I’ve been meaning to post the lyrics to You’re Aging Well forever. It’s a song written and performed by a woman I went to college with, Dar Williams. (more…)

The year was 1994. The OJ trial was in its full, divisive swing; Kurt Cobain killed himself, leaving daughter Frances Bean to be raised by Mom of the Year front runner Courtney Love, and yes, Ace of Base inexplicably held three out of 10 of Billboard’s top spots. I was not long out of college, and working as an assistant editor at American Photo magazine.

The company that owns Parenting, the magazine I now work for, just bought American Photo. My old boss Dave is still there, and now sits just across the way from me. We caught up and he threatened to bring in old staff photos of me dressed in grungewear. He also reminded me how big my hair was back then. I have a lot less hair than in 1994–that happens to lots of women over time, and no one tells you! He still has the same amount. Is that right? That just doesn’t seem right. I’m the girl.

Seeing Dave reminded me how black and white life was when I was in my 20s. I remember getting all pissy when American Photo featured Kate Moss–who had yet to figure out how to convey a fork to her lips with any regularity–on the cover. This was in her waif heyday, and she was wearing a mesh top and her hipbones jutted out like brackets on which you might mount one of those display ledges from Pottery Barn.

Recovering from an eating disorder myself (Kate simply seemed to be having too much fun to slow down and swallow) I was in full-blown anti-diet mode. Skinny was bad, diets were the devil, as was the industrial weight loss complex and all that contributed to the perpetuation of disordered eating everywhere. Oh, and female nudity of almost all varieties was sexist! You didn’t want to get me started on airbrushing nipples.

Nowadays, things are a bit different. I live in a haze of gray, and while that might seem like a cop out, I find it a much easier to get along with myself and the rest of the world.

I still think Kate Moss was too skinny then (although she looks incredible now). But in retrospect, only some of my ire was  about sexism or the propagation of an unhealthy body ideal. I was a little jealous. Not because she was emaciated–truly, even then I thought she looked awful–but of the fact that she seemed so effortlessly skeletal and was paid scads of money for it, while I and most every young woman I knew were forced to undertake the impossible task of daily questioning the entire beauty ideal in order to feel barely okay about our bodies (and, of course, got paid nothing for doing so).

“Curves are beautiful,” I’d tell myself, wanting to believe it way more than actually I did at the time. I hoped that I could repeat it (or some variation) to myself as many times a day as I was bombarded with images that conveyed the exact opposite. That was my master plan to counter the culture.

Shocker. It didn’t work so well. No matter how hard I tried to embrace every roll and pucker, I still liked my body better when I was on the low end of my weight range. I could barely admit that to myself. I was too ashamed. That would mean I’d failed at being a feminist who didn’t buy into the cultural norms–on top of being a chubster! My anger at the Kate Moss cover was in direct proportion to how hard I was trying to feel good about my own body, given that it was never going to be thin.

Now that I’m a Formerly, living in the gray zone, things are completely different. For one thing, I don’t give nearly as much of a shit. I eat when I’m hungry and exercise and hope for the best. Considering I’ve carried twins (hell, even not considering that!) I look pretty good. And the one (my husband) or two (that potbellied abuelo who sits on the milk crate outside the bodega on our corner) who pay any attention seem to agree.

What’s more, I really believe what I was trying to convince myself of–that there are many ways to look beautiful. That’s not to say “All bodies are beautiful” or “I will love my body no matter what,” which is what I tried so hard to espouse when I was younger. Those all-or-nothing statements are just as untrue and pie in the sky (mmm…pie!) to me as “there’s only one way to be beautiful.”

My Formerly way of thinking: Many bodies are beautiful, mine included, most of the time, depending on the light. Which isn’t bad, really, considering I started from bulimia.

On the all diets are evil tip, that’s not quite true either. There are people who should probably watch their weight. Folks who are on the fast track to diabetes and heart disease shouldn’t eat too much crap. Long term dietary changes are probably a better way to think about them, rather than diets that you go off of, but either way, cutting back here and there is not necessarily part of some patriarchal conspiracy to make women disappear, as I used to think.

Bad body image plus time equals peace. It’s not a bad equation. I’m grateful to have had the time.

Photo by Stu Spivak CC

Words you’ll never forget

Can’t recall your ATM password, but still remember the insult about your butt from a fifth-grade jerk? Turns out, body barbs affect us for years. Read on to move on.

By Stephanie Dolgoff

From the February 2009 Issue

When Kristy Scher was 16, her father said, “I’m concerned about your weight—even your ankles are fat!” When he said that, “It was like, ‘Damn! Even the things I thought were OK about me really aren’t,’” says Scher, a 38-year-old yoga teacher in Portland, Maine. Almost every woman vividly recalls at least one childhood crack that influences how she feels about her body now. In a new SELF survey, 50 percent of readers say parents were a frequent source of these zappers. Worse, a study in The American Journal of Pediatrics notes that more than 80 percent of college women say parents or siblings have made negative comments about their weight or eating habits, which contributed to lower self-esteem. But the hurt can come from others, as well. In the SELF poll, 54 percent of women say schoolmates were the worst culprits. Megan McCafferty, 36, a writer in Princeton, New Jersey, recalls a fellow eighth grader saying, “It’s a good thing you’re smart, because you sure can’t rely on your looks!” Laughs McCafferty: “The only good thing is that the angst this caused has given me great material for my novels.”

