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Body Image (Archive)
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at
11:28 AM (Pacific)
It's odd...my own body image changed 180 degrees after I had my kids.
In some ways my body actually got better, objectively speaking. I suddenly acquired a butt, for one thing...before that I was too thin. Not thin in the super chic sense; just too thin, in the undernourished sense, and I never liked that.
To be fair I'm on the Pill now and that changes your figure anyway, it definitely makes you curvier, which to me is a positive thing.
But it's more than those two disparate changes. And it's more than running after, and picking up after, the kids, which keeps you reasonably fit. It's more that I ceased viewing my body as an object, and began to see it more as a machine.
An object in this sense is something that may or may not have a purpose. It can be beautiful in its own right, it can also be ugly. But a machine has innate beauty of purpose. The more efficient and functional the machine, the more beautiful it becomes.
I like machines anyway; I have always preferred the functional, the necessary, over the purely decorative. I seldom collect objects for their own sake. To me something has to have a purpose. Which is probably why I like the new me.
I suppose it started when I was pregnant. I never understood why some people think pregnancy is ugly. To me it was fantastic. OK, I threw up as much as anyone else, I got tired, I had to sleep on my side, etc. I never bought real maternity clothes, just found some super size loose dresses to wear. I went through health problems during both pregnancies but the whole time, I loved my body. I just did. I never worried about getting fat.
Afterwards it took me about six months to lose the pregnancy weight. I took it all off both times. It was the Pill that made me put on "permanent" weight but again, it's weight in good places.
Before the kids, I can say I had a "plastic" view of what women's bodies should look like (I didn't agree with it, just accepted that most people felt that way). i.e., I thought breasts had to look a certain rather plastic way and then there was that liposuction, nip-and-tuck mentality. I even considered getting implants. It was nuts. I don't think I would have gone through with it, it's expensive and I disliked the thought of having to bottle-feed. But the mentality was there; that there was always something wrong with my body, that perhaps plastic surgery could "correct."
Now as I say it's odd but I never think that way. A body is what it is. It is functional; whether or not you ever have kids, the design is there.
--Josephine
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