Taught and Stolen

“Sculpt” and “tone” are rooted in skinny culture.

I heard that on a podcast recently, and it stopped me in my tracks.

I don't spend much time thinking about being skinny anymore. Well, to be honest, this body doesn’t “do” skinny. But the mind still can, right? What I do focus on is strength. I focus on longevity. I focus on what my body can do and how I want to feel inside it.

And yet, I'm not immune to the ways skinny culture still finds its way in.

Especially now, as the pendulum has swung back again.

Good thing, I’ve never really cared much for trends.

This body carries stretch marks, cellulite, surgical scars (as well as falling off triathlon bikes scars, box jump scars (IYKYK), pass out in the middle of night while peeing because your heart rate is so low from being fit (humble brag) scars), the shifts of perimenopause, and a thousand other signs of a life fully lived. Evidence not of perfection (clearly), but of resilience, experience, and humanity.

This is also a body that once weighed 222 lbs. One that went from a size 16 to a size 2. Neither was right for me.

One that has run 13 marathons, 82 (?) half marathons, and completed a half Ironman after learning to swim as an adult.

One that carried and delivered a healthy baby through 29 hours of labour (and I would have kept going) and left me feeling more powerful than depleted.

One that has survived loss, stress, illness, surgery, healing, aging, and becoming.

And despite all of that, there are still days when I wish it looked different.

That's the part that frustrates me.

Not because I think there's anything wrong with wanting to feel good in your body.

But because after all these years, after everything this body has done, some parts of me still aren’t impervious to evaluating it through a lens I never consciously chose. A lens that asks how it looks before asking what it has carried. A lens that assigns value before understanding the story.

That’s where societal expectations come in. Because skinny culture isn't about health. It's about the idea that a woman's body is a project. That its appearance tells us something about its owner's worth, discipline, desirability, or success.

And that… that’s what destroys me.

Not because I weighed 222 lbs.
Not because I don't.
But because even now, after everything, there are moments when I still have to consciously choose to see my body through my own eyes instead of someone else's.

Recently, I was given a writing prompt: When is the first time you lost hope in yourself?

I was surprised by how quickly the answer came.

The first fracture in trust with myself wasn't the body I occupied. It was believing I wasn't capable of changing it.

For years, I tried and failed. Or at least that's the story I told myself.

Looking back, I can see that something more complicated was happening.

It wasn’t my ‘why’ trying to change. It was patriarchy’s why. Take up less space. Be smaller. Quieter. Contained. Every industry trying to profit from that one “fix” that will make me more acceptable. It didn’t start with me and it won’t end with me but that was the heartbreak. That this fracture and loss of hope was taught to me and stolen from me.

Once I realized my why’s had been inherited, everything changed. When I took full ownership (thanks to a kind and supportive doctor) the conversation shifted. And twenty-three years ago, that became the catalyst for choices that changed my life.

In those 23 years, my own pendulum has shifted. On one end, it took on qualifying for Boston, teaching yoga, lifting heavy weights, and building a career helping people connect with their bodies, not use them. On the other, it’s never stood up properly for itself or others when it’s become public property for interpretation.

At my strongest, leanest, and most capable, I heard things like:
"You don't look like you'd own a yoga studio."
"You qualified for Boston? You don't look like a runner."

When I was larger, judgment felt silent but present. When I was smaller, it became louder. Different body. Same person. Same external entitlement to assign value.

Because the thing is I don’t grieve my former body.

I don't look back and wish I could erase her.

I mourn the years spent believing my body determined how much hope I was allowed to have in myself.

What body culture takes from us is so much bigger than one person’s ability to change it. But the badasses out there using their platform to take up space, to reclaim their bodies, to let fads come and go, that lift others up, that get curious about people’s stories instead of assigning meaning to their bodies? That’s what I want to be a part of building.

And if there's anything I wish I could tell the woman who lost hope in herself all those years ago, it's this:

Your body was never the problem. The belief that your worth depended on it was.