I have spent my entire life being told that this would happen. That as I began to exit my 20s and move towards my 30s, my metabolism would slow down a little bit, and I might gain a few pounds. My body will change, from that of a hyperactive youngster into that of an adult. An adult just like all the adults I see around me: a little bit of a belly, a few pants sizes bigger than they were when they were 20. That is the shape of almost every adult I know. And I was told this was a curse, a problem to be solved. My clock was running out, and I needed to address my “unhealthy habits” before I ran out of runway and the process began.
So, at 27, I shouldn’t be surprised that I am beginning to gain a bit of weight. Not a lot, let’s be clear. I am still a tall, thin man. But some. I have moved up one pants size for the first time in a very long time. And I have been conditioned for 27 years to believe this is the fault of fast food, of “junk food,” and that when I begin to notice these changes that is my cue to stop eating any of it. “Party’s over, kid. Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. But you’re a grownup now, and grownups don’t get to drink pop. Grownups have to be ‘careful’ around pizza. Grownups eat a lot of salad. Otherwise grownups gain weight, which of course is a fate worse than death.”
I have been following HAES and Intuitive Eating for less than a year at this point. I have fully embraced it for even less than that. So I shouldn’t be surprised that the old, deep beliefs are winning today. But I am allowed to be frustrated.
When I am not thinking about it, when I am just at home, enjoying an evening with my lovely wife, I feel at home in my body. I don’t have any issues with my belly. I don’t pay attention to the thickness of my thighs. But at work, I absolutely feel it. Whenever I am given reason to feel self-conscious, I take it and run with it. I am sitting here at my desk at work, unable to focus on anything I need to be doing. Instead, I find myself staring at my midsection. When I ate lunch today I didn’t taste a bite of it; I was far too busy freaking out about how my legs had widened.
I am currently re-reading Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body Is Not An Apology, which I think is incredibly instructive. To borrow her language, I think that I am stuck in a place where I feel I need to apologize for my body, for my demeanor, for myself to the world. Let me explain.
I was sent out on a company product shoot yesterday with a man who makes me feel incredibly… insufficient. He has sharp hair, sharp clothes, he is charismatic and forceful and speaks over people in a way that feels very… I don’t know, I guess traditionally masculine. And while I technically outrank him, and on paper I would be his boss, he just took charge, charisma’d all over me with his forceful demeanor, and made me feel useless. Looking at the photos we took, all I can see is my failure at traditional masculinity and his mastery of it. I look at the product shots with me in them and all I feel is hideous and shameful. In other words, I feel that I need to apologize.
And how does one apologize? By conforming to every socio-cultural norm within arms’ reach. Get a haircut, be more assertive, wear better clothes, lose some weight. That’s not who I am, that’s not who I want to be. But it’s who society thinks I should be more like, and when my self-confidence is at a low ebb that’s the only way I think I can gain it back. That’s how I end up despairing over my pants size. That’s how I look at photos of myself and stare past the feelings in the photo to hate on some small detail of my stupid goddamn face.
I am writing and posting this because I need to push myself beyond that. Even if I don’t feel it or believe it right now, I am still a human being worthy of love and affection. I am still everything that I was yesterday. Hopefully some day in the future I will look back on this blog post and laugh. But right now, just picking out the picture for this has been triggering.