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If I could just lose twenty pounds…

If I just didn’t have these worry lines…

If I just had a bigger bust…

We pin our hopes on our bodies.  If our bodies would change, we tell ourselves, then everything else could change.  And so we go about our body projects with vigor and grit and, if those don’t work, a bounty of shame spewing to make us get back on target.  Then we wake up one morning and realize we got exactly what we wanted with our body– the lost pounds, the Botox, the boob job– and we still feel the exact same way, and we’re stunned.

Here is what you must understand:

How we feel?  It’s not an outside job.  It’s an inside job.

Yes, it it absolutely imperative that you take care of your body.  Our bodies are our vehicles for life– they allow us to experience and participate in life and to get what we want out of life, we must do the work we can do to take care of them.  But taking care of our body is very different from berating our bodies or forcing our bodies into submission.

Want to feel differently about yourself?  Don’t prioritize changing your body.  Prioritize changing your mind.

We have been taught to change our bodies.  And sometimes, when that is hard, we disdainfully glance at the media and wish it would change- give us permission to be ourselves.  But we are the ones with personal control, and we must recognize that changing our minds is the first step to changing our lives.

You control what you grant permission.  But if I were to slip you some permission slips, here are the ones I might pass you like folded origami notes in the hallways of your mind:

Permission to change your mind about the media.  The media does not know better than you what you should look like, how you should dress, the way you must present yourself.  The media wants to encourage you to consume.  But you really can decide for yourself what you need and what you don’t.  You do not have to go for the ride.  You do not have to be sold a bag of goods.   You do have to buy-in.  Make the conscious choice to resist the messages you are sent.  Vote with your dollar, time, and voice.  And realize that every single thing you buy (or show you tune into) tells the people behind that product that you want this in your life.  Be careful what you choose because your dollar, time, and money are voting and insuring that we get more of it.

Permission to stop the self-deprecation.  Somewhere along the way, women were taught to shrug off their strengths and minimize their successes.  And it wasn’t just that we needed to be “aw, shucks” about what we did.  We needed to really lay it on thick with what we thought we couldn’t do.  “I can’t…” “I am so bad at…”  “I could never…”  “I am so sorry (not for an actual wrong doing but for something as basic as breathing sometimes)…”  Self-deprecation becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.  For our lives to change, for our minds to change, we have to let go of the habit.  It is not okay for our instinct to be how can we punish ourselves with our thoughts, words, deeds.  It has to stop and we’re the ones who must stop it.  Begin to monitor everything that you have to say about yourself and change the tape in your head to gentle acceptance.  When you really don’t love a choice you made, don’t shame yourself.  Ask yourself what you can learn from the experience.  What is the information that experience is sharing with you?  

Permission to stop the cycle.   Rarely do we keep our self-deprecation to ourselves.  We share it, freely, further poisoning ourselves and contaminating the environments where we spew.  We say, “I need to lose five pounds at book clubs” and the women sitting around the room instantly assess themselves.  “Five?  I need to lose ten,” says sweet Sarah who you always thought was just gorgeous.  “Ten?  I need to lose twenty!” says Ashley who you think of as just perfect.  And suddenly, you think “well, gosh, if they need to lose 10 and 20 pounds, well, maybe I really need to lose 30.”  It’s insane what we willingly do to ourselves and, inadvertently, to others.  Look, there is no conversation less interesting than body conversation.  I promise (don’t believe?  Let me break down my curl pattern for you.  You will never sleep more quickly or soundly.).  So stop the cycle.  Don’t start it with your friends and don’t let your friends perpetuate self-hate crimes when they start it.    

Permission to see things in a whole new way.  What if you embrace the idea that nothing is WRONG with you?   Sure, there are still ways that we can each grow and learn but what if, suddenly, you were able to embrace the idea that all of life is journey?  That we are all in process?  We don’t need to have it all figured out?  We just have to be willing to figure out?  We just have to respect ourselves for our efforts?  We just have to embrace life.  Suddenly, everything changes.  

For too long, we have been sold a false idea: that we will finally be content when our bodies change in some way.  In actuality, we will only be content when our minds change—when we give ourselves the permission and the tools to be content.  Let’s partner together in permission.  Let’s share with each other the tools.  Let’s change our minds so we can change the world.       

