"I consider Gay and Kathlyn to be my teachers." -John Bradshaw
My Husband Loves My Thighs. Or, My Ideas About the Perfect Body Meet Reality
My Husband Loves My Thighs…
Or, My Ideas About The Perfect Body Meet Reality
The statistics are alarming. Most women think their bodies are wrong in a variety of ways. Mostly, they think, “too fat.” But they also think, “too short, too tall, not shaped right,” and dozens of other “too muches.” Women know on the one hand that they’re being fed this nonsense by advertising and other media, where size 0 women model clothes that the average size 12 women sees day after day. But even though we know this intellectually, the pull to criticize and demean the body we got handed careens around the emotional part of the brain where the memories live. As a child I got teased by my brothers over the shape of my legs: “piano legs was one of the taunts. I watched the lithe dancer bodies in gym in high school and thought, why not me? Why did I get THIS rather sumo-legged shape? I even wrote a poem about my body several years ago that contains these lines:
“After huffing around the track,
draped on the locker room bench
like a half-finished sculpture,
I’d watch stockings smoothed over
the Modigliani legs of my classmates.
When I was fifteen
I knew the despair
of the violet
gazing up the curved stem
of the rose.”
So here’s the thing. Men don’t care if you’re a size 0--really. In fact, my husband thinks a LOT of women are too thin and really, really likes my curves. He tells me this regularly and also touches me with great affection and enjoyment. Nevertheless, it took years for me to take in this genuine appreciation and use it to love my actual body as it is. How many times have you looked in the mirror and automatically adjusted, said if only or critiqued the latest casualty in the gravity wars? And how much positive difference has that move made? Learning to love the body you’ve got allows you to give and receive love right now in the life you’re living. I have practiced giving myself the same quality of love that Gay does and can now enjoy the stability and strength that my structure gives me. I can handle a lot of energy, emotions and chaos around me with my rooted frame. I can go and go and still be ready to play. I imagine that your body serves you in ways you haven’t yet appreciated. Start using your mirror as a invitation to love this miraculous becoming that your body reflects.
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