I grew up in western Washington, where 10 months of the year my outfits consisted of flannels and boyfriend jeans and not much else, as with most western Washington girls. But those 2 months, typically late June to late August, where the sun makes a rare appearance and sometimes you even break a sweat, can be torture for the girl that’s struggling with the way that she looks.
I can hear the groans without actually hearing them, ‘another post on body image’ or ‘we get it’. And if that’s the way you’re feeling and you don’t need this, I’m so happy for you. But for some people that are still working on the idea that they’re enough, this is important. The way you talk about your body and feel about yourself is the way your daughter will, the way her daughter will, the way the rest of the girls after you will. So it is important, because if your daughter feeling the way that you do about her body disgusts you, this is for you.
The way that I learned to think of my body stems from my grandma, who is the sweetest old lady you will ever meet and also where I inherited having absolutely no filter when I speak. I grew up the palest person on the face of this earth with the most beautiful, naturally tanned friends in the world. Which never once bothered me until those 2 months of the year when they turned darker shades of beautiful and I turned into a tomato. When I saw my grandma after one particular incident of being so sunburnt I couldn’t move, she had had enough. She told me that people pay for smooth porcelain and God dipped my whole body in it for free; what a waste it was to burn the porcelain He gave me. This is something that changed the way I thought of my pale skin; it wasn’t my body it was something given to me. And while my grandma would make good use of her unfiltered mouth if she knew the porcelain skin I’ve been given is now marked with tattoos, what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, right?
Have you ever looked in the mirror and just once, before you picked out what you hate, considered that the same Creator that arranged the stars in the sky arranged the atoms of your body? Have you ever once thought that being fearfully and wonderfully made was just enough? I would encourage you, if you’re struggling, the next time you start to critique the things you did not create, to start cherishing the fact that your body has stuck with you through the good and the bad and it will always be there despite the way you feel about it.
