My Body Is Not a Before Picture
Open any app for more than four minutes and someone will try to sell you an “after.” After the cleanse. After the challenge. After the 12-week programme, the waist trainer, the gummies with suspiciously confident packaging.
Which means, by default, you’re the “before.” Forever. Just standing there in bad lighting, waiting to become worth looking at.
I’m done being a before picture.
The body you have is the one doing the work
This body carries me to work, climbs stairs when the lift is broken (it is always broken or takes so long that you are better of using the stairs- I mean that’s why i can NEVER be part of those who take the elevator in an emergency but I digress), hugs my friends, dances badly at weddings and recovers from my questionable decisions about late-night food. That’s a lot of unpaid labour for something I spend so much time criticising.
I’m not going to pretend I love every part of it every day. Body positivity can feel like another performance, another thing to get right. Some days I just aim for body neutrality: this is my body, it works, I’m not going to spend today at war with it.
Change it if you want, for reasons that are yours
Wanting to get stronger, fitter or feel different in your skin is fine. Good, even. The question is who the change is for.
If it’s because you want to run without wheezing, lift your own suitcase into the overhead bin, or simply feel more at home in yourself, wonderful. If it’s because an ad told you that you’re not enough yet, that’s not a goal. That’s a sales funnel.
Small ways to stop the war
Unfollow accounts that make you feel worse about yourself after every scroll. You don’t owe them your attention.
Buy clothes for the body you have today, not the one you might have “after.” Clothes that fit change how you feel more than any challenge ever will.
Notice how you talk about your body out loud, especially around younger girls. They’re listening, and they’re learning the script.
Present tense
There is no “after” coming to rescue me. There’s just now, this body, and the choice to treat it like a home instead of a renovation project.
I’ll take present tense. The lighting’s better than you’d think.
Keep reading: Fitness for Women Who Hate the Gym (and the Gym Bros in It) · Skincare Without the Twelve-Step Guilt Trip