Recently, I was listening to the Wellness Lately podcast, and one of the hosts asked this question: "When was I taught that my body dictated my worth?"
I’d never thought about it before, but I realized that there was a clear answer for me.
Growing up, I was an awkward, scrawny, nerdy kid. I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t cute, I didn’t have the required trendy clothing items. Yes, I was skinny, but in the way where my knees were bigger than my legs and kids teased me by asking if my mom ever fed me. That was in elementary school. Add braces and frizzy hair and things went further downhill in middle school.
(photographic evidence of middle school awkwardness)
Then, something happened. The summer before my freshman year of high school, my family moved across the country. When I started high school that fall in my new town, things got weird. I was the new girl. All of a sudden, boys were paying attention to me. Nothing had changed in my mind, or for me personally, but all of a sudden, I was cute and popular. I was asked to dances. I was on the homecoming court. Or maybe it was prom court, one of those.
And looking back, the only thing that I can see that made me suddenly worthy was my body. Somehow, going through puberty, my skinniness was now desired. People were suddenly paying attention to it in a positive way. (In a very pre-#metoo era, this attention was often expressed by grabbing various body parts in the school hallways.)
That attention felt good and it meant that valuing myself because of my body is something I’ve done ever since. It’s something that has made the mid-life changes to my body even more disconcerting. I’m only now realizing how much I let others’ perceptions of my body dictate my worth and I'm now putting in the work to try to detach from those perceptions.
Have you had this experience? When were you taught that your body dictated your worth? I'd love your thoughts.
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