My Body Myth
As a child I loved my body the way I loved my parents. I didn’t think about it much, if at all. Love was undefined and confirmed by experience. My parents cared for me, listened to my stories and woes, encouraged creativity, comforted me when I was sad or ill. They weren’t perfect parents but I never doubted that they always wanted the best for me and were proud of me. I never questioned this love. It just was the way it was. I, of course, was one of the lucky children in this world to experience love in such carefree way.
The same was true with my relationship with my body. I was an athletic kid, baseball, long distance running, high jump, broad jump, basketball were my forte. I saw something that I wanted to do and I was able to do it. Although I was competitive, I never felt the need to be the best at something, it was just fun and I could do it. When I chose not to participate in a sport, it was usually because it didn’t interest me. I didn’t encounter much that my body couldn’t do in this child’s world.
I was aware that there were some children who struggled with sports and their weight, just as I was aware there were some parents that were mean to my friends. It was too unreal for my young mind to find empathy for them but I think our phrase at that time, was to “feel sorry for them”, without any real understanding of what was going on for them. These things were not really discussed even amongst good friends. To tell the truth I always found people’s families a bit of a mystery. I never thought about it much, though I remember a vague discomfort when I encountered it.
This was the 50’s and the boom of convenience food was skyrocketing. Kraft dinner, Campbell’s Tomato Soup, Kraft cheese slices, baked beans, canned spaghetti, Oreo cookies, sugar cereals were my staple breakfast and lunch. My mother always cooked a meat, vegetable and potato dinner - lamb, roast beef, liver, pork. She always complained there weren’t enough animals for variety. It was the 50’s so salad was unknown, lettuce for sandwiches always iceberg. Again I loved all that I was fed, even the liver, assuming this was the way one was supposed to eat. Since I was an active child I never went through a plump stage before a growth spurt. I just grew like I was supposed to.
There are many things that I inherited from my mother that I hold dear. I grew up in a matriarchal family. Whatever my mother said was a go. While my brothers and sisters all rebelled outwardly in their own way, I tended to quietly accept and was the “good girl”. I found ways to be a passive aggressive rebel but even I didn’t know it at the time. What is my mother’s strength is also her weakness in her generation of women who served men. Despite tsking tongues, she forged on in her determination to fight for various causes, usually with the theme of children. She created a chaotic atmosphere in our home compared to my friend’s moms, piles of papers everywhere, rushing out of the house to be somewhere important, theme parties with laughing, drunk adults, thirty people up at our cottage with her singing The Laziest Gal In Town. I used to ask her why she couldn’t be an ordinary mom. She loved this question, for originality and creativity were her forte. She loved people at the same time loving to be the center of attention. She threw the best parties and loved crowds of people around, with a lot of booze to make it more fun. She loved passionately and deeply, leaving my dad for the love of her life who she eventually after eleven years got to marry. She was a woman who stirred envy in people who didn’t have the courage to do what she did. She demanded a lot from people and from her Great Gatsby upbringing in New York, she often treated people like servants. She was loved and hated, as people who take risks tend to be.
As I look at my gifts that I was given for free, I see more and more of my mother in me. I too was thrilled when my daughter asked me why I couldn’t be an ordinary mom. I reluctantly admit some of the traits that drove me crazy about her but am secretly thrilled to possess the strength and determination that have run through her side of the family for many generations.
Unfortunately, another generational inheritance was the Hatch Legs. My grandmother was born Grace Hatch and like the generation before her, she had large wobbly legs which she passed on to only one of her beautiful daughters, my mother. I didn’t care. I would snuggle my face on her comfy thighs and pat them, watching them bounce to my rhythms. I never thought for a minute that this was something I would have at her age, for my legs were long, strong and dimple free. I didn’t see it coming.
