Body Image Manifesto

Working to dismantle negative self talk and messaging about aging, body image, fat phobia, anti-fat bias, diet culture.

This. Is. Me.

This spring, my friend and photographer Paula Lu told me about a campaign she and her friend, designer, and Project Runway winner Chloe Dao were working on…Fabulous Over Forty. Initially, I had agreed to help style the shoot, but it wasn’t long before I agreed to get in front of the camera. Despite being almost 50, despite being “overweight” and bigger than I have ever been, I said yes. And while it’s true, most days I do not look like this, but this is how I feel. I feel big, I feel bold, I feel strong, and I feel like I shouldn’t have to shrink myself to fit into someone else’s definition of beautiful.

Yesterday my daughter told me she wanted to be “slim.” Those were her exact words. And because of my tendency to overreact, I tried to be cool but followed it up with, “Did someone say something to you? Were you talking about this at school?” She simply said no. I have worked so hard to shield her from diet culture messaging and not pass on my past body image neurosis, weight loss obsession, and food issues to my children. But here we are. The messages of how our society defines confidence and beauty, and expectance are everywhere.

Why in the world did I think I could shield her from the messaging all get about being smaller and skinnier is somehow more desirable, more beautiful, more attractive? They are influencing us all, all the time, unless we take drastic action to tell ourselves otherwise. And let’s be real; my kids don’t listen to what I tell them, but I do think they watch what I do.

Real women, real bodies, and real beauty are not contained to a single age or weight or dress size, or a freaking number. Beauty is NOT a number. How did I arrive here? An unusual transformation happened to me over the past 2 1/2 years as we collectively navigated a world of a global pandemic. I stopped giving a shit…but it’s not what you think. I became hyper-vigilant about my health and, in the process, shed some beliefs that had been weighing me down. No pun intended…or maybe it was.

BMI Was Never Meant to Be a Health Metric

When vaccines were first made available in the US to people “at risk,” people with a BMI of over 35 were eligible to get a vaccine. However, when I asked my doctor if I could get one, she said no. So am I at risk or am I not I thought? I don’t see myself as “obese” or “at risk,” but if the government is going to throw me in that bucket, I will accept the reward. She said no, I could not get an early vaccine and wasn’t eligible. So am I “at risk” or not?

In many ways, I always knew that the analysis of BMI was always bullshit. My whole life, I had always weighed more than I had appeared. Was it my musculature from playing sports my entire life? That would throw it off. But what did that number on the scale mean? Why did I hold so much value in it? Why was the value on the scale so tied to my self-worth? I tackled that in my blog post “Letting Go of the Numbers.” And I have done even more research since then.

To be straight with you, BMI is not a measure of health…or as NPR puts it, BMI is “bogus.” First of all, the researcher that coined the term was a mathematician, not a physician, and specifically said that BMI should not be used as a measure of health. Don’t care for NPR? Then maybe BMI (body mass index), which is based on the height and weight of a person, is an inaccurate measure of body fat content and does not take into account muscle mass, bone density, overall body composition, and racial and sex difference according to researchers at Perelman School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania as reported in Medical News Today will resonate with you. Feel free to jump down the BMI is BS rabbit hole.

I digress. Regardless of my BMI, during the lockdown, I noticed a couple of things I was doing that contributed to my improved body image.

I stopped comparing myself to others because who was there to look at?
I was vigilant about moving my body because what else was there to do? Thank you, Peloton.
I changed my diet, I made adjustments, I tried to get good sleep, and I lost weight. My body changed.

But then I got covid; I gained weight, and I struggled with long-haul symptoms. Eventually, I felt like myself again, and guess what? I’m still the same badass mofo that you know and love. And guess what, I might be at my heaviest right now and who freaking cares? I will keep trying to be as healthy as I can, I will address mental health issues as they arise, and the rest I will leave to conversations with my doctor. Our weight goes up; it goes down, and our hormones fluctuate. Sometimes it goes up because of stress; sometimes, it goes down because of stress.

STOP THE SHITTY COMMITTEE

This past summer, I went to my college reunion. I went to a very small liberal arts college in the northeast, Allegheny College. In the past, I would have gone on a “diet” in the hopes of turning back time to a point when I was 30 years younger, 50 lbs lighter, and a size or four smaller. Why am I (and every woman I know) constantly battling to make ourselves smaller? Why? Why the obsession? What box are we trying to fit ourselves into, and who created this box? Where is all this nonsense coming from, and why do we constantly feel like we need to starve ourselves to feel worthy? What could we be doing if we weren’t constantly focused on the size of our bodies? What have we missed out on because we didn’t like the way we looked? I know we have all been there before. I had a therapist when I was going through infertility treatments that me to name the voice that was talking negatively to us. I called the voice in my head the Shitty Committee and pictured a pack of barking, yappy doberman pinchers. When you hear your personal shitty committee start to bark, you have to shut it down as fake news. Can you picture me yelling, “Shut up, you fake news spreaders,” to a pack of dogs? When you tell yourself that you are unworthy, it is fake news!

