It’s said that Barbie who is proportioned at 36-24-36 would topple over if she was a real life woman. Yet every young girl grows up playing with Barbie and being told, directly or indirectly, that to be good enough she should look like her. My story is no different. I grew up in the worst possible way that a young woman can grow up… Always feeling not good enough, not proportioned well enough, and not beautiful enough.

I grew up in the worst possible way that a young woman can grow up… Always feeling not good enough, not proportioned well enough, and not beautiful enough.

The other day I was out to dinner with a girlfriend and this topic of body image came up. While I was sharing my personal story with her, I felt an undoubtable nudge and knew that I wanted to share it with all of you too. As you read my story, ask yourself if you can see any part of yourself in me, whether as a young adolescent girl, a young woman in her 20s, or an older woman having realizations, reflections, and transformations of her own.

My Story

I don't remember life before we immigrated to America when I was six years old. But, I know that from the age of six onward, my internal battle with myself grew stronger and louder by the day.

When It All Started… How I Grew to Dislike My Body

From what I can remember, there was never a possibility that I would grow up liking my body. Why would I when no one around me liked theirs? I remember overhearing, when I was just 11 years old, a mother ask her friend if she thought her two year old daughter’s legs were too fat. I remember a teenage girl telling me I would be so pretty when I grew up, and I remember deeply interpreting the statement to mean that I would be pretty later because I was ugly then. I must’ve only been 9 or 10 years old.

And then there was school…

And then there was school, where at least from what I remember, the body image thing seems to have happened almost innocently.

I remember coming to 5th grade wearing the same mini-bookbag as my best friend, Tara. She got it a few days earlier at Payless and told me that I should get one too. As immigrants, my parents didn’t have a lot of money but this was a mini bookbag from Payless that I pleaded for and so they got it for me too. I was a happy girl. The feeling of walking up the stairs of my elementary school seeing my best friend in the distance, each of us wearing our mini bookbag, is a feeling I remember vividly ‘til this day. This mini bookbag was a visceral item we shared, and it unified us. It was a symbol of our friendship. I adored Tara, and I adored this symbol of our friendship.

The next time I remember caring about how I looked and what I was wearing was in junior high school. Somehow it came to my awareness that many of the kids in school were wearing clothes that were better or more brand name than mine and it was apparent that my clothing wasn't as expensive or as good. One kid even came up to me at some point and said, “are those sneakers from Payless?” I didn’t know that was a ‘thing’.. That it mattered. I was ashamed. I was mortified. And from then on, every little piece of clothing mattered. I would never be the same again.

Before I knew it, this awareness of how others looked at and thought about me and my clothing grew into a full-blown insecurity with my body size and shape as I entered puberty and was very well aware that boys were noticing girls who had certain types of bodies that weren’t like mine.

Tara and I went to different junior high schools and with no cell phones around to keep our friendship afloat, our friendship eventually dissipated. I made a new friend in junior high school whose name was Inna. Inna and I had a pretty innocent friendship at first—sleepovers, pizza, and a movie. But we were developing into teenage girls and that friendship quickly grew to include shopping for tight fitting clothing and mini skirts and talking about and crushing on boys. Inna and I were both slightly overweight and that seemed to be okay. For a while, at least.

Enter crash dieting

One summer during junior high school, I made a few bucks by helping a fellow immigrant family friend learn how to use a computer. I helped her learn a few things, including how to print a few documents she wanted to have on hand. Some of these documents were instructions on a variety of crash diets (the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, etc). She wanted someone to do a diet with her for accountability and I was curious, so I set out on my first 7-day crash diet.

Remember when I said I had no chance at loving my body? No chance. It seemed like almost every woman I encountered was trying to change hers. And like any developing girl, my insecurities about my body only grew as I matured. I have a mesomorphic body size (that’s the technical term for a small stature, medium body size) and a non-traditional body shape (think bigger on top, smaller on bottom with big breasts, a generous belly, and skinny legs and a small butt to hold it all up). For a long time, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my size or shape, but experience after experience taught me different.

For a long time, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my size or shape, but experience after experience taught me different.

