Writing a blog about size acceptance, size diversity, and struggling with feelings about food, weight, and body image is like leaving your house to mail a letter and finding yourself taking unexpected detours along the way. Eventually the letter gets mailed but what could have been a five minute walk around the block frequently turns in to a “three hour tour.” It is not dissimilar to the circuitous route taken when working with people who hate their bodies or are struggling with eating. It’s not an endeavor for the faint of heart. Along the way the terrain winds, steepens, levels out and then sometimes plummets before another uphill climb. The journey of changing attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and finding self-acceptance sometimes leads us into places that we would rather not remember. And sometimes the process of waging peace with our bodies and our selves requires close examination of the hopes, dreams, and attachments we associate with how we look and how much we weigh. These are not easy to give up and there is no magical transformation. But one thing I know from my clinical and personal experiences with this trek, is that it’s an easier road if you are traveling with others and incorporating humor, and forgiveness along the way.

Forgiveness is vital. When we are born we are dealt some cards. One card is our genetic make-up. No choice there…not our fault…it is what it is. The second card is our immediate environment. NO choice there either. Parents, guardians, home…all dealt to us. The third card is our community. It will be years, if ever, before we are able to choose what neighborhood we are living in. And the fourth card is the society, cultural, and generational group we belong to; also, not a choice card. When my son first discovered the Beatles, Woodstock and Motown, he would look at me enviously and say, “You are so lucky to have grown up in the sixties Mom.”

All of these cards are dealt to us. This is no game of Go Fish where we get to draw a card and toss it out if we don’t like it. Until we are old enough to choose to move away from our immediate environment or community we are playing with those cards. And those cards play a huge part in how we feel about our bodies, our weight, and how we establish our relationships with food.

For example, my genetics predispose me to being short, my family surrounded me with messages that the worst thing you could ever be was fat, my larger community was filled with billboards for weight loss programs and fast food restaurants, and my generation worships a very narrow ideal of beauty while simultaneously placing a strong emphasis on the importance of beauty. It would have taken a miracle for me NOT to grow up hating my body and confused about my body image and self worth. There was no miracle. I did and I was.

But there is a fifth card. It is the wild card. It is the choice card. It is the free space on the bingo card. This is the card that allows us to make decisions about how we are going to feel about ourselves and our bodies despite what our genes, family, community or cultural media messages are telling us. That is where the forgiveness comes in. How can you blame yourself when it wasn’t your fault??? 

Playing this fifth card takes courage. Most of us are hearing our inner voices and people around us telling us to “hold” and not up the ante by playing our choice card. After all, it’s easier if we just play along with the cards we were dealt or fold rather than gamble on forging a new direction or attitude. But the risk is worth it. At least it was for me. The leveling out of the ups and downs that came at the end of a long challenging road of searching for self acceptance has paid off with a jackpot of peace of mind and a healthier happier sense of self. One that is NOT intrinsically connected to a number on a scale.

I don’t usually pass on email chain letters and don’t worry I’m NOT going to start now.  But one of my readers suggested that I post this story because it pertains to the themes of  Tasty Morsels:  Self Acceptance, Size Acceptance and a wider definition of beauty.  The name of the original author is unknown so I could not cite the source or share a link. I did of course add my own two cents of commentary at the end…how could I not?  Here goes!

A poster featuring a young, thin and tanned woman appeared in the window of a gym with the caption:

This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?

A middle-aged woman whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster responded to the question:

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are frequently surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans).  They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales.  They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia.  Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They happily stuff themselves with shrimp, are incredible creatures and have virtually no predators other than humans.

Mermaids, on the other flipper, don’t exist. If they did, they would be lining up outside the offices of psychoanalysts due to their identity crisis…fish or human?  They have a compromised sex life according to myth…because they kill men who get close to them…not to mention the anatomical puzzle of how they COULD have sex…?  Just look at them…where is IT? 

The choice is perfectly clear to me:  I want to be a whale.

The part of this “allegory” that I want to focus on is the part about choice.   We are living in an age when media mandates that ONLY young and thin women are considered beautiful.  I agree, young and thin women ARE beautiful.  AND they are NOT the ONLY women that are beautiful.  It brings a whole new meaning to the concept of Pro-Choice.