I was in my early twenties, blowing my crazy, curly hair out as straight as I could with the relatively limited skills I had coupled by my general impatience for beauty (in general, my face was always in a book while I was trying to do my hair).  Finally, after an hour under the hot, misdirected blasts of air, I would look in the mirror, deem my triangle of hair as good as it was going to get and head out into the wicked North Carolina humidity that always boosted my hair from triangle shape to half-circle, the widest part fanning out over my shoulders, within minutes (my hour bent over a book while directing heat in the general direction of my hair rendered totally useless).

One day with my arm awkwardly contorted over me as I tried to yet again read with one hand and dry with the other, a thought came to me.  If I did this five days a week, 50 weeks of the year, well, then I was putting more than 10 days a year into doing my hair (badly, I might add.).  Extrapolate that out to five more years of this pattern, and I was going to lose about 55 days of my life to doing my hair.   If I kept going with this pattern, fighting my natural texture, then when I died, it would be just as fair to put “she spent one year of her life doing her hair” as just about anything else.

To say that realization shocked my system is an understatement.  Next, I pulled open the drawer that held my hair supplies and quickly did the math.  I had well over $150 dollars worth of product in there.  My spending money each month for meals, movies, the like?  $150.  More than one month of my expendable income was in that drawer.

Both those realizations railed against what I would have strongly insisted my values were.  What better things could I be doing with that daily hour of hair doing?   What better use did I have for that money?  Put that way, I had to see my truth, see the incongruency, and DECIDE to change.

And so I set rules for myself.

Rule # 1: my hair could get 90 minutes of attention a week.  So that basically meant that if I wanted to blow it out once a week, I could.  But other than that, the remaining hair minutes– those precious thirty minutes– were basically for putting a comb through it, putting in some product, and lightly diffusing so I didn’t walk out the house with sopping wet hair that took hours and hours to air dry.

Rule # 2: I had to finish every product in my drawer before I could get anything else.

Those rules were game changers for me.  I became less and less fixated on my hair.  I quit looking for the latest hair products.  A particularly frizzy day was just that- a particularly frizzy day.  It said nothing about me, my worth, my ability.

Now, hair, to this day, tends to be my thing.  I still don’t spend much time doing mine, but I am just a little bit of self-awareness away from grabbing all the hair products in a big box store aisle and saying “One of these has to work.”  I still don’t have a favorite product for my hair but I still try to finish what I buy before I get anything else.

Many of us have our thing– our body image/ beauty standard thing that we get a little obsessive about… maybe it’s weight or eye lashes or being tan or not tanning or blush or lipstick or manicures or you get the picture.  We usually have a thing that we have a little (or a lot) heightened awareness about and, if we aren’t careful, can trigger us into a body/self bashing free for all.

Yet, we don’t really need any of those things.  We’ve just been taught that we need those things by the media that surrounds us because if we buy into that myth, then we literally buy things and make someone else some money.  We’re exploited because someone else wants a vacation house or seven.

And if we aren’t particularly careful, our “thing” becomes something more ominous, it becomes an obsession.  And our obsessions paralyze us.  They keep us oppressed.  They divert our energy and attention and resources away from the things that we think matter and onto the things that others tell us we should make matter.  We begin to play someone else’s game instead of our own.

The truth is that there is no amount of time that we can spend in the mirror that will touch, heal, or soothe our souls (or anyone else’s).  The work of our lives IS not a body project- a body project that is almost never obtainable because the images that inspired it in us are not even real.

If we choose our standards for ourselves based on a general malaise or dissatisfaction, our effort is not going to satisfy because it is not our body that needs changing.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard a woman say that “I lost x pounds.  Why aren’t I happy?”  Our bodies have never been our vehicles to happiness.  It is not our bodies that need changing for us to find happiness, confidence, purpose.

Today, I want to encourage you to become hyper-aware of what your obsessions are when it comes to body image and beauty standards.  What are the messages that you have bought into?  What are the messages you are maybe even giving?  In our mission to set ourselves free from the thoughts and ideas that constrain us, our first step must be seeing and accepting what we have been telling ourselves and what we have been driving ourselves to do.  Over the next couple weeks, we’ll look at thoughts and practices that can push forward towards self-acceptance and intentional living and away from the stuff that oppresses us.

