This morning I was browsing a blog where people post their secrets. I found one that says “I love my body and think it’s perfect but I pretend not to because that’s what normal girls do.” This secret means the whole world to me because it’s the truth, I think, about more girls than anyone realizes and it’s crazy sad.

We all know that girls struggle with body image, but there are also a great deal — and dare I say a great deal more — of girls who are quite content in their own skin. One of the hardest things for me is to be around someone who is constantly picking apart their body.

It’s one thing if someone is unhealthy and can admit that as an obvious fact along with “so I am going to change this about my lifestyle” or to look at themselves in the mirror and say “this outfit is unflattering on me.” But to carry on a conversation with me about your body insecurities is in vain because not only is there nothing I can do by listening, nor that you can do by talking about your body, but also if you have a whole 20 minutes to talk about your arm flab, then the real problem is not your arm flab and I probably lost respect for you 15 minutes ago.

I didn’t used to think like this. I used to go on with friends about appearance just like any other girl because I thought that’s what “normal girls do” without realizing us normal girls were crossing the line between healthy self-awareness and dangerous self-obsession. To me, it was a way to bond with girls that I might not otherwise be able to get through to.

Sadly, it’s easier to start a conversation with some girls by saying “my saddlebags are an embarrassment to all humankind” rather than “I totally love this Tom Petty song.”

And then one day, when I had those types of people out of my life and the ones left had grown up enough to see how ridiculous the whole thing is for anyone over the age of 16, I looked in the mirror and thought “What the heck was wrong with my head? Because there is nothing wrong with my body!”

I am not trying to downplay the fact that there are girls (and boys) with serious eating disorders or to say that they bring it upon themselves, necessarily, but that the obsession is becoming more “normal” than self-acceptance these days. That can lead to greater issues for these young people later on. They are literally setting themselves up for disaster by training their brain to think negative, destructive thoughts about themselves.

And who do we blame?

Certainly not the media. It’s our responsibility in life to discern reality from fiction and unfortunately what some of the actresses on television and in the movies are living is true fiction that haunts our reality.

We can’t always blame the parents either. I grew up with a mother who always encouraged a healthy lifestyle, to play outside, run around with my puppies, eat as many fruits and veggies as I could, enjoy my meals, stop when I’m full, and not to ever forget desert, for goodness sake. Basically, she always taught me to respect my body, inside and out. Yet in my mid-teens I still struggled with insecurities.

Perhaps it is, to a degree, “normal” and even okay to be somewhat aware of one’s body by way of taking care of it, but the truth is I never “obsessed” until I was around people who facilitated that obsessing — and those people were my peers. Girls just like me who really had absolutely nothing, nothing at all to worry about.

I look back on those years with sadness at what I wasted. So much time, energy, and thought was sacrificed. Friendships that could have been cultivated out of love, trust, and good memories were being built and destroyed on the single question of “what’s your jean size?” How horrible! And whose business is that anyway, besides the dressing room attendant’s?

On a smaller scale, and without knowing it really, we were just encouraging each other’s poor self-image the way girls on “pro-ana” sites do. These are Web sites and forums created to promote and encourage those with anorexia to persevere through the disease and continue with the self-destruction as a means of liberation.

I truly had a distorted view of my body, and not naturally. I was really never the type of girl to look in the mirror and think anything other than Wow, time to wash my hair or A little mascara maybe… but I had surrounded myself with girls who honestly thought that this picking apart, this criticism not just for their own bodies but for each other’s bodies was productive and somehow justifying whatever “problems” they saw with their body which really stemmed from the problems no part of the body touches. In my want for girl-bonding and a place to fit in, I had lost my identity and replaced it with daily crunches and mustard instead of mayo.

So now, instead of filling my head with these empty, soulless thoughts about my body, I know this is the nicest the mirror will ever treat me. It’s so much easier to let my head buzz with ideas for the next story I want to write, the next picture I want to paint, the place I want to take my puppy for a walk, and the movies my mother and I are going to watch when I get out of work. I know that in 20 years these things really will matter. They bring the quality and depth to my life that a flat stomach never could. I’m just shy of 19 years old and in 20 years this is the me I’ll look back on and think Oh, I wish I were still that firm, and so no way am I wasting these years of youth on WHAT?! My Butt? My boobs, my thighs, my stomach, my pinky toe, this strand of hair in front of my eye.

None of it matters.

None of it matters.

These are not years for obsessing in the mirror. They years are a gift and we have it now, and there are millions of grown women looking at us thinking if only they knew what they have at this very moment. So why not know it? Why not be aware (yet, not overly aware, as that is equally unattractive) of our youthful beauty and get on with our lives. I am not just talking about our jean sizes, that of course varies depending on a dozen and one little factors, I am talking about the beauty of youth of the freedom to frolic in sundresses and spread our bare toes across sand.

Second guess everything EXCEPT your reflection! We have this amazing opportunity to pump ourselves full of a knowledge and substance that will outlast these years of mostly effortless perkiness and carry us into our adult lives with a confidence more stunning than anything gained during body-rants with our “girlfriends” and reading the calorie count on a bag of pretzels.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 1:03 pm and is filed under On the Homefront. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.