November 29, 2012

How Yoga Changed My Mind (And My Relationship to My Body)

Filed under: Body Image — Tags: , , , , — Melanie @ 4:01 pm
This post was originally published at MindBodyGreen.
For the women in my family, the body was a sFor the women in my family, the body was a source of anxiety, shame, a measure of discipline and worth – something to fret over, scrutinize, and punish for bad behavior. Food invoked anxiety and fear. Calories were meticulously tracked and exercised away as quickly as possible.The women openly complained about their “flaws” and lamented the numbers on the scale, while many of them ravenously ate a couple extra hundred calories in secret. I learned that life began five pounds (or, in my case, 10 pounds), from now.

I didn’t grow up feeling comfortable in, or good about my body. The body as a source of joy and vitality was an alien concept most of my life. I enjoyed food and wanted it, but I knew that made me weak, undisciplined and “bad.”

It didn’t help that I inherited my height from my father’s side of the family. I learned that beauty was a beast, one I had to conquer in order to measure up and feel good about myself. And that I had to conquer it no matter the costs because, hey, baby, you’re worth it.

My mother and the women in her family were all diminutive women with tiny feet, tiny hands, bird-like shoulders, and bitty waists. They were delicate flowers that liked to remind people that they were “petite.” From the time I’d entered fourth-grade, I was referred to as “big-boned,” “solid,” “big like her dad’s side of the family” and in need of “losing a few pounds.” I had surpassed my great-grandmother in height by the time I was 11. By seventh-grade, I was taller than my mother and grandmother. Measuring 5’3” and weighing 130 pounds, I was an “Amazon,” that poor freak of nature that had inherited the wrong set of genes.

I knew none of these comments were compliments. In fact, most little girls want to secretly flip someone the bird when an annoying aunt or family friend hovers and croons, “My, she’s gotten to be such a big girl!” “Big” and “girl” don’t go together well in our culture. But I didn’t have the confidence or wherewithal to say, “Whoah, whoah – back the hell up. Don’t you all know you’re talking about my body right in front of me? Don’t you know your tones are either derisive or filled with worry about my size? Don’t you know this kind of body talk objectifies me and makes me feel like shit?”

Nope, I was too deeply mired in my own shame and guilt about my body. Oh, why oh why wasn’t I born short with a delicate bone structure? Plus, these were my family members and adults in my life that I respected, admired, and trusted. I believed they had my best interests at heart. And they did. They really did. I don’t doubt that for an instant.

My mother and my grandmother, the two women I idolized more than anyone else and who loved me deeply, were projecting their own anxieties and insecurities on me because they didn’t know any better. We’re all prone to absorbing the socially constructed images and messages in our cultural environment.

And they’re no exception.

Like me, their own families, peers, and the society they grew up in influenced their sense of self and their measure of worth as girls and women. Like me and legions of other girls and women, they internalized the notion that what matters most, aside from any other skills or talents, is how pretty they are (and in our culture, pretty is synonymous with skinny). Not how they feel, not what they can do, not how healthy they are.

And, let’s be honest, there are lots of skinny people who aren’t healthy. In fact, health never entered the conversation in my household. Losing five or ten pounds was never a matter of health, but a matter of aesthetics.

I mean, ceaselessly dieting, from the Atkins diet to the pineapple diet (where you consumed vast quantities of pineapple because pineapple would “eat” away the extra fat you were carrying), over exercising, diet pills, caffeine, and excessive calorie restriction isn’t exactly the yellow brick road to optimal health.

After years of compulsive and punishing exercise (my mother got me a gym membership when I turned 12), severe calorie restriction, bouts of binging and purging, and Slim Fast shakes for breakfast, I stumbled into a yoga class led by Bryan Kest.

It was the mid-nineties, I was 24-years-old and my life was about to radically change. Everything I knew about my body, everything I felt toward my body, and my negative self-talk was about to undergo a seismic shift. For the first time since early childhood, I was about to learn how to be comfortable and radiant in my own skin. For the first time in my life, I was about to learn how to love my body.

I settled in on my mat in a space that would become the rare and sacred space devoid of competition. A space uncluttered by external chatter, removed from the world of advertising and one that would quiet and soothe my own self-critic. Kest began that first class by inviting me back into my body. “Welcome to your bodies. Welcome to yoga.”

To read Melanie Klein’s complete essay on yoga and body image and the complete details of her own transformation pick up a copy of 21st Century Yoga; Culture, Politics and Practice. Available in soft-cover or on Kindle.

November 17, 2011

Generations of Body Battles: How I’m Learning to Be a Peacemaker

Filed under: Body Image — Tags: , — Melanie @ 11:01 pm
 Generations of Body Battles: How I'm Learning to Be a Peacemaker

My body is a battleground. I have spent most of my life waging a war on it. I have vivid girlhood memories of my worth being measured by my waist size and numbers on a scale. I was taught that I must “suffer to be beautiful.”

This troubled relationship with body and self continued into middle school, as I hid my budding curves; into high school, when I combined starvation, purging, and over exercising; and well into adulthood, including during my pregnancy and postpartum experience.

But I am not alone—and sadly, this body hatred is nothing new. I am part of a lineage of women who declared war on themselves, from my great-great grandmother who donned the organ-crushing corset, to my great-grandmother who internalized the Victorian feminine ideal of daintiness and measured each bite meticulously; to my grandmother who cinched her waist with girdles and ate diet pills for lunch; and down to my mother who embodied the emaciated silhouette of the 1970s and aerobicized her way into the 1980s and early 1990s with her food-and-exercise diary tucked in her purse.

