by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com
The other night, I finally sat down to watch VH1’s Behind The Music about Courtney Love. Watching the Courtney Love interviews felt like visiting with an old friend. She’s still the same — endearing and maddening at the same time.
At some point late in my sophomore year of high school, I decided on a little side project. I was on a mission to hear and find out about as many women-fronted rock bands as possible. This led me to nearly lose my mind over PJ Harvey, Babes In Toyland, The Breeders, Belly, L7, Concrete Blonde, a tape that I magically had of a band called the Slits, and of course, Hole. I still loved The Smiths, and U2 and the Pixies, and Pearl Jam’s first album, but the women rock stars were the real deal. They spoke to me in a language that my sad, teenage heart could understand. They spoke to me because I spoke their language.
In the days before the Internet, before DVR, when VCR timers were still a bit wonky, I would stay up late on Sunday nights, often until 2 AM, watching MTV’s 120 Minutes in the hopes that they would play one of my favorites. I’d read Spin, and maybe NME if I could find it, and I’d buy the Village Voice every Wednesday in the hopes of reading about them. PJ Harvey was my favorite, her songs were so full of angst and pain and sexual disquiet that she was almost embarrassing to listen to. The press would show up at her lonely little studio in Dorset, and she’d confess to journalists that she never dated anyone until she was 20. In those days, she would get on stage wearing all black, her hair pulled back, a tiny person with a huge voice and huger talent.
Courtney Love was different. She was tall, larger-than-life, fond of arguments, brash, mercurial. She wore baby doll dresses and tons of red lipstick and played her guitar from between her legs. Her voice was scratchy, with none of the usual singer niceties, but she screamed a lot, which gave her audiences the license to scream along with her.
And yet for all her brashness and screw-you attitude, the thing that I kept noticing as I watched her on t.v. last week was her face. Over the years, she’s had a multitude of nose jobs, limp implants, and probably botox and other things. Courtney’s interview revealed a person who had never been okay with her appearance. Even in her early 20’s, while playing a pregnant woman in a movie, she was so concerned about looking fat that, every day, she took a little stuffing out of the pillow she was using to look pregnant.
So what, right? She’s a rockstar who’s in the public eye, lives in Hollywood, etc. etc. etc. But with Courtney Love, it’s a particular kind of bummer. She’s written song after song about how much it sucks to be objectified and 
how much women are just seen for their relative attractiveness and bodies. She sees all of it, but still internalizes it. In other words, she writes songs about how much b.s. women in go through in terms of their bodies and body image, but she’s still in a place where she feels the need to drastically alter her face and body.
In essence, she’s in a spot that a lot of you reading this are in the right now. Perhaps you’ve been reading about HAES and body acceptance and you think, intellectually, that people should accept and love their bodies, but you’re not there yet. Or, you’re able to get to a place of acceptance and then something — a friend’s comment, something on t.v. — throws you out of it and you’re back where you were, feeling crappy about your body and thinking body acceptance is not for you.
If this is the spot you’re in, I want to hear from you. Comment below (and make sure to leave your email address) and tell me a little about your struggle with loving your body. One commenter (chosen at random from commenters who comment by midnight Eastern on July 8th) will receive a FREE 60 Minute Body Love Breakthrough Session with me.
Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. To learn more about Golda and her work, click here.
I am riding this roller coaster every day, and it seems like every time I’m about to finally step out of the car, the seatbelt snaps back into place and off we go again! :) I find that I am mostly vulnerable to societal situations – at home, in front of my own mirror, I get dressed and feel good. My husband is wonderfully supportive and loves me as I am. But then I leave the safety of my comfort zone, and at times it’s like being under attack. Shopping is painful because it’s so much harder and more expensive to find what I need…advertising and the web are full of fat-hating images…I constantly hear thinner people (friends and strangers) disparaging their own bodies when they are significantly smaller than mine (what do they think of me, then?)…I always seem to be the largest person in a group or at an event, and I hate having to see that demonstrated in pictures or a reflection. I am very passionate about healthy body image because I have three daughters and want to protect them from feeling unacceptable, and we talk often about self-acceptance, separating character from looks, etc. But I admit I often struggle to sincerely feel and embrace the things I try to model for them – I might try on a sundress and say, “Hey, this looks pretty,” while under my girls’ watchful eyes, but in my head I’m saying, “Damnit, if it wasn’t for that fat roll there I’d look so much better… can I really wear this in public without humiliating myself?” Sometimes I think I’d hold the record for self-esteem and body image if I could live on a deserted island cut off from the rest of the world!
