD every time I step into the shower.

After being so accustomed to not seeing that much of my reflection in any state, this daily visual was a lot to suddenly have to deal with.

I was confronted with the shape of my hips and the way they taper into my thighs. I noticed how spindly my arms can look. I am quick to mark and so my body is a tapestry of various shades of brown, some of it is tan lines, a lot of it scars or stretch marks. No matter what I do you can always see part of my spine and the sharp jut of my collarbones and sometimes that feels alarming. I paid very little attention to my FUPA but, all of a sudden I was painfully aware that it was there.

Tiny voices started trying to claw their way to the surface. The voices that wanted to shoot me down every time I ate. That made me stay away from bread and peanut butter. That thought it was better to sustain myself on peanut M&M’s than actual food for hours at a time (fun fact, I can’t quite bring myself to eat peanut M&M’s anymore, which is terrible because I love them). That want me to skip breakfast because it’s unnecessary calories, but then want me to skip lunch as well because ‘fasting is supposed to help you lose weight’. That are trying to brand me lazy when I skip a workout or when I switch something high intensity out for pilates or rest because I can’t be bothered but I do still want to move my body in some way.

They are voices that I’ve battled before and kind of thought I wouldn’t have to battle again. But that was naive because I am a woman in the world and if there is one thing that people love to comment on, it is what a woman’s body is doing. And we seem to have swung back around to the skinnier the better.

They are easier to fight now though. When I don’t do my planned workout I remind myself it is what my body (let’s be real, it’s my lower back) needs. It needs to reset and stretch and rest. When I find myself grabbing yet another snack I remind myself it’s because I’m hungry and there is nothing wrong with that. When I don’t sweat during a workout I remind myself that it doesn’t mean I wasn’t working hard, sometimes workouts are more about control and strength than gassing yourself.

I didn’t have testing my relationship with my body on my bingo card for this year, but it’s been kind of nice…?

That sounds weird, but that I mean by that is that sometimes it is good to have your foundations shaken a little so you can see just how strong they are. I’ve had them shattered before and it is reassuring to know that right now, they are harder to crumble.

Jumpin’ Jumpin’

What I’m reading - I think I am beating the pull of the reading slump. I just need to keep on pushing on through.

ARCs read - Dark Restraint - Katee Robert (out Aug 6th)

Other books - Fair Rosaline - Natasha Solomons, For the Love of Kane - Ames Mills, The Golden Handcuffs - K.C Carmine, Icing It - Emma Foxx, Lucky Strike - Crea Reitan and Midnight Ruin - Katee Robert

Currently Reading - The Truth According to Ember - Danica Nava (out Aug 6th)

(Bookshop links are affiliate links)

What I’m watching - I accidentally ended up watching all of Five Star Chef in one night while I reviewed the second batch of line edits from my editor. I love me a cooking show and this was a good little background show while I justified my use of the word ‘just’ to myself.

Also, we are in the Olympics fortnight so it’s just non-stop sport. The nicher the better.

Title Inspiration - I am never not in my Beyoncé era, but I do neglect a lot of the older stuff (because Cowboy Carter and Renassiance still go SO HARD). Anyway, Pretty Hurts started calling my name after I wrote the majority of this post.