Why, decades later, do such remarks remain vivid? “As a child, you lack the cognitive skills to put them in perspective, so you may take them more seriously than you should,” says Ruth Striegel-Moore, Ph.D., chair of the psychology department at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Worse, our culture tends to reinforce the idea that an imperfect body isn’t good enough, which can make the shame doubly hard to shake. Still, “you can choose to say, ‘I’ll let this rest and live by my own values,” Striegel-Moore says. Try these tips for letting go once and for all.

Get indignant. Instead of taking nasty remarks to heart, respond strongly—but in a healthy way. Says Scher, whose father maligned her ankles, “Nowadays, if I hear someone denigrating a woman’s body, I think, Bow to the goddess and kiss my curvy, luscious ass!”

Light a fire. Take the insult (thunder thighs!), jot it down along with the belief it’s searing into your brain (”I have no self-control”), then burn it, Striegel-Moore suggests. “The ritual lets you say a formal good-bye to the negativity.”

Talk back. “My mother once said, ‘You’re perfect from the waist up,’” recalls Deborah Jaffe, 43, a photographer in Los Angeles. Rather than bottling up the angst, try responding directly, in a neutral tone (”You’re telling me this because…?”). That forces the other person to justify her behavior, Striegel-Moore says.

Learn from it. “Many of us repeatedly put ourselves in hurtful situations, hoping to get it right,” Striegel-Moore says, which means you might gravitate toward someone because she insults you, as the behavior feels familiar. Alyssa Goldberg, 43, a systems analyst in New York City, used to tolerate bad behavior from “friends.” Then one day, “a guy told me I’d be happier if I lost 25 pounds,” she recalls. Instead, she lost him. “I said, ‘Watch me lose 180 pounds now,’ then I left him standing there.”

Check you out!

Are you constantly peering at yourself in the mirror—and disparaging what you see? It’s time to put your body-bashing habits to rest and give kudos to your fantabulous shape!

By Stephanie Dolgoff

From the February 2009 Issue

You’re walking along, having a lovely day (tra-la-la!), when you glimpse yourself in a store window and a voice in your head bursts in like a news flash preempting your favorite TV show: “You’re too fat to deserve to have a nice day!” Kiss your good mood good-bye. You’ve got self-denigrating to do.

I am well acquainted with that kind of self-critique. And although I know being healthy is more important than being thin, knowing isn’t the same as believing. “To shift your feelings, you have to change the way you act,” says Terry Wilson, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, New Jersey. In my case, he says, that would mean curtailing behaviors that reinforce my body negativity. To start, he suggests I notice when I check out myself—whether in a window, a mirror or even in my own head. (”My belly feels thick today!”) “Women like you, who worry about their weight, tend to body-check on a regular basis,” Wilson tells me. “There’s a tendency to think, If I’m not vigilant, if I don’t stand guard, I’ll let myself go.”

That strikes a chord. More signs of body-checking behavior: You constantly glance at your shape, ask your partner if you look fat or weigh yourself more than once a day. “One problem with body checking is that it keeps you in a heightened state of consciousness about what you perceive as a problem,” Wilson says. Once I start paying attention to my body checking, I’m shocked by how often I do it (six times in half an hour!). I suck in my gut while on the phone with my dad, stare at my butt in store windows when I’m on my way to a work meeting and take note of my belly extending past the waistband of my jeans as I sit down with a friend I haven’t seen in a while. The fairly obvious conclusion: When I’m feeling insecure—about work, a relationship—I’m apt to turn that dissatisfaction toward my body, maybe because it’s easier to do that than to cope with whatever is truly bothering me.

Simply seeing the link—stress leads to body checking—helps me see the habit as a sign I need to pause (”Hey, you’re checking again!”) and breathe. I discover that the less I check myself, the less I bash myself—and the better I feel about my body. Lately, I’m having more lovely days. I can live with that.

Photo Courtesy of www.spanx.com

Why is it that models of slimming undergarments like Spanx (left) are never the ones who would benefit from wearing them? It’s the body image parallel to the rich getting richer, and it makes the rest of us grumpy. (more…)

I’m still what the Irish call a “big horse of a girl.” But I OWN my body now. Every dimple, wrinkle, stretch mark, downward spiral. I swim, bike and run every day. This body has completed 2 Ironmans, birthed 2 11 lb babies and survived many accidents. The 22-year-olds can have their belly rings, I’m perfectly content not being able to FIND my belly button….

Photo by: Joyosity, CC Licensed

After much emotional homework and years of defying the media and popular culture messages that I must look slender and perfectly pert, I finally, after 30-odd years, learned to love the body I have, extra belly rolls and all. Yay, me.

And then it up and changes on me. Must I love this one, too? I’m trying but although i didn’t know it at the time, it was much easier to love the 25-year-old version than the one I have now after 41 years and twins and too many whoopie pies. Which are really good if you haven’t tried one. Kind of big round Devil Dogs. (more…)