@Chibi Jeebs, I am at where you are at. I think I’m good with myself and how I look until I see a photograph of myself and focus only on the things I don’t like. Then I wonder if that’s how people see me all the time.
Oh, I’m definitely where Courtney is at. There are days where I really feel like, ‘this body is *mine*, which means it is mine to enjoy and I will do what I want with it and you can’t stop me and you don’t get a say, oh, and by the way, keep your hands to yourself!’ But, there are moments, even in those days, where I feel so self-conscious about how I look that I actually don’t do something I want to do. Recently, I’ve been thinking about starting to run again. I was never super into it and I was never very fast or could go very far. But, I remember it feeling good. But, for the last month, literally, I get up around 6 so I can go jogging (well, walking with some running), and by the time I’m ready to go out the door I’ve psyched myself out so badly about ‘what if other people see me’ and ‘what will they think watching this fatty try to run?’ that I’ve not gone yet. I’ll get there…but, I’m not there yet.
When I was younger I was thin and busty. Turns out being thin and busty is widely acceptable as hot and beautiful, so it was easy to accept my body. I had no image of myself as anything but amazing and gorgeous. I ran in feminist circles, discussing how terrible the images women are forced to look at and subjugate themselves to in our society are.
Eleven years ago I had an injury that limited my activity, and I have since gained 50% of my original body weight, putting me at nearly 180 pounds instead of 110. I now struggle with my body image all the time, and while I realize on an intellectual level that I am feeling like I need to conform to an artificially created image of beauty, it is still devastating to feel inadequate. I look in the mirror and see a woman that no one could ever find sexually interesting. I know that I am cute, but “sexy” is beyond my reach. How could anyone find these rolls of fat sexy? I look at my stomach, and remember the flat, taut tummy of my 20s, long gone and likely never to return.
Is it possible Courtney suffers under this same illusion? That when she was young and thin and could fit into the picture of what attractive was under the basest definition, she didn’t need to actually integrate her cries of protest within herself. Perhaps when she ceased to be young and thin, she struggled with the same difficulties of letting go of youth that so many of us do, and wanted to find a way to recapture it. If I could afford plastic surgery to get thinner, I would seriously consider it, even while I simultaneously cast judgment on those who use surgery to make themselves look younger and prettier.
It is a difficult thing to make peace with your body at any age. It feels like a constant battle to love all of who I am, including the physical manifestation of me.
I don’t know that I will never fully accept my body. I really don’t think that I can. I’ve been to both ends of the spectrum, hospitalized for Anorexia, Regaining, over and over, compulsive eating, to starving again, to “Morbidly” Obese, to Morbidly Obese and starving. At my highest weight I was still dealing with the same demons that plagued me when I was Anorexic, but no one could believe the fat chick had a problem putting food in her mouth, except my sainted husband, who would feed me when I couldn’t feed myself, and stop me from going on diet pill binges.
Now I live in that reality of stalled metabolism, body hatred, and I put on the face of acceptance. People see me as happy go lucky and very comfortable with my weight, but they don’t see me struggle with it, screaming at myself about my circus tent dresses and fighting with it inwardly. I can help OTHER people to see that their bodies are perfect and beautiful and fine, but I can’t see that in myself, and it sucks.
I talked my friend in from the ledge of thinking herself too fat at 125 pounds and talked to her about body affirmations and self love, but I can’t practice what I preach. no one has ever told me to love my body in a voice that didn’t shake or in a phrase that didn’t end with “but you could still stand to gain/lose a little weight.”