Here is how we attempt to motivate ourselves:

I am so stupid.  So lazy.  So fat. So ugly. So undeserving. So selfish.  So awkward.  So unlovable.  The list goes on and on.

And with each one of those unkind, unfair statements, we break our hearts; we bruise our souls; we lay more bricks in an insurmountable wall.

For some reason, we lash out at ourselves, we think we are offering ourselves a service. We think we are doing ourselves a favor.  And then we wonder why we are moving through the world without fire, without hope, without conviction.  WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? We lament.

And the answer is both so simple and so terrifying.  We have broken our own hearts.  We have crushed our own spirits.  We have defeated our own minds with our lack of self-kindess.  

And, for what, really?  Because we are chasing perfect?  Perfect- an idea whose premise isn’t even real.  Perfect- a theory put forth entirely to sell us a bag of goods.

Does perfect exist?  I can ask a roomful of women and a resounding “no” will meet me.

And, yet, so many of us secretly follow that no with this little thought in our minds, “I don’t need to be perfect.  I just want to get as close to it as possible.”

But perfect is a moving target.  Our thoughts about how to live, what’s beautiful, what’s smart, what’s funny, what’s kind, what’s good, what’s great, what’s revolutionary are not static.  There isn’t just one idea.  We all have our own ideas.  So whose perfect, exactly, are we chasing when we get on the ride?  Whose almost perfect are we trying to reach?

When I was in graduate school, I wrote a manuscript that featured a collection of personal essays and linked poetry that detailed my coming of age journey through the lenses of body image, ethnic identity, and society’s good girl standards.  The title of that collection?  Giving Up Beauty.  

Today, if I were penning a personal manuscript, I might entitle it Giving Up Perfect (and Imperfect).  If my twenties were about giving up the idea of needing to look a certain way in order to become MY best version of myself, then my thirties were absolutely about giving up the idea of having to BE a certain way in order to be as close to perfect as possible.  And giving up perfect has been a profound, powerful relief in my life.

Just as there is no one beauty standard that we can reach that would please everyone (and, hence, we need to rely on our internal barometer to appreciate ourselves), there is no one definition of perfect.  And so when you are on a quest for a globally consistent reaction to who you are and what you bring to the table, you are banking on dissatisfaction.  You are banking on coming up short.  You are not investing in you.

We all know that perfect does not exist. And if perfect does not exist, there is no polar opposite, either.  You cannot be imperfect if there is no perfect.  You simply are.  Every single one of us?  We are unique expressions in this world, just as we were meant to be. 

But self-acceptance doesn’t just start with embracing the idea that we no longer have to chase some constructed idea of perfect and with the awareness that we can no longer label things that don’t fit that false standard as imperfect.  Embodying self-acceptance also means that you take a whole new look at the experiences and moments that once made you label yourself stupid, fat, lazy, undeserving, unlovable and more.

Choosing to be self-accepting means you choose to no longer shame yourself, to no longer label yourself, to no longer condemn.  

Suddenly, the bounced check doesn’t mean you are irresponsible.  The forgotten play date doesn’t mean you are an idiot.  The limited range of motion in your shoulder doesn’t mean your body sucks.  The thirty minutes you spent napping on the couch when you had meant to fold laundry doesn’t mean you are lazy.

When you are self-accepting, you no longer embrace the opportunity to judge yourself.  Your energy shifts and, instead, you focus on each experience giving you information.  

Everything becomes, simply, information.

The bounced check might be showing you that your money management system doesn’t work for you or that that week was incredibly busy and kept you from being able to be on top of the details.

The forgotten play date may be revealing how consumed you are right now with the care of your sick mother.

The limited range of motion in your shoulder might be reminding you of just how much you have carried your children through their body and heart aches.

That nap was inviting you to just give yourself just a small bit of care in the midst of a busy time.

In embracing your self-acceptance this month, I want you to shift your energy away from judgment which does not serve you (or anyone else) and to curiosity.  When you feel inclined to judge yourself, shift your words.  No longer condemn your choices or reality.  Instead, I want you to gently ask, what information is this experience giving me?  And prepare yourself to powerfully move forward with that information as a guide.