When I turned fourteen, I must have been sexually attractive before I had the lessons on how to handle it. I attracted to my great misfortune, a seventeen-year-old charmer who was the drummer for a rock band. Everything I knew about love flew out the window. Whether it is deemed statutory or due to the constant forceful persistence of a horny male teenager, my body was raped of its innocence and the love affair with it ended.
That story alone is and was a common tale amongst naïve teenagers and with the ignorance came a pregnancy that changed my life.
At the age of fifteen and alone in a strange city, I had a beautiful baby girl that I only saw for three days and have never been able to locate since. (That has since changed. I have located her and she is now a big part of my life) This, I believe is the root of all the sadness I carry in my heart and body.
In those days it was shameful and us bad girls were sent away and stories were fed to our friends and family that were not allowed in on the secret. On my return to school, there was a weight I carried with me despite my pretending that everything was great. I became the consummate liar. Inside I was no longer the confident, happy girl with few cares. I felt guarded and what was so confusing was my new relationship with my body.
I was a woman amongst schoolgirls. I had stretch marks that I had to hide in gym class or sleepovers. I grew to recognized my body as a source of power over men. I was heavier which made spontaneously jumping into sports more difficult. And to my horror, I had the first signs of Hatch Legs.
I resigned myself to them. My waist was disproportionately slender and only emphasized my legs. Thick “English” ankles were growing. I was appalled but accepted this fate in the same way I accepted the dyslexia. I would never have a beautiful body so what was the point in doing anything about it. Around me girls, and later women, were obsessed with the perfect body and like math I didn’t “do Body”. My new personal myth became: no matter what I did I would always be ugly.
Analyzing all this makes me dizzy. I don’t think I ever made the connection to the baby with the change in my body till now. I wasn’t conscious of feeling ugly. My face was pretty enough to attract men but attached all the time to my relationship to my body and myself was a sense of deep shame. I’m not a psychologist and I wouldn’t even dare to say what happens to someone when people live in shame without really knowing it. I can only speak from my own experience. I think I did some pretty goofy things in my life in the name of shame. And it was on a mountain in Spain that I finally forgave myself.
As a child I loved my body the way I loved my parents. I didn’t think about it much, if at all. Love was undefined and confirmed by experience. My parents cared for me, listened to my stories and woes, encouraged creativity, comforted me when I was sad or ill. They weren’t perfect parents but I never doubted that they always wanted the best for me and were proud of me. I never questioned this love. It just was the way it was. I, of course, was one of the lucky children in this world to experience love in such carefree way.
The same was true with my relationship with my body. I was an athletic kid, baseball, long distance running, high jump, broad jump, basketball were my forte. I saw something that I wanted to do and I was able to do it. Although I was competitive, I never felt the need to be the best at something, it was just fun and I could do it. When I chose not to participate in a sport, it was usually because it didn’t interest me. I didn’t encounter much that my body couldn’t do in this child’s world.
I was aware that there were some children who struggled with sports and their weight, just as I was aware there were some parents that were mean to my friends. It was too unreal for my young mind to find empathy for them but I think our phrase at that time, was to “feel sorry for them”, without any real understanding of what was going on for them. These things were not really discussed even amongst good friends. To tell the truth I always found people’s families a bit of a mystery. I never thought about it much, though I remember a vague discomfort when I encountered it.
This was the 50’s and the boom of convenience food was skyrocketing. Kraft dinner, Campbell’s Tomato Soup, Kraft cheese slices, baked beans, canned spaghetti, Oreo cookies, sugar cereals were my staple breakfast and lunch. My mother always cooked a meat, vegetable and potato dinner - lamb, roast beef, liver, pork. She always complained there weren’t enough animals for variety. It was the 50’s so salad was unknown, lettuce for sandwiches always iceberg. Again I loved all that I was fed, even the liver, assuming this was the way one was supposed to eat. Since I was an active child I never went through a plump stage before a growth spurt. I just grew like I was supposed to.