So anyway, yeah.
I like to run! And I trained for a marathon a few years back just after having a baby. And I was at the marathon expo the day before, where they sell anything to do with running, like clothing, bars, shoes etc… I was standing at this stall that was peddling sticks to self massage after long runs. Listening to the guy sell someone else one. And he turned to me and asked me what I thought, as though I was the other customers wife! I said no we aren’t together but which would you recommend to me? And he asked in a disbelieving tone “Your running tomorrow?” “Yeah!” He told me all the names and proceeded to walk away from me! I felt invisible! I don’t think of myself as big as a size 12 but this guy made me feel too big to run a marathon! No I don’t have a marathoners physique but I like to run! I have big strong legs and come from a family of curvy women with hips made to give birth! No pixies in my family! How is it possible a perfect stranger selling something I want to buy would make me feel so unhappy with my own body? I keep trying to tell myself I am good enough but society keeps saying No! It’s a hard battle to fight!
The person you mention at the end of this post is me. i am a 37 year old mother of four children. I’ve lived through several traumatic situations. I am in therapy and taking anti-anxiety medicine and as a result of facing the pain, I have gained about 30 pounds in the past six months. So, not only do I feel miserable about all the stuff I’m dealing with, I also feel like I am unattractive, fat, and ugly. I have gone up and down with weight and tried every diet throughout my life starting in elementary school. I have read every book and article there is about weight loss. i am at a point where i acknowledge that the weight and overeating is about the deeper traumas I have survived through. Intellectually it makes sense to me that I need to accept myself now as I am. I need to be kind to myself and accept my body and understand that I am so much more than what I look like. But emotionally it is the toughest thing for me to do. I catch myself worrying about if others will find my behavior acceptable or if they will think I’m attractive and worthy. I am trying to listen to my inner voice and love me and be kind to me but it is so painful and difficult to do. But i owe it to myself to be at peace with me and I will continue facing the pain and trauma until i can look myself in the mirror and honestly say, “i love myself”. thanks for the great blog!
I was in a funk last week. It happens every now and again but this funk was really settling in for the long haul. So much so I almost thought about telling my doctor about it.
The thoughts running through my head weren’t pretty and while I’m sure it happens to a lot of people (if not everyone), it still feels pretty lonely at the time. Memories of past embarrassing or awkward moments come flooding back – like that time I was traveling overseas and the kids kept asking me how much I weighed. Getting cut from the high school soccer team, always picked last, going stag to the senior prom…
For a long time I’d think about the things I want to do and would say, “not until I lose some weight”.
So then literally, a couple of days ago, I stumbled across a blog. She talked about this idea of “fat acceptance”. It didn’t jive at first but this idea of Health At Every Size really hits home. It’s liberating, really. I can be healthy and not weigh myself 5 times a day? That pressure doesn’t have to be there.
I read about how “body shaming” is used to try and motivate people. It’s just so wrong and I didn’t get that before.
But at the same time, I don’t know how to be ok with me now. It feels good when people ask if I’ve lost weight – how do I stop caring about that?
I dunno… this comment wasn’t going to be that long, but I could keep going. I’m just figuring this out but I don’t feel discouraged by this new way of thinking, it’s a nice break from all the negative stuff I’ve been telling myself!
I was in this exact spot on Thursday (Canada Day for me). I’ve been working on my health and fitness level for awhile, and I’m starting to see results I like. I was feeling good – feeling like I was *looking* good – as we headed over to a friend’s for a barbecue. Until I caught a glimpse of myself on her webcam. That good feeling? Gone in the blink of an eye. All of a sudden, I could only focus on how huge my arms looked, how saggy my breasts looked, how big my stomach looked. Instant mood change. Even as I recognized it, I felt powerless to turn it around and focus on the progress I have made and the positive changes I am seeing. It’s awful how the mind “works” sometimes.