I am not a body image activist.

Well, I am, but not for the reasons you might think.

As a lecturer in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I have the great pleasure of teaching a seminar on body image.  But with that honor comes the difficult reality of listening to my students’ heartbreaking beliefs and ideas about their bodies and their worth.  Several years ago, when we were exploring media literacy and the impact that marketing and media have on us, an idea came to me.  Impulsively, I dared my students to go natural for a day.

I had no idea how many of my students would take on the challenge, but come the morning of our experiment, all of them walked in without any enhancements- no hair products, extensions, styling tools or aids, make-up, contacts, or perfume.  Needless to say, they were breathtaking not just despite their lack of make-up but because they were real and vulnerable.  And they started to see it, too.

The Charlotte Observer sent a photographer, and I wrote a piece for the paper about the experience to accompany the photos.  To my dismay, some of the commenters on the piece lamented the fact that university resources (tax payer dollars!) were being directed to teach this sort of class.  What a waste, some of them said.  These kids will have no marketable skills and an inflated sense of self, they continued.  Having spent years teaching this course, I cannot disagree more.

I’ve had a varied career, doing work that I felt was on purpose, and this self-acceptance work is some of the most important work I’ve ever done.  But it is not important because my students can look in the mirror at the end of the semester and like what they see.  Contrary to what some might believe, the accomplishment at the end of the semester isn’t that a smattering of young people get such inflated egos from feeling so much better about themselves that they lose all perspective.  The real accomplishment at the end of the semester is that my students leave the class no longer paralyzed about how they feel about themselves, with a sense of empowerment about what they have to offer which has nothing to do with their looks, and with an invigorated perspective so they can go out and do work they feel really matters to them and the world.  That what we have to offer has nothing to do with our bodies is the most essential self-acceptance lesson I teach.

Too often, we think we are our bodies.  And, yet, what the world most needs from us is very rarely rooted in our body– what the world needs from us is rooted in our mind and soul and heart.  Our bodies are our vehicles, but they do not define us.  We define ourselves.

So I am not just a body image activist.  I am a global activist, an instigator, an advocate, a rabble rouser who wants women to realize that we each have a purpose that is uniquely ours.  Yes, I think every one of us has not just the right but the responsibility to respect the vessel that carries us through life. Yes, I think other people’s standards- whether we are talking about our mom or the media- should not factor into our awareness of our worth.  Yes, I think how we see ourselves fundamentally needs to change.  But I do not think these things because what we see in the mirror is important.  I think these things because too much else is important, and we have over-prioritized our reflection.

This world is full of needs.  And not one of us is here by accident.  We are, each one of us, the living embodiment of a unique solution this world needs.  We each have a purpose that is uniquely ours.  We each have a solution- or multiple solutions- we are meant to manifest.  And our life is meant to be the realizing, creation of, and expression of those solutions.

If we are consumed by our bodies, then we are taking valuable time away from the work we are meant to be doing and the gifts we are meant to be giving to this world, from our purpose.  If we are in the mirror, assessing, obsessing, critiquing, despairing, we are not doing the work we are meant to be doing in this broken and aching world that has been waiting for us to step fully into ourselves and our power so we can address the need we are meant to address and bring about the healing we have been called to offer.  What are you not doing while looking in the mirror, lamenting your fate?

When we get sidetracked, we are taking away from the time and energy we can invest in our purpose and passion.  The world is too precious, its needs too real, for anyone of us to be hindered by the marketing, the madness, the messages that comes at us in warped speed in an attempt to slow us down, distract us, dull us.  There is no room for us to play small or scared.  But to not play small or scared means we must do the work that allows us to slide into our best selves.  Because when we arrive there, what we have is not just self-acceptance.  What we have is the ability to pull off one of the many miracles this world needs.  It is not cosmic accident that we are here, right now.  But it will be a tragedy if we don’t realize it. To paraphrase the old adage, “we are, each one of us, the ones the world has been waiting for.”  Our realization of this truth and our ability to embrace it changes everything.  We can’t afford for that not to happen.