One situation I recall quite well is one summer, when a young male friend of mine shared with me that a guy I was really into had said, “Sophia’s face would look really good on Alex’s body”, as if to compliment my face while brushing my body aside and wanting to replace it with that of a curvier girl my age. I was about 12 or 13. 12 or 13 for heaven’s sake!! Just remembering this brings me such disappointment and disgust. It’s not only what us girls are taught—it’s what the boys are taught in our culture that makes it so hard to grow up being a woman who even mildly appreciates and loves her body and herself.

Fruits and vegetables… that’s it?!

With a crash course in crash dieting and pretty low self-esteem, I was primed for embracing the next weight loss craze. Then, Inna’s mom opened the door one day to pick her up from my house. She’d lost a ton of weight! And all I could do was stare at her in absolute awe. She looked healthy and confident, and she glowed. Without even a pause, I said, “I want to lose weight like that too”. She was happy for me and before leaving, said, “I wish my own daughter would want to lose weight too”. Inna’s mom shared the details of her diet with me. It was called “the fruits and vegetables diet” (фрукты и овощи, in Russian) and it would go down in my personal history as my favorite and most commonly used diet and favorite and most commonly used way to cope with the self-loathing that lived inside me (and also therefore probably the thing that wrecked my metabolism the most!)

At home…

At home, I don’t remember much of what was said to me in those early years about my weight and I don’t recall the specifics of the effects it might’ve had on me, but given what I see and know today, I can only imagine what the rhetoric was like. My mother struggled big time with her own weight gain since immigrating to the states in the early 1990s and my dad-- a naturally “skinny guy” (what we technically call a natural ectomorphic body type) -- was quite critical of it. The dynamic of my mom being dissatisfied with her weight and my dad being dissatisfied with her eating habits was a staple in our household. In fact, it’s persisted into present day. My mother’s sister, too, was always focused on her appearance and weight, and she and my mom were my two models of what it means to be a woman growing up. Needless to say, I didn’t grow up appreciating my body. I grew up hating it.

Needless to say, I didn’t grow up appreciating my body. I grew up hating it.

Crash dieting became my m.o. I was a pro at it. Just ask any of my high school friends. With the fruit and vegetable diet as my “go-to”, I made sure that I had a plan for losing weight and looking and feeling better about myself. The longest I ever did the diet was for 21 consecutive days. I’d missed my period and was extremely constipated and my dad scolded me to eat something when he found out on Day 21. So I did.

There were many other pivotal moments and experiences that followed that I could probably write a novel about. But for the purposes of sharing my story’s trajectory into present day, I’ll share just a few that stand out:

• In High School, I paid $350 to a hypnotist who said he could help me eat less.
• In Junior High School and High School, I often wore a corset under my clothing to even out the bumps along my belly and back.
• There were therapy sessions here and there and mostly through college and graduate school. It seemed like no one could help me feel better in my own skin.
• In graduate school I resumed the cigarette smoking habit I’d first started in High School which curbed my appetite and had nice effects on my weight.
• I also didn’t mind that my medication all through early graduate school had the side effect of extreme weight-loss. In fact, I think I took it for many years in part because of that reason.
• In graduate school, I exercised most mornings, often overdoing it.

The Turn

At the age of 28, I stopped doing all of the things. Having received my PhD, I had the time I’d been craving for many years to focus on other things, namely myself. And not just what the world saw, but what I saw and knew was there. The insecurity… the self-loathing… the sense of worthlessness… I was a beautiful young woman who had no confidence but who faked it so well that most people didn’t suspect a thing. I knew I wanted to live a natural lifestyle and learn to love myself as I am. I cried endlessly. It felt like all the tears I’d suppressed were finally coming up because I was letting them. I was creating the time, I was creating the space, and I was removing the things I used to stuff them down all these years. When I look back at it, these were the tears of a girl who deeply wanted to but didn’t like herself very much.

I was a beautiful young woman who had no confidence but who faked it so well that most people didn’t suspect a thing.

