The Butcher

The first time I had a conscious thought about my body was when I was 15. That was a blessing already, to remain in innocent bliss, up until then. After that, these thoughts became more frequent and snowballed into a bad habit.

Looking at myself: in the old pictures beaming, when I was still sub 160cm, not a single thought about how I had felt about my body. Myself, too: the one looking at the pictures, comparing and contrasting, telling myself it is all a natural part of growing. Just as how we have to grow during puberty, I feel that having to deal with body image issues seems like a necessary rite of passage. A cruel security check for our qualifications into adulthood or something.

How this issue developed cannot just be explained by external reasons such as overhearing someone pointing out things you’ve never noticed, or being exposed to the media. There need not even be a reason, as in my case.

I would say I have only really struggled for a year and a half, but now and then there are bad days that I have to learn to put aside. These days remind me of how much I had struggled with self-checking daily. What could I see about those miniscule changes that takes months to be significant? There was nothing to monitor, hence a blank slate made it easier to impose new insecurities. I am also reminded of how well-attuned I am to reflective surfaces: certain mirrors make us look taller and leaner, or others, like the reflective outer surfaces of buses, always makes us look stumpy. Mirrors were not the only culprit: I judged how much I could pinch from my waist while sitting down, or how jiggly my limbs were when I shake them. Honestly, when looking at my body, I felt like I was examining meat, poking at it through its cling wrap, making sure it is fresh. Quality control. Sterile and unloving.

Initially I had problems with my legs: always too muscular for my liking. I was used to the image of how they were supposed to look like from when I was like, maybe 10. It intensified when I had to try on clothes because I never had to shop for my own clothes up till a certain point (probably explains why I did not have to think about my body that much). All was fine and dandy until I tried a pair of pants, or shorts.

And so, some things I have learnt about coming to terms with my body:

It takes time and loads of unlearning for me to be alright with myself. (Highly recommend following social media influencers who get real about the issue. Jen Brett and Natacha Oceane on Youtube and thefashionfitnessfoodie on Instagram had helped me a lot)

1. The first thing I had to do was to realize there is no point in comparing myself to another person (I am bigger and taller than the average person, so of course I am going to have proportionally bigger body parts to help me function, common sense). Height might not be the differentiating factor for many others, but my point is that everyone’s bodies are built to help it function best, so naturally we will look our best differently.
2. I needed to normalize the fact that our body changes and there is no need to kid ourselves that pre and post lunch we would look the same. Just like how our skin gets oilier throughout the day, or how our feet are bigger at night, it is normal to bloat and fluctuate a couple of kgs throughout the day. Everything resets the next morning regardless of how you ate last night. I do not have to compensate elsewhere.
   1. Yes, there is no need to compensate. You happened to eat a lot today? That is because you were hungry and craving. Tomorrow you do not need to eat less or exercise more. The same goes for if you happened to not be hungry and ate very little on one day. One day of indulging yourself will not make a difference, nor would five days, nor would a week. The long-term lifestyle matters more so stop taking away from tomorrow.
3. Fixing our insecurities is only temporary because it will be redirected elsewhere: it went from legs to arms in my case. If the version of yourself before change does not know what looks good enough, why would we know any better after we work so hard to lose or put on weight? How do we ever escape the endless cycle of dissatisfaction?
4. That being said, it is perfectly alright to want to hit certain goals/change how our body looks provided that this desire comes from a “happy place”. The lines are hard to draw for every individual but honestly, no matter how we justify this desire, you cannot lie to yourself. My personal yardstick is that it must stem from a rational place (not an instance of “oh no I think I gained weight by having cake and bubble tea”) because only then would I be capable of recognizing when is good enough for me and avoid unhealthy extremes.
5. Lastly, it is easy to find diets and exercise routines proliferating the internet, but hardly anything tells us when to stop and how to sustain whatever body we have acquired. That is why we have to make a conscious effort to learn how to set realistic goals. Looking back at my photos, I was shOOked because I didn’t realize how skinny I got and still I had thought that I did not reach the end goal. There was simply no end in sight. Losing weight is fine, but it will become a problem if we don’t know when to stop. It becomes especially bad when this is fueled by our obsession and we stopped listening to our body’s signals (TMI but I literally lost my period for three months).

