Ok, here we go.
This was a hard one for me to write. I’ve had it written for the past three weeks now and debated about posting it for the world to see. I debated because it’s a struggle that I have overcome but still harbor deep emotions about it. However, one of the biggest forms of healing, is to accept and release, and for me to keep this locked away any longer would be me choosing not to release that pain.
We live in a society where we are taught to strive after unrealistic ideas of beauty. We are taught to appeal our images to beauty standards that are set up by society. Beauty standards that tell young boys and girls what makes you attractive, sexy, and beautiful. What society says men and women look for in their significant other.
And should you not be able to live up to those standards, we are made out to feel less than, unwanted, undervalued, and not good enough.
We all fall victim to it at some point in our lives, and I was no different. As a young girl, I developed a lot earlier and faster than my peers. Puberty was such an awkward stage of my life. I didn’t understand anything that was happening to my body and I most certainly didn’t understand why it was happening so fast. But it was, and at the tender age of 13 my body began the transition of transforming from a little girl into a woman.
I’m a naturally curvy woman. I have always had curves even as a young girl. I grew up a tomboy so in the beginning my body image didn’t mean anything to me. I was active, I was healthy, and all I ever cared about was playing with my brothers. But shortly after puberty started for me, my body became one of the most profound things in my life. My breast became fuller, my hips got wider, and the rest of my body just sort of followed suit.
I kid you not by the time I turned 15 I had the body of a woman.
Like most young girls I was taught that “smaller” girls are prettier and that’s the image you should model yourself after. So naturally I learned to be disgusted with my body. I was so uncomfortable with my breasts and my hips so much so that I intentionally wore clothes that were two sizes too big just to hide my body. I even learned how to find comfort in wearing sweaters all the time, summer, winter, spring, and fall, just to keep my body hidden.
I rarely ate breakfast and always intentionally skipped lunch at school. For almost 6 years of my life this was the unhealthy diet my body had become accustomed to. The only food I was fueling my body with were snacks and home cooked dinner meals. At the time, I was drowning in the mindset that I was bigger than I appeared to be. That the way I saw my body was how everybody saw my body.
And that didn’t consist of curves. In my mind my body had saggy, large, rolls of my skin, and thighs so big they could be seen a mile away. I felt like all my clothes disgustingly hugged my body, and refused to comfortably fit my body. I felt my clothes were suffocating every inch of my body, and people could see the suffocation that was taking place.
In high school, there was a brief period where I had a few friends who always questioned me about why I never ate lunch. I always lied and just told them I wasn’t hungry, even though I was starving. I even went through a brief period of engaging in bulimic behaviors in private, which started when I began to eat lunch at school and ended when I went back to not eating lunch.
But I was so uncomfortable with my body that it literally was the most embarrassing thing for me to eat in front of other people. All I could ever hear in my head when I made a connection to me and food was, “you’re such a fatty”, “you’ll never be skinny if you stuff your face with that”, “fat girls aren’t pretty don’t you want to be pretty?”
My idea of beauty was damaged and corrupted by what society had taught me. According to society’s standards I was not beautiful. I deprived myself of having a normal healthy social life, of having friends and connecting to others, of being young and happy, of having a healthy relationship with food, because I never learned to be comfortable in my body as an adolescence.
I was no small girl and I have never been a small girl since puberty came into my life. I never learned how to embrace my curves and find the beauty in myself through my body.
Now as a young adult I can honestly say that I have found the light at the end of the tunnel. There are still days where I am uncomfortable with my body, but I find more comfort in choosing to love myself than trying to pick and prod everything I don’t like about it.
I tell this story because it’s important to teach young boys and girls about natural beauty. It’s important for them to learn how to be accepting of their bodily changes, and how to love the bodies their adult selves will take.
I am thankful for the full figured body that I was blessed with, as well as the courage to accept and love every inch of myself despite what society says about my image.
I have learned how to keep practice with a workout routine which makes me feel better, more accepting, and more loving about my body every day. When I was younger I didn’t understand that the type of relationship you have with food, and the way you treat your body, whether it’s healthy or not, impacts the way you see and feel about yourself.
But now I do and I make note of how I treat my body. I embrace my curves and take extra care to keep it active so that I don’t lose the appreciation I have for my body. There is no greater love than the love we have for ourselves. It takes time, but it’s worth the battle.
So, love yourself tenderly and wholeheartedly, because the only way someone could love and appreciate the real you, is if you choose to love yourself first.
-Xo
Kimora