There are many things that I inherited from my mother that I hold dear. I grew up in a matriarchal family. Whatever my mother said was a go. While my brothers and sisters all rebelled outwardly in their own way, I tended to quietly accept and was the “good girl”. I found ways to be a passive aggressive rebel but even I didn’t know it at the time. What is my mother’s strength is also her weakness in her generation of women who served men. Despite tsking tongues, she forged on in her determination to fight for various causes, usually with the theme of children. She created a chaotic atmosphere in our home compared to my friend’s moms, piles of papers everywhere, rushing out of the house to be somewhere important, theme parties with laughing, drunk adults, thirty people up at our cottage with her singing The Laziest Gal In Town. I used to ask her why she couldn’t be an ordinary mom. She loved this question, for originality and creativity were her forte. She loved people at the same time loving to be the center of attention. She threw the best parties and loved crowds of people around, with a lot of booze to make it more fun. She loved passionately and deeply, leaving my dad for the love of her life who she eventually after eleven years got to marry. She was a woman who stirred envy in people who didn’t have the courage to do what she did. She demanded a lot from people and from her Great Gatsby upbringing in New York, she often treated people like servants. She was loved and hated, as people who take risks tend to be.
As I look at my gifts that I was given for free, I see more and more of my mother in me. I too was thrilled when my daughter asked me why I couldn’t be an ordinary mom. I reluctantly admit some of the traits that drove me crazy about her but am secretly thrilled to possess the strength and determination that have run through her side of the family for many generations.
Unfortunately, another generational inheritance was the Hatch Legs. My grandmother was born Grace Hatch and like the generation before her, she had large wobbly legs which she passed on to only one of her beautiful daughters, my mother. I didn’t care. I would snuggle my face on her comfy thighs and pat them, watching them bounce to my rhythms. I never thought for a minute that this was something I would have at her age, for my legs were long, strong and dimple free. I didn’t see it coming.
When I turned fourteen, I must have been sexually attractive before I had the lessons on how to handle it. I attracted to my great misfortune, a seventeen-year-old charmer who was the drummer for a rock band. Everything I knew about love flew out the window. Whether it is deemed statutory or due to the constant forceful persistence of a horny male teenager, my body was raped of its innocence and the love affair with it ended.
That story alone is and was a common tale amongst naïve teenagers and with the ignorance came a pregnancy that changed my life.
At the age of fifteen and alone in a strange city, I had a beautiful baby girl that I only saw for three days and have never been able to locate since. (That has since changed. I have located her and she is now a big part of my life) This, I believe is the root of all the sadness I carry in my heart and body.
In those days it was shameful and us bad girls were sent away and stories were fed to our friends and family that were not allowed in on the secret. On my return to school, there was a weight I carried with me despite my pretending that everything was great. I became the consummate liar. Inside I was no longer the confident, happy girl with few cares. I felt guarded and what was so confusing was my new relationship with my body.
I was a woman amongst schoolgirls. I had stretch marks that I had to hide in gym class or sleepovers. I grew to recognized my body as a source of power over men. I was heavier which made spontaneously jumping into sports more difficult. And to my horror, I had the first signs of Hatch Legs.
I resigned myself to them. My waist was disproportionately slender and only emphasized my legs. Thick “English” ankles were growing. I was appalled but accepted this fate in the same way I accepted the dyslexia. I would never have a beautiful body so what was the point in doing anything about it. Around me girls, and later women, were obsessed with the perfect body and like math I didn’t “do Body”. My new personal myth became: no matter what I did I would always be ugly.
Analyzing all this makes me dizzy. I don’t think I ever made the connection to the baby with the change in my body till now. I wasn’t conscious of feeling ugly. My face was pretty enough to attract men but attached all the time to my relationship to my body and myself was a sense of deep shame. I’m not a psychologist and I wouldn’t even dare to say what happens to someone when people live in shame without really knowing it. I can only speak from my own experience. I think I did some pretty goofy things in my life in the name of shame. And it was on a mountain in Spain that I finally forgave myself.