A quote from Margaret Cho:
“If you are a woman, if you're a
person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a
person of size, if you are a person od intelligence, if you are a person of
integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.
...And it's going to be really hard
to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women's and gay
men's culture. It's all about how you have to look a certain way or else you're
worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think 'oh, I'm so fat,
I'm so old, I'm so ugly', don't you know, that's not your authentic self? But
that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies,
billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will
take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme
that doesn't turn around shit.
When you don't have self-esteem you
will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for
the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will
hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you
will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of
your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote,
you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of
revolution and our revolution is long overdue.”
I’ve been trying to write about the complicated relationship I (and many people) have with body image, self-love, healing, and transformation. You see, if there is anything I profess as a Christian, it is that Christ offers deliverance from bondage and transformation into new life. Yet this is something I have struggled to embrace all my life.
My awareness of this has never waned but it has been
heightened in the past few years because I’ve watched my wife lose about 100
pounds and experience a transformation from carrying body fat as a shield to
loving every ounce of herself as an expression of her life. I envy her experience. I wish I too could experience that. (I do not
want to oversimplify her experience as I know she still struggles every
day. Nevertheless, she has accomplished
a great deal of growth and transformation.)
Another reason my struggle to embrace my body and experience
healing has been especially obvious as of late is that I’ve grown increasingly
defensive for my wife. As she lost
weight, people would walk up to her and in all good nature tell her, “you look
so good” and “you look beautiful.” While
I recognize that they mean to be encouraging and supportive, the unspoken
message of “you weren’t beautiful of good enough before” remains.
My blood boils for her, me, and all who struggle with body
image when this happens. The common
experience that my wife and I share is that of using our bodies as a shield of
protection. In similar ways, we have
dieted for acceptance, eaten to push away pain, and loathed our bodies for all
they pain and struggle they represent. I
still do.
But she doesn’t. She
has finally found the combination of space, support, and love to look at her
body one ounce at a time and love the way it has been a protector for her,
grieve the past, and transform it into a new creation. It’s been so beautiful to watch. Truly, there aren’t words for how life filled
and hope giving her journey has been and it’s not over yet. I am grateful and honored to be a witness and
sharer in this journey.
But where does all this leave me? I still find myself in the despair of pain
from a childhood that should have destroyed me, depression that won’t stop haunting
me, and a body so full of scars seen and unseen that I can barely stand to look
at it on most days. I want what my wife
has. I want that deliverance and
transformation that I so deeply believe Christ offers. Yet, I’ve never experienced that combination
of emotional space, physical energy, and external support that it takes to
sustain such a life changing, transformation.
Will I ever? I don’t know but I
hope so.
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