I always thought of my body as a vessel to carry things from one place to another. In college, it was a vessel to take my brain from place to place. In church, it carried my soul. In relationships, my body took my heart to each person. It was no more a part of “me” than my car. It was utilitarian, and I treated it as such.
I carry more weight on my body than the doctor recommended size. My weight goes up and down a little bit. I was my skinnest the summer I worked at at a children’s camp, racing around to prevent catastrophes and keep a gaggle of children from wandering off. Mostly, I hover around an average.
I do not necessarily think I am ugly or pretty. There is something decidedly average about me. I have put on makeup occasionally, but mostly I do not wear it. My hair is something that happens to me, a mess I do little to control.
Sometimes I forget what I look like. That is the level to which I have disconnected from my body. Sometimes I catch a look in the mirror and go “Oh.”
I am not kind to my body. My skin wears excema, it is dry and often cracks because the OCD in me tells me that germs lurk in every crease. Usually, a few mysterious bruises hover around my legs and arms because I walk into walls and trip up stairs on a regular basis. I do not exercise as frequently as I should. After all, my body is something that carries around the real me. It is a tool. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?
A perspective shift began, as so many revelations in my life, with a beautiful piece of pop culture.
With Queer Eye, into my TV life waltzed Jonathan Van Ness. I listened to him talk about how caring for ourselves in physical ways matter. I remember him telling an overworked father that taking even just five minutes to care for his body would be revolutionary for him. More recently, in the Queer Eye book, JVN (as many refer to him) wrote about how learning to care for his own body changed his whole perspective on himself.
The way we treat ourselves physically matters.
My body is more than a physical tether, keeping my spirit weighed to the ground. My body is a part of the whole that is me.
I called my friend, a wonderful and supportive human that was with me from day one of grad school, and told him I was going to start blow drying my hair.
Interestingly, it was another set of pop culture best friends who inspired my most recent body connection.
The Try Guys on Youtube are a group that started on Buzzfeed and now run their own media company. They make amazing videos that are hilarious and often powerful. I even show them in my psych classes from time to time. They did a video on facials. For the most part, it was funny, but something struck me. Watching them try out skin care launched a violent fit of OCD. I suddenly became obsessed with the idea that the skin on my face was horribly dirty.
Jenny Lawson in Furiously Happy talks about realizing that bacteria lives on her face and becoming fixated on the idea. As someone with OCD, I fully grasp this problem. The video suddenly had me looking in the mirror all the time and realizing for the first time that I had blackheads. Even though they were not terribly noticeable, and until that moment, I myself had barely noticed them, they felt like giant blaring signs on my face. This is what OCD does in your brain. It latches on and amplifies everything.
I had to rush out and get blackhead skincare supplies. For several days, this became an obsession and a compulsion. I needed it to be better immediately.
But, things settled down in my brain. They always do, and suddenly I realized that underneath the obsession, there was a healthy reality. My skin did deserve care. I started putting in a careful routine, untwisting it from the knot of compulsion and instead actually caring for the skin on my face. My skin looked so much better, and with the hair drying, I suddenly realized that it felt good to care.
I always dismissed such things as unnecessary vanity, and in so doing, I became less and less in my body. I was a ghost possessing my own form. So, changing that up and allowing skincare, hair care, and physical self-care to be important to me has been an active revolution. I am starting to feel like I live in this body, that I am at least in part this body. I am my body’s and my body is mine.
It is still an uphill battle to make the habits stick. Some days, I still feel that old pull to worry that caring is vain. Sometimes I still get surprised by who stares back from the mirror, but more and more I am allowing myself–even my physical self–to be a priority. More and more I am allowing myself to mindfully fill out the whole of my body.
—
Come back next week for another dose of Existential Wednesday!
—
If you want to read more about Purity Culture and the way it damaged so many of us, check out Damaged Goods by Dianna Anderson.
I also recommend wholeheartedly everything Queer Eye and everything Try Guys! These two sets of friends are lights in the world.
Existential Wednesday 