Of course in Dr. Deah’s Hollywood, the obsession with beauty as the ULTIMATE definer of self-worth would be lipo-suctioned out of our belief systems. The choice of mermaid or whale would not be on a gym poster, since neither of those images have anything to do with health, physical therapy, or strength building which are primary goals for going to gyms.

Dr. Deah's Hollywood

But even though we do NOT live in Dr. Deah’s Hollywood, we still have choices available to us.  We can choose, as the woman in this chain letter allegedly did, to give feedback to the gym about their choice of advertising.  This kind of activism is important, if we don’t let others know there is another point of view, how can we be angry that there is no other point of view?

We can choose our own goals of health that are not based on weight gain or loss as the indicator of success.

We can choose to widen our perspective of what is beautiful.

And most importantly we can choose to embrace who we are, in this moment as we pursue our short and or long-term goals.

And my choice if given the Mermaid or Whale pop quiz would be…

None of the above.  I’d like to be me, thank you very much.

What they wrote:

Survey: 97 percent of women have

negative

body image

Glamour magazine reports that some women have 25, 50, even 100 of these negative thoughts on a daily basis

By CBS News Staff

This is NOT news. What IS news is that there is a vibrant self/size acceptance movement afoot in this country helping women to embrace the concept of size diversity. But what irks me the most about this “article” is the photo they ran with it…I mean really…an article about women hating their bodies and they flank the article with a provocative photo of a nude model-thin woman…with the caption, “Beautiful Female Body.”

OK, I know, that even thin “beautiful” women hate their bodies and maybe that’s the point, but I don’t think the folks that ran the photo are that insightful. I think that if they really connected the dots they would think,”Women hate their bodies because they are constantly being objectified and bombarded with images of thin women as the ideal so let’s not run a photo of a nude skinny woman.” Instead the brilliant minds thought….”Hey I have an idea, let’s run a photo with this article that will make even more women hate their bodies!!!!!” Brilliant
sheeesh!!!

I was excited when I saw the headline of Tara Parker-Pope’s article, “Go Easy on Yourself, A New Wave of Research Urges.”  Then a smaller banner headline, “Accepting imperfection may be a first step towards better health.”  Finally!  An article that will talk about self/size acceptance as a conduit to health.  YAY!!

Woo Hoo

Then I had a second wave, “Hmmm, what if accepting imperfection is identifying the imperfection as being fat thus making perfection thin…AGAIN!”  But I held on and read the article.  Indeed, I was disappointed (but not surprised) that the primary outcome, the prize, the reward for establishing, ”the habit of self compassion” was weight loss and thinness.

It is a complicated topic. Would women struggling with compulsive eating and binge eating (who seemed to be the primary subjects of the research; they cite examples of bowls of candy and doughnuts and learning to make healthier choices about how much of the “forbidden foods” to eat) need as much self compassion if they hadn’t been bullied and demeaned for being overweight in the first place?

Love yourself and you will get thinner then when you are thin you will really love yourself.

I know the tenets of intuitive and mindful eating are also congruent with self compassion.

How can you argue with the premise that:  If you are mindful of what you eat, stay in touch with what your body needs and wants, and eliminate the concept of forbidden foods you will have a healthier attitude and relationship with food?

I can’t. Leftovers has spent twenty years promoting the premise that self acceptance and self-compassion are the only ways to embrace your total self.  Beating yourself up day after day does not solve anything.  

But where I veer away from many of the Intuitive Eating programs is that some of them are still using the “new thinner body”  as the grand prize and ultimate reward for the hard work of establishing the new habit of self acceptance.

I read Jean Fain’s book (which is mentioned in the article) and she really approaches the whole topic with a great deal of compassion. But Jean and I had a very honest and authentic exchange when I told her it was difficult for me to support that her book was called the Self Compassion Diet and that all of the wonderful exercises she employs in the book would ultimately be used by women who were looking to lose weight and the self compassion was a means to that end.

And in the end, I’m not sure if books about self-compassion where the end result is….well…self-compassion….would be as marketable.