This post should dovetail fairly nicely with my last post in
which I talk about the fact that we need to quit using the word fat as an
insult. Today, I am posting pictures. I am not posting just any pictures. These
are pictures of my abs. In some they are covered, and in others they aren’t.
They were all taken today, and will be posted for comparison purposes. I have
not edited any of them. You’ll even get to see a doorknob because I am such a
rocking photographer.
Why am I posting pictures of my midsection? Well, it is far
from perfect by current standards. As a matter of fact, I could model for
before pictures in a Photoshop class or in a plastic surgeon’s notebook. I am
going to lay bare a few facts and feelings before I get to the pictures. I am
at a healthy weight and body fat percentage. I workout very regularly, and
before anyone thinks they have any useful tips, I don’t need them. I lift and I
do cardio. I enjoy both. I have had three children who were all born via
c-section. I did not put on more weight than my OB recommended during my
pregnancies, but because I am short, the babies had nowhere to go but out while
I was growing them, and because of genetics, amongst other things, my skin
chose not to bounce back once it was stretched to capacity three times in the
space of four-and-a-half years. After the birth of my first child, the weight
peeled off and I looked pretty good. I was the poster girl for breastfeeding
for weight loss. After number two, most, but not all, of it came off, and after
number three, I had the dickens of a time getting the last ten off, plus the
five to ten I hadn’t dropped between numbers two and three. I sat there on the
high side of a healthy weight, nudging over into overweight, unhappy with
myself for about a year-and-a-half. Then, my youngest weaned, and my body was
truly my own for the first time in nearly seven years! Between pregnancy and
breastfeeding, someone else had always needed something from my body. I could
really take it back, so I set to work.
Now, I would love to say that my motivation was purely my
health. Heart disease runs rampant in my family, and it likes to take us young.
I have Lupus, which, while it is in remission, is going to prefer a healthier,
fitter body to stay that way, and I have three young children for whom I am
responsible, but I really did it at least as much for the fact that I wasn’t
going to buy the next size up in pants, and I wanted all the baby weight gone
by my 35th birthday, which was in November of 2012. I wanted to not
feel invisible, so I set about doing something for myself so that I would want
to be visible. I joined My Fitness Pal, set up a good routine for myself at
the Y, and then I stuck to it. I am now within a few pounds of what I weighed
in high school, and I met my original goal before my birthday. I am currently
working on maintaining.
All that said, what I have discovered along the way is that
I was constantly finding new things about myself to dislike. I would have
surges of confidence, and then I would back off of them. My current bugaboo has
been my abs. I would look at myself critically, and think, “Gross!” I would
joke about them with others, but I really, really hated them. My doctor had
already told me that I don’t really have anything left to lose. It’s loose skin
from the way my body reacted to pregnancy, and can only be repaired via
surgery. I hate being cut open, so I likely won’t get plastic surgery, thus I
will always have wrinkled, scarred, puckered abs. Then, just yesterday after
reading (and pinning) this quotation, “I am obsessed with becoming a woman
comfortable in her own skin,” I realized that I was never, ever going to be
comfortable with myself if I felt my own body was gross. I have nothing to be
ashamed of. I have survived an illness that nearly killed me. I have borne
three children. I have chosen to be healthy by building muscle and losing fat,
and even when I least liked it, my body was NEVER gross. It has done everything
I needed it to do, albeit with an occasional assist from the medical community.
I want everyone to hear that, go look in the mirror, and understand the same is
true for you. You are NOT gross, awful, horrible, or anything else you can
think to say about yourself. Your body is wonderful. It isn’t perfect. No one’s
body is perfect, and the “perfection” that is currently sold to us via photoshopped
spreads of celebrities in magazines and models in ads, is a particular vision
of beauty that no one can attain. For goodness’ sake, they even photoshop out the
natural wrinkles and puckers that occur when you bend. They remove muscle
definition from women with muscular arms, and they remove visible ribs from
very thin models. I will one day do a whole blog about PS, and how some of the “little”
stuff is the most insidious. Standards of beauty change, but the beauty that is
you with whatever you hone in on when you are being critical of yourself, is amazing,
and we need to see more real beauty. I want to be very clear that I am not body
shaming those we hold up as beautiful or saying that they aren’t lovely to
behold. They are. We just need more than that paradigm. We need to see that
there is more than just different versions of flawless to be had. There is the
deeply, gorgeously flawed. We are all imperfect, inside and out. If you look at
yourself, and think “Gross!” as I have been, you are rejecting part of what is
wonderfully human about yourself. Embrace the imperfect. It is that which
ultimately makes you unique, interesting, and fully human. With all that in mind,
here are photos of some of my imperfections. It's real. It's me, and I'm not ashamed of it anymore.
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| Here you can see all the wrinkles and my c-section flap |
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| This one gives a better view of the stretch marks and what I refer to as my second bellybutton on top of the original |
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| Front view in a flattering dress |
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| Side view in the same dress |
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| Bare side view- you can see a mosquito bite and a kidney biopsy scar |
