Body Image and Aging
A quick note before the heart of this blog. My intention for 2022 is to write no fewer than 52 blogs. I’m stating this here for accountability and because a few blog themes I post will likely be re-working of topics I’ve covered in the past. This is one of them and long time readers might already know some of these stories.
This month my focus is the Be You Hub is Witness Yourself. This blog is about witnessing my life long body image ideals and in noticing the mold figuring out how to re-shape my self image in middle age.
I was a very short and very light child. I was always assumed younger than I was. But I played sports and was a dancer. That made me strong. I’m still strong today, but I’m less short and less light.
Between my genes and all the dance training, I was an incredibly late bloomer. During my freshmen year in college my mom came to campus and bought me a Dell computer. This was late 90s. You’d go into the store to choose your specifications and come back a week later to pick up your custom-built tower and monitor. When I returned on my own to pick it up the clerk thought he was being punked — he wasn’t going to hand over the computer to a 13-year-old. It took some convincing even after I’d shown him my driver’s license and University of Texas student ID to believe me. So that kind of short, light, immature late bloomer.
But I finally grew into myself during sophomore year and that growth spurt pushed me over the edge to win a spot on the Pom Squad headed into my junior year. For me this was absolute success. Only 15 girls make Texas Pom and I was one of them. Think Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, but for college.
This was what I wanted. I’d tried out the two years prior and had missed making the team both years in the final evaluation round — the cattle call. I’m not joking, that is literally what they called it. Cattle call was the very last stage of tryouts after all the technique and choreography rounds. Twenty of us were strutted out in our sports bra and tiny spandex shorts to be rated by a panel of students and faculty. What girls most fit the type and look they wanted? I’d be shocked if this was still allowed.
And what’s the first thing you do after learning you’ve made Texas Pom? You walk your ass over to the scale to be weighed and are told you will be benched if you go over that weight at any point during the coming year.
What the hell, right? Except I didn’t think that at all. I knew the expectation and was thrilled to be a chosen one.
We were a few weeks into summer practices when our new uniforms and practice attire arrived. As uniforms were being handed out, I was given a small. With as cruel intent as I’ve ever heard the teammate next to me declared, “Hand that back. You are clearly a medium.”
That was it. The veteran girls hadn’t been exactly mean, but they also weren’t welcoming to me. They were showing their hand. I understood.
I was never going to fit in with this group no matter how well I danced. I had the right size, image, and look that year for the cattle call panel, but this me was threatening to my teammates. I couldn’t win.
Only 12 of the 15 girls got to cheer any given game. Often girls were cut for missing a practice or sat out due to injury. Just like any sports team, that’s why we had a bench. But void of injury or missed practice, our bench came down to weight (not ability, drive, talent).
The week I got benched I was two pounds over my original weight. Coach told me to ask the teammate we all knew didn’t eat nearly enough for tips on how to lose it before next week.
I never asked and was naturally back at “goal” weight during the next weigh in. I always took the weight stuff in stride, but the mean girls routine all year on the squad would seed in me poor confidence and low body image issues. I was never quite good enough.
I headed straight to D.C. after graduation and threw myself into a new identity working in politics. I was working a lot and eating like I always had — a steady stream of fast and processed food. I also started going out to bars a bit and drinking more regularly than before. A year of that and I’d gained 20 pounds.
My body wasn’t being scrutinized for the first time in my life and I didn’t fully register the weight gain. I was yearning though to stay physically active and after I met my friend Patrick we joined forces to compete in pairs sport aerobics. Sport aerobics is now an Olympic sport. We were not that caliber — we still snuck our fair share of fast food, but we had so much fun.
I got to thinking I was hot (enough) stuff and decided to try out for the Washington Wizard dance team. Pretty early into the tryout process the director pulled me aside and said though I had the talent for the team I did not have the right body, the right look. She cut me that night and told me to come back when I’d lost some weight.
