On Body Neutrality

 

As a part of Body Image Warrior Week, a collective of style, beauty, and body image bloggers is sharing content in order to promote various perspectives on body image. Mara Glatzel from Medicinal Marzipan has long been one of my favorite body image bloggers, in part for her worldview and in part for her graceful, inspirational prose. But what strikes me most about Medicinal Marzipan is its honesty: Glatzel shares her vulnerabilities as well as triumphs in the route to wellness, including mourning the loss of comfort of emotional eating and acknowledging that nobody is going to give you permission to eat--so you've got to give that permission to yourself. She understands that in working one's way to body love, sometimes a prolonged stop in the land of neutrality is required--and with that, I give you:

It’s like--my body is over there, spilling over into the room around it, and my head is over here, chatting with you and looking pretty. We’re two totally different pieces. Can’t you see? But, I love my body, can’t you tell?

It took me a long time to realize that loving my body meant something quite different than leaving it alone and letting it run the show however it so pleases. That loving the skin that I was in had absolutely nothing to do with “throwing all the rules out the window,” or saying f*&$ you to society and their idealized beauty norms.

It means: You only get one body. One. It is your home, your rock, your ally--and treating it like a dumpster or ignoring it, hoping it will just go away already--is not helpful.

It means: respecting the skin that you’re in.

I get a lot of people writing me emails about loving their bodies, wanting to know please God body love seems so far away when I hate my body so much--to which I reply let’s start with body neutrality.

Yes, body love is the wonderous state where everything is wonderful and you skip around in a field of flowers, blissed out and having nothing but compassionate thoughts about your authentic self. But for many? We just aren’t there yet.

Body neutrality is a state of contentment. It is dead smack between I hate myself with every fiber of my being and I couldn’t possibly love my body any more. It is a white flag thrown into the ring. It is the gauntlet thrown down when you realize that what you’re doing? It just isn’t working for you.

For me, body neutrality means cultivating a short set of guidelines within which I know that I will feel relatively good--and sticking to them, no matter what. These rules include simple things (the kind we all know that we should do, but never get around to) like starting my day with 32 oz. of water pre-coffee, getting at least seven hours of sleep, buying underwear that fits, having sex with moderate regularity, and trying to fill up half my plate with vegetables of some variety.

It’s not really a write home worthy list, but it works. As someone who is recovering from a lifetime of compulsive and emotional eating--these guidelines keep me in a window of containment where I am able to make decisions that aren’t warped by mood swings or panic. They save me from the very dangerous place of: How did it get this bad? I am so terrified and feel so disgusting I don’t know what to do next.

These guidelines put my head back on my shoulders, reconnecting it with my body--after twenty years of stuffing my feelings down with food. It reminds me that my body is here to support me as I move about the world--and that is something that should be celebrated. It reminds me that we are on the same team, and that developing a baseline of self-care means that we both win.

And for someone who is just beginning to delve into the world of self-love--it is a perfect place to begin.

 

Already Pretty // Beautiful You // The Beheld //
Decoding Dress // Dress with Courage // Eat the Damn Cake // Fit and Feminist // Medicinal Marzipan // Not Dead Yet Style // Rosie Molinary // Virginia Sole-Smith // Weightless