If I wanted to blame someone, I certainly could. Every woman I grew up around and the city I grew up in (New York City, where looks take precedence above all) would be the top two candidates to blame. And although there is no doubt in my mind that they are partly responsible, I chose not to blame all of the people who instilled in me the same self-dislike that they had in themselves. I knew that they were victims of a really warped society just as much as I was-- a society that instills in all people a deep dislike of their body and a self-worth that is based solely on their appearance. Our society is messed up, and so our thinking and views of ourselves are too.

When It All Changed… How I Grew to Love My Body

One day, at the age of 32, I called my now best friend Tieg and said “Tieg, I feel so different. The deep pain and criticism of my body that I thought would be with me for my whole life is gone.” I was in tears. I didn’t understand how it was that I was looking in the mirror and not thinking self-defeating thoughts. I’d experienced a shift in my internal world and it had changed me forever. It’s not that I didn’t think this feeling was possible; I just never thought it would be possible for me in this lifetime.

The other day, when I was remembering and describing this moment to my dear friend Illya, I took a long pause to remember the true awe that I experienced when I realized I no longer felt intense shame about my body. It almost felt like something was wrong in that moment… like there’d been a glitch in my nervous system… like a belief system I’d been operating with since the beginning of time was suddenly stripped from me… Part of my identity was gone. I’d been one of the girls with really bad body image. Who would I be now? It was shocking and jarring at first… liberating and incredible just a few moments later.

I’d been one of the girls with really bad body image. Who would I be now?

A Glitch in My Nervous System

I was right that there had been a glitch in my nervous system. But the glitch didn’t happen in that moment when I all of a sudden no longer felt ashamed of my body. It happened 32 years earlier, when I was born a female into a world populated by self-loathing females and a culture that maintained that self-loathing at its every turn.

What reversed the glitch?

When people ask what happened, I say it was a mixture of outer action, inner healing, and grace.

Let’s start with outer action…

Just a few years earlier, for the first time ever, I boldly requested that my parents no longer comment on my weight when I visited them in New York. It was a tradition to comment on whether I’d lost weight or gained it, and it was a “given” to comment on whether I looked good or to stay silent (implying that I didn’t) when they’d see me for the first time in the airport or in their home.

What had for many years been the most dreadful and fear-evoking moment for me disappeared. The next time I visited what I’d forever called “home”, there were zero comments made about my appearance. I don’t know what happened exactly, but I imagine that somehow my parents, albeit not privy to the healing and transformation tools I’ve been blessed with in this life, understood my request and intentionally changed their behavior. Finally, I could relax a little at home. Finally, the mirror that haunted me throughout my entire life started to feel a little less critical. And when it came to my mother’s comments about her own body, rather than feeling like I needed to agree with her, I listened to the comments with deep compassion, knowing that a beautiful woman was judging herself because society had taught her to do so in the same way it had taught me.

I listened to the comments with deep compassion, knowing that a beautiful woman was judging herself because society had taught her to do so in the same way it had taught me.

This, I reckon, was the outer action and boundary-setting that helped inspire my inner transformation. Because something incredible begins to happen when we begin to say “no”. Our energy and intention shift to a very conscious notion of “yes, this I will allow to be the way I live my life” and “no, this I will not allow to be the way I live my life” and that creates ripples in our internal and relational worlds.

Inner healing…

This shift also happened during a time of a lot of personal inner healing work. While participating in a therapeutic training (which is the crux of the type of therapeutic support I now offer people), I was brought face-to-face with my own shame. I was brought face to face, in the deepest of ways, with all of the ways in which I’d believed that I was inherently bad. Being held by the skilled therapists and teachers of this training, I didn’t run away from my massive and uncomfortable shame this time or let it completely eat me up, as I was once afraid would happen. Instead, I stayed with it and cried. I cried until I couldn’t cry any longer. And I was left a little more raw and a little more real than when I’d started. As the days went on, I realized that it also left me a little more me.

I understand now that bashing my body was one of many ways that I showed dislike towards myself. I chose my body as the focus of my internal dislike because that’s the outlet I was shown by others was there. I carried so much shame about who I was because since day one, the voices around me directly and indirectly suggested that I needed to be different… that I needed to be more like “him” or more like “her”, whether it was in terms of what I looked like, or the grades I got or the hobbies I enjoyed. Coming face to face with my shame allowed me to get a better handle on what was going on inside of me and it allowed my internal shame– regarding my body and many other things, too– to largely dissipate. This is one of the incredible benefits I’ve personally experienced from inner healing work, and it’s why I devote my professional life to helping support other people in it too.