Nowadays, the bad days are very infrequent and just recently I had enjoyed shopping for new jeans instead of dreading what I saw in the mirror for the first time in a long time. Two years ago I randomly came across a question: would you be training for functionality or aesthetics. I had struggled with it (remember my fear of muscles?) but now, I could answer myself that I would actually give functionality a little more thought and enjoy exercise because it makes me feel stronger. It makes me damn proud.

Quite intuitively, the environment and what people say matters a lot to our body image. When I was struggling, I was incapable of looking at myself objectively, so I had to see myself through other’s feedback. And I can say this for every girl regardless of body shape: there will always be someone pointing out your flaws at some point in time. For me, it came from (ironically) my family. My strongest critics were people who have their own children and are in their own ways responsible for giving me this body. I wonder why it seemed normal for them to try to shrink whatever they had tried to grow. Yeah, remember the good times when people actually wanted me to eat more and grow up big and healthy? Heck now they sound disappointed when they told me that I will “never be one of those girls who look good in shorts” (my brother even jokingly proposed I wear those ugly guy bermudas so that they will hide my legs). Heck my grandfather who has not exercised in decades sounded proud when he said that even he’s got skinnier legs than me. (Can you tell my exasperation?)

Normalizing body-shaming had made things worse for me and still gets me sometimes, but I will not pretend that I had only been the victim. In telling my brother he should lose weight, I have also been a perpetuator. To me it had seemed justified, I wanted him to take care of his body more because how he looked was an indication of self-discipline. The problem is, he is not overweight, so what gives me the rights to tell him what to feel about his body? Or, in the less obvious ways, such as me complaining of having to go for a run after eating junk food, or boasting to people I have finally lost a certain amount of weight, I have unconsciously contributed to the culture of body-shaming.

This brings me to quite an important point. All of us have been both the victim and perpetuator of problematic body image at some point in our lives. The influence of society is too large a force and perhaps in our unconscious ways we reflect our environment. I think part of the reason is also because it is convenient to borrow the name of “health” to criticize your body (that can be another topic for another day). It is not to excuse ourselves for using some words when talking about others or even ourselves, nor is it to condemn every single word we say and suddenly find ourselves hesitating for the fear of saying something wrong.

While it is impossible to eradicate the negative voices, I don’t think it is hard for us to balance it out with affirmations and reassurance. We may unconsciously say certain things, but make up for it by consciously assuring others too. I think many of the people who said what they did to me are struggling themselves. If at this point it is still hard to love our bodies, then the first step is to take on a new role as a supportive family member/friend/whatever. Celebrate every small feel good moment, or if you cannot do it yourself do it for someone else. It will come back around to you someday.

I cannot just preach “let us all love our bodies more” because coming to terms with our body image is a personal journey. Even for me, on certain days the learning points above still takes a lot of self-talk and convincing to override a really bad day. A few friends who insisted on getting ice cream with me had helped with the way I looked at food. Listening to people open up about their bodies had normalized a lot of things. On one hand this is my reflection because I think I have reached a checkpoint this year where I have achieved a goal I had set out for, and on the other I hope writing this has a margin of an effect on the way anyone is looking at themselves. Or I would also understand if reading about my personal experience with body image was completely unhelpful and came off more like me boasting about how I had succeeded.

Whatever it is, I hope that there will come a day we will no longer see ourselves as cold slabs of meat waiting for our own prodding inspection, wishing for the butcher to bring down his knife. Our body is still warm and alive, growing and breathing, changing, serving us. I hope next year will be a good year.