I told her I’d lose the weight a hell of a lot faster than half those girls could grow some talent. Ok, ok, I did not say that, but it’s what I was thinking. I never tried out again.
I started to see the problem with body image standards and the role I was playing. As a little girl and as a young adult I strove to attain the standard. And as often as I’d reach a bar, it would adjust to something else.
I was playing an un-winnable game.
So I quit the game. I won’t be so righteous to say I didn’t keep thinking about my weight and body, but I stopped measuring it so much by someone else’s goal. I started living more by what felt good to me. I left politics, became a yoga teacher, and granted myself and others more grace and acceptance.
During my late twenties and thirties, I still ate trashy a quarter of the time, but got slightly more serious about a healthier diet. I’ve always valued moving my body daily for my physical and mental health. At times I’m obsessive about that, but I try to check myself.
I’m just as strong as I’ve always been and still love that about myself. That strength has held me through two pregnancies, births, and my forever changed postpartum self.
Shortly after turning 41, my body image issues resurfaced and I began to slide. (This is about a year before covid so it can’t be pushed onto pandemic concerns). Over the course of a few months, I went from feeling pretty great about my body to absolute shit.
I felt (even if others didn’t see) a shift in my body composition and weight. I developed pelvic floor dysfunction. My sleep was disrupted, and my migraines increased. Asthma and allergy struggles that had been dormant for 20 years were back with a vengeance. I was always gasping for breath and I felt like I had a never ending cold. My cycle also felt never ending with spotting coming and going constantly. I was stressed at home and at work and it was hard to tell if it was the cart or the horse causing all the trouble.
About a year into all this the pandemic hit and at first things got worse. Eventually I was able to untangle myself from the work stress and relieve the home stress, but the health issues still lingered. That’s when I started googling and seeing all my doctors. I gave myself a label — peri-menopausal.
Today we have some sexy older women represented on big and small screens (I’m loving the Sex and the City reboot), but we are also not that far removed from those cattle call days. So embracing mid-life and peri-menopause isn’t exactly easy, but it’s at least helpful because I can label it biological.
I’m now a few months shy of my 44th birthday and I’m coming back to balance. Much of my energy in the last half of 2021 was devoted to finding my balance and once again making peace and even celebrating my personal body image.
To find the balance, I tackled each symptom individually from a body wellness perspective and collectively with a mental well-being focus.
The first thing I did was to dive into exercise physiology and nutrition science. I read the books and then I became my own test subject. I wore a continuous glucose monitor for a month and played with my macro and micronutrients during that time as well as exercise programs to track what I responded to best.
Out of that I created a movement practice that throughout each week blends boxing (new to me and so awesome), resistance training, walking, and yoga practices. I am getting better about skipping a day of hard exercise when needed and with some sadness I’m resigned to not being an active runner.
I use an app to track my weight and food which has made me more accountable to eat the foods I know are best for me and to track my own trends. Daily weight tracking won’t be great for everyone, but for me it’s re-iterated that weight is a flow.
I’ve also come to appreciate that I feel best taking a few regular prescription medications. As an adult I’d leaned towards homeopathic remedies only, but returning to daily asthma, allergy, and hormone control medications as well as a daily vitamin and adding Ibuprofen when needed has much improved my day to day.
I saw a pelvic floor physical therapist for six months and though I still have room for improvement, I’m in a much happier place with this issue.
Each physical manifestation of my body image struggle looped back to mental health concerns. I felt a surge in happiness for the first few months as I tackled each issue, but locked back into a depression after the brief high. In the last two months though I doubled down on my mental well-being. I took a personal retreat to be immersed in my inner workings last month and am taking part in weekly group therapy sessions aimed to demystify and normalize anxiety and depression.
The final frontier is this creative venture. I might be talking about body image, but when I’m writing I’m in my feelings and emotions. Writing is me connecting all the dots.
In sum total, I’ve done a lot of work in the past year to feel healthy and to bring me back to me. To love my body for her strength and her beauty. To love her by my standards and not ones someone else has set. I’m feeling just right.