Grace…

When I think about how big change like this happens, I always like to leave room for grace. From my personal experience, I sense that we experience the things we do when we’re ready to experience them, and not any sooner. And we receive the support we need when it would help us most. And that- I leave to grace. Some details of how and why things happen the way they do I just don’t know while in human form. Maybe we’ll all find out one day… What do you think?

Thanks to inner healing, outer action, and grace, I was a changed woman. And I liked it! It felt good to look in the mirror and like myself for the first time since I was about 7 or 8 years old. I knew that it would reflect in all areas of my life, including how I treated myself in the presence of other of my perceived imperfections and how I treated other people in light of theirs.

It felt good to look in the mirror and like myself for the first time since I was about 7 or 8 years old.

I was right. In the years that followed into present day, I am much more able to hold the parts of myself that feel insecure, inferior, or not good enough. No, that feeling hasn’t completely gone away. But I know that it’s this shame-based and unkind society that we live in that brought them into being and that it’s a kind and compassionate me that can help to alleviate them in the long run. The voices of these insecure parts of me used to eat me up and now their voices typically sound like more of a silent whisper that reminds me that this, too, is an opportunity to love myself more.

Why I Wanted to Share My Story

When society tells you over and over again that you’re not good enough, thin enough, or beautiful or handsome enough, you begin to believe it. And the negative effects that creates in your self-perception and in your life are far-reaching. It doesn’t just impact how you see yourself; it impacts how your nervous system is able to take in and respond to emotional information from then on. (That’s why earlier in the article, I called my body image issues “a glitch in my nervous system”). It changes you forever, and not in a good way. I hate that I went through what I went through and I hate that you have gone through it and are currently likely still going through it too.

I know if you’re reading this, that you have your own version of this story too. And that’s why I wrote this article in the first place. I know my own story very well. But all you see when you see me today is a woman with a sense of confidence, self-worth, and self-love. You don’t necessarily know that I was you… that I grew up just like you. That I suffered just like you.

I wrote this article because I am no longer in that place of suffering… in that place of believing these false things about myself that create a life that reflects those “icky” thoughts. And it’s my mission to share that message of hope—that when we heal the words, actions, beliefs and situations that have hurt us in the past, that a new version of us can be born… that a new version of us is born. And that new version of you is one who is so much better able to see the beauty in themselves, no matter their size or shape or how crooked or straight their nose is. And that person is much more able to see the potential for joy and freedom in their lives, no matter their size, shape, or how crooked or straight their nose is. When we invite this shift to take place within ourselves and create a kinder, more loving experience within ourselves, our entire life changes.

When we heal the words, actions, beliefs and situations that have hurt us in the past, a new version of us can be and is born.

Is this journey done for me? No, it isn’t. I continue to be a woman living in a world where 36-24-36 are the preferred female proportions, where children are raised to be at war with themselves, where the appearance of natural aging is unaccepted, and where we are taught to see with our eyes and not with our hearts. I know, in my heart, that I have mustered through a big crux of my journey with my self-image, but that it’s far from over. New stages of life will undoubtedly bring forward new versions of me to learn to accept and embrace and new societal criticisms and barriers to circumvent and surmount.

I know that I have mustered through a big crux of my journey with self-image, but that it’s far from over.

 

If you’re curious about engaging in the kind of inner healing that helps you change your beliefs-- like your views of your weight, beauty, physique, and worth, value, and lovability-- from the inside out like I did, reach out and let me know. I’m happy to share more about the process I went through and how I help other people go through it too. The journey isn’t about losing weight; it’s about losing society’s senseless beliefs about who you should be and what you should look like.

The journey isn’t about losing weight; it’s about losing society’s senseless beliefs about who you should be and what you should look like.

What’s your body image story—i.e., your story of your evolving perception of your body and your looks overall? Every body image story is a story of increasing self-love and I want to hear yours, no matter what chapter of your story you’re in.