What a waist

All the time I've spent comparing myself to others

When I was fourteen years old, I had a pair of dark wash flair jeans I loved. At the time, I could tell you everything about them, I could write a dissertation on why they were so perfect. Now, years later, I honestly barely remember them. I do, however, remember the tag of all things. Not the tag on the inside of the waistband with the size and the care instructions. Not the tag with the price. The brand tag. Ironically, I don’t even remember the brand name anymore. It wasn’t the brand I cared about anyway, it was the photo that came with it.

It stands out so vividly in my mind because it’s the tag I cut off and stashed in my jewelry box for safe keeping. It’s the tag I secretly pulled out and gazed at when I knew no one was looking. It featured a black and white photo of a pair of jeans hugging the bare hourglass torso of a woman. It wasn’t anything scandalous, it was just a cropped image of a bellybutton and denim, but man did it catch my attention. The waist above the waistband was the smallest midsection I’d ever seen. And I wanted it.

I suppose I thought that if I stared at the photo enough I might magically obtain the same figure, despite being a fourteen-year-old with a totally different body type. At the very least I think I considered it aspirational, keeping it there in my jewelry box as a reminder of something I could strive for. After all, my rather squarish frame wasn’t featured anywhere. Surely that meant it wasn’t ideal. Surely that meant it could be—should be—changed.

The jeans were my favorite pair because they fit me well. Still, every time I pulled them on I checked myself in the mirror, seeing how my shape compared to that of the model on the tag. Where she curved, I was straight. Where she was flat, I, well, wasn’t. Each time, I was disappointed to discover I was not the same as her, and yet I did it anyway. It was a sort of masochistic ritual, with the tag as my idol and my jewelry box as its shrine.

I wish I could say I grew out of this behavior, but honestly that was just the beginning. Two years into my teens, my eyes were already wide open to the preferred shape, the ideal waist. It was everywhere I looked: TV, magazines, billboards. Most notably, I remember the cover of The Pussycat Dolls PCD album—the one with all six women standing sideways in cropped shirts and shorts. I did a double take when I first saw it, zooming in on my family’s desktop computer to make sure I was seeing it correctly. I was confounded. How could a stomach possibly be that flat? I recalled my own reflection, which was always wider than I liked, no matter which direction I was standing. Where were their rib cages?

Instead of questioning why this body type was so praised, or considering that it was likely heavily photoshopped to say the least, I turned on myself. Why was I not more like that? What was wrong with me? The fact that I was perfectly healthy never occurred to me. But such was the warped lens of skinny culture. That was the 2000s in a nutshell.

The saddest part, however, is that the societal messaging has hardly changed since then. In many ways, it’s gotten worse. Everywhere I look I see a skeletal celebrity or a GLP-1 ad—sometimes both at once, à la Serena Williams. I see thinness being marketed as “health,” as if to say looking a certain way is the definitive marker of wellness when, in reality, we’re all built differently. It’s as overwhelming as it is disheartening, and it’s bleeding off the red carpet and into everyday life at an alarming rate. I hardly recognize my social media feed anymore, and not just because it’s riddled with all kinds of ads, including ones for weight loss drugs. People are still posting, yet they seem to be disappearing. Some might be taking these medications for actual health reasons, and I of course support them. However, it’s the ones who seem to be taking them to fit into a certain mold (i.e. pant size) that give me pause. It brings my thirty-three-year-old brain back to fourteen. Should I look like that?

Logically, I know it’s just an old neural pathway I carved when I was young. I know it’s easy to travel because it’s what I’ve always done. Even with this awareness, however, there is still a large part of my mind focused on how I small I should be. It’s not only annoying, it’s distracting. Every time my waistband feels a little too tight or I catch a glimpse of myself at just the wrong angle, it actively takes me out of the moment, out of my own body. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want my photo taken because I don’t want to see what I look like. That is sad. I know this, and yet it’s a hard feeling to shake. It’s a waste of time and energy, but it’s hardwired into my mind.

The only thing that seems to help pull me out of this mental trap, at least a little bit, is my death bed. I don’t want to be an old woman and look back on my life only to realize I spent over half of it wishing my body were different. I don’t want there to be no photos to look back on because I was too busy avoiding the camera and rejecting my own image. I don’t want taking my last breath to be the only time I ever really lived, the only time I ever let my body just be. I know at seventy, eighty, ninety I’ll look back on any photos of myself and think I was crazy for ever believing the things society told my brain to think. I know this because even now, when I look at pictures of me at fourteen, I see how I never needed to change anything about myself.

I’ve since outgrown the jeans I so adored at fourteen. There’s no chance they would fit me now, and that’s okay. Actually, that’s normal and preferable. That means I am a grown woman and not a teenage girl. That means I not only have hips, I also have life experience and perspective. With that insight, it hopefully won’t take me another decade or so to outgrow this outdated mentality, the one that tries to tell me I’ll be more acceptable if I take up less space.

My thirties have been all about inner child work. Some of it is hard, like rewiring these old beliefs and untangling old traumas, but some of it is actually fun. I’ve been trying to get back to the things my younger self loved, the things that made her feel alive, even if they bring me out of my comfort zone as an adult. Last year, for example, I took ice skating lessons. This year, I’m taking dance classes. It’s only fitting that at the end of each class, the teacher instructs us to gently yet energetically pat our legs and arms as a thank you to our bodies for moving for us. It’s helping me see, after so many years of deep-seated dysmorphia, that our bodies do so much more for us than just look a certain way. They carry us through life.