The reunion filled my bucket in more ways than I can count. I reconnected with dear friends that I hadn’t seen in person in 10 years or more. People who really knew me. People I grew up with and into adulthood with. And the truth is we are all older, some wiser, and none of us looked like we did when we

Something to think about…there are people making money from women’s body insecurity and have created a “diet culture” where people are set up to fail (losing and gaining back the same weight, maybe more), and businesses continue to make money? How do you feel? I feel angry, and I’m sick of buying into the nonsense and junk science.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think we should all try the best we can for our circumstances to live in a way that supports our health, happiness, and longevity, but when the definition of health and beauty it is solely focused on body size the messaging we are getting is flawed.

Where did this even come from?

Yes, these messages about body shape and size are pervasive in our society, but for me, growing up, my body was tied to self-worth in a way that could be equated to being middle class and hitching my college aspirations to an athletic scholarship. My parents saw my weight as a direct influence on my athletic performance. I was never really fast enough, never quick enough.

Look out if you ever get on the fat side.

— MY Dad & Grandma

“Look out if you ever get on the fat side, " my dad and my grandma said to me. I hesitate to share this because I don’t want you to think my dad is some huge a-hole because nothing could be farther from the truth. As the oldest of 5 kids, paying for college weighed heavy on my parents. I also just assumed that everyone was good at sports and actually better than I was. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how athletically talented my whole family was and still is. My dad and uncle both played college football, as did my brother and cousin. My sister and I played college soccer, and another sister played college lacrosse. My nephew has received multiple offers but has decided to play football at the University of Delaware next year. So the pressure to play sports at a high level was not unfounded. I am the one who tied my self-worth to athletic performance and, thus, my body size, which affected my performance.

Like many families, there was also a hustle to get down to “beach weight” prior to our annual family vacation. My mom never really seemed to be worried about weight until well after she had her 5th child at 40 and after I left for college, which, although I have never asked her, might have corresponded with perimenopause or menopause. She was more obsessed with whole wheat bread and not letting us eat sugar. She was kind of ahead of her time.

Let’s normalize weight fluctuations!

It’s completely normal for your weight to fluctuate. It’s completely normal for your body to change as you age. Aging is a gift. Let me repeat that. Each day we get to live here is an absolute gift. So why are we wasting our time beating ourselves up for something that is normal? It’s normal for our body to change when it performs the miracle of birth. The fact that your body might be able to grow a freaking human, and then you turn around and curse this change and the miracle that it just performed is something I can no longer stand beside you, my friend, and let you do.

You turn around and beat it up for not looking like it did before you built said human is ridiculous. And don’t get me started about beating my body up for not being able to withstand fertility treatments.

I am sick and tired of it being normal to spend one more second beating myself up because I don’t look like the 20-year-old version of myself; I don’t fit into the jeans I wore in high school or college or when I got married. It’s not normal. I have changed, and I am no longer going to beat myself up for not being able to turn back the clock, not fitting into someone else’s idea of beauty, and not being able to shrink myself into the small person that someone else wants me to be.

How about this? How about we honor ourselves and move our bodies because it feels good to be strong and have air moving through our lungs and have blood pumping through our hearts and NOT because we are trying to make ourselves fit into a smaller pair of pants? How about we honor ourselves by prioritizing quality sleep and not wearing some “busy badge” of honor, constantly running ourselves to the point of burnout? How about we eat fruits and vegetables and whole foods (as we can afford) that make our bodies feel good and run like the finely built machine they are and NOT feel guilty because we ate donuts like they're some kind of reward? Food is both a fuel and a shared communal experience and not a reward for deprivation or good behavior.

So guess what, if you find yourself at a point in your life where your body isn’t what it used to be, and your clothes aren’t fitting the same, don’t wait to buy that new pair of pants, a new skirt, a new dress, in a size that fits your current body. And for love, don’t miss out on one more thing because your pants don’t fit, because dear friend, you are sacrificing today's gift.

Body Image Manifesto

This. Is. Me.

xo,

Allyson

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