This is not just my legacy. This is an experience shared by countless girls and women, beginning at earlier and earlier ages and affecting them well into their later years. This legacy of low self-esteem and self-objectification–punctuated by disordered eating, continuous exercise and abusive fat talk–keeps us stuck in an unhealthy cycle that holds us back and prevents us from being truly empowered. As bell hooks states, these practices are “self-hatred in action. Female self-love begins with self-acceptance.”

Okay, so how do we get to that self-acceptance? As the number of girls and women engaged in these destructive habits increases exponentially, the good news is that campaigns such as Operation Beautiful, Fat Talk Free Week and the NOW Foundation’s LoveYour Body Day are rising up to combat the onslaught of voices undermining our personal and collective self-esteem.

Campaigns like these give us great opportunities to take action for change. I have also found that self-affirming rituals such as banishing self-criticism and honoring my body through reverence and celebration to be rewarding and transformative. In fact, I have felt the most beautiful and whole when I have silenced the critic in my own head, limited my level of media exposure and engaged in loving practices such as yoga that allow me to cultivate respect for my body as opposed to deepening my disdain and disappointment.

Your mother gave birth to you–her body was the vehicle for creating, carrying and birthing a miraculous new life, your life. While we may not always see ourselves as miraculous, stop and ask yourself this question: why not?  When did your body, a source of wonder and magic in childhood, stop being the source of the miracle that is you?  Ask yourself why self-loathing is heaped on generation after generation of women, whose bodies should garner respect and gratitude. Can you switch the conversation in your head? Can you identify two things that you appreciate and respect about your body? Maybe even five? Can you identify one new thing every day?

Respect is the connective strand that binds Carmen Siering’s 20 ways to love your body post. If we can learn to respect our bodies, perhaps we can learn to love our bodies over time, and eventually turn that self-love into personal liberation.

Originally posted at Ms. Magazine. Revised for Proud2BeMe. Cross-posted at Elephant Journal.

October 22, 2010

Make Love, Not War, With Your Body

Filed under: Body Image,Gender — Tags: , , , — Melanie @ 9:46 pm

Written by Cakie Belle. Originally posted at Cakie Belle. Cross-posted with permission.

Most people hate conflict. We actively avoid the people we don’t like, whether it be in our workplaces, our homes or our social lives. We make compromises to avoid arguments. We make sacrifices to get along. We dream of peace on Earth. And yet so many of us spend every minute of our lives willingly engaging in a cruel and ruthless battle where ultimately,  there can be no winner. Of course, I’m talking about the war with our bodies.

No matter how well other things (like our jobs and relationships) are going, if we are in constant conflict with ourselves we simply cannot fully lead the magical, wonderful lives we deserve, or experience true, lasting, blissful happiness. Without self love there can be no peace, because when we hate our bodies, we are literally living, breathing, eating and sleeping with the enemy.

I have been embroiled in my own body battle since I was just a little girl and when I look back I can see that my hatred for my physical self has cast a dark shadow over many memories that should have been wonderful, like days at the beach where I couldn’t enjoy myself because I was so self-conscious of my tummy, nights out with my girlfriends when I felt unattractive and jealous, and romantic dinners with my boyfriend ruined by the fact I was racked with guilt for eating a fattening dessert and garlic bread. It’s a miserable way to live.

The truly bizarre thing about the war with one’s body is that it is so completely one-sided. We treat them like the enemy and yet, our bodies do nothing to spite us. They do nothing to hurt us. They do nothing cruel or unkind or unforgivable. Our poor abused bodies simply do their job, keeping us alive and making the best of whatever our genetics and lifestyles have given them. Our bodies work tirelessly to keep us functioning and offer little complaint when we treat them badly. We abuse them, shame them and belittle them, but until the day we die, our bodies simply carry on.

Give your poor body a break! It is time you acknowledged how amazing your beautiful body is and recognised its unique magic. It is time you appreciated it for all its miracles and its time you started treating it with the love and respect it deserves. It is time that you made peace with the one person you will spend every single day of your life with. That’s you.

Draw up a peace treaty. Buy your body a thank you present (like gorgeous lingerie, new perfume or a big cupcake). Treat your body to a bubble bath, a massage or a hike up a mountain. Look in the mirror and tell your body you are sorry. Tell your body it is beautiful. Make a promise to treat it better. Write your body a love letter. Banish the toxic self-talk. Wave a white flag and surrender to the fact that your body needs you and you need it. Pour your whole heart into improving your relationship with yourself. Stoke the flames of fierce self love.

Don’t waste another single moment fighting a battle you cannot win. Let the war be over.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user, neoliminal. CC 2.0.

December 3, 2008

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, Amy.

Amy Poehler makes me laugh and makes me happy. I love her. Unabashedly. She’s brilliant, she’s hilarious and she’s all about being herself and inspiring other women to do the same and that is the premise of her new show, Smart Girls at the Party. Be fabulous, be funny, be smart, be yourself and take pride in it.

That’s an awesome message for girls and women of all ages in an era that promotes the dumbing down of the American female. After all, smart girls have more fun.

The most recent episode features “7-year-old Ruby, who Amy describes as a “feminist, activist, deep thinker and artist”, who gives her own perspective on feminism, stating matter-of-factly: “I think that boys and girls are of equal value” and sings a feminist anthem she wrote.” Fuck yeah!

Beyond the celebratory message of self acceptance, the interview with Amy, Meredith and Amy emphasizes the importance of female solidarity and friendship. Like many women, I used to proudly proclaim that “most of my friends are guys.” The suspicion, envy, competition and trash talking among women and girls is a debilitating disease that impairs the development of enduring, meaningful and nurturing relationships. The importance of female bonds counters the individualistic, me-first, narcissistic version of “feminism” that has been mass marketed in the last decade. I’m stoked!