Golf Course Revelations
Revelations happen in the strangest places. This was the thought rolling around in my head while my golf ball rolled off the green. I was three months into my newfound golfing hobby and was still learning the concept of aim. Not unlike other times we’d played, here I was in the middle of the course, thinking about anything but golf. My eyes searched for my ball in the grass, but my mind focused on the way my inner thighs rubbed together under my white athletic skirt.
“How sad it would be to live my whole life in this body, and never actually like it.” I thought, kneeling to pick up my ball nestled in a cushion of weeds.
Wow. Look at those thighs.
I’ve never met a woman who loved her body. Not in the sense of loving her features; her eyes, her neck, her hair, or appreciating all the power and capabilities her body possesses. I’ve met plenty of those women. I am one of those women. No, I’ve never met a woman who loves her body as a whole. All of it, from head to toe, every inch, lump, curve, line, without an ounce of judgement. A woman who wouldn’t change a thing, not one dimple or tooth, not even the smallest hair. I’ve never met a woman like that. Not one.
I am not this woman. I can’t remember a time I didn’t pick myself to pieces. Tear myself to shreds, to be more accurate. It all began with my thighs. Then one day I heard the term love handles and the focus went to my hips. Next was my stomach, when I realized a small, insignificant, barely noticeable mound had formed on top of my abdomen. From then on, there was never a shortage of skin to scrutinize or curve to critique.
It wasn’t until grade school that I even noticed my thighs were attached to my body, never mind bulging off the side of my chair. Until then, I’d run around playgrounds blissfully unaware I had any appearance at all. My legs were simply there, moving and playing, a perfect part of a healthy child. I can’t remember these moments of carefree self-love anymore. I can only remember when they stopped.
The weather in Massachusetts had warmed and everyone had started to debut their new summer clothes at school. Bare legs roamed the hallways and fidgeted below desks. Mine were no exception. Pasty and untanned, my legs looked different than most of my classmates. They were wide and white and doubled in size when resting against the seat of my chair. With every glance below my desk, I became painfully aware of what it meant to be self-conscious. To feel complete embarrassment for the body I’d lived in for years.
My best friend in grade school was a thin girl with curly hair. Her skin tanned perfectly in the summer and even though she had large front teeth, to me she was the epitome of perfect. Her stomach was flat, her legs were slender, and I wanted to trade my body for hers more than anything in the world.
For the rest of the school year, I sat on the edge of my seat, literally, waiting for the end of my self-inflicted humiliation. I flexed my quadriceps at all times, hoping the tension in my muscles would minimize their size in my seat, or prevent ripples from travelling down my legs when I walked.
At one point, I tested the topic with my dad. We were sitting in an Italian restaurant with plates of pasta on the way when I asked him if my legs were fat. I loved pasta, but to this day I can’t look at it without feeling a twinge of guilt in the depths of my gut.
“No, I don’t think your legs are fat,” he said, “do you think my legs are fat?”
I looked down, pondering the size of his legs. On a 6’2” man, it was hard to imagine “fat” being an issue. Everything was naturally double my size, but in my childhood mind, that’s the way men were supposed to be.
“No,” I said.
“Well, you have legs like me, so your legs aren’t fat either.”
What my dad meant was that, as his daughter, I had his legs, and I did. When it came to genetics, I had most of his features; his blue eyes, his chestnut brown hair, his pale, sensitive skin that burned easily and turned to freckles after too much time in the sun. He was Norwegian, Irish, Scottish and Italian, and I was him. Of course I had his legs. They were the same shape, same build; athletic and thick with muscle. They were healthy legs. But in that moment, my heart sunk. All I wanted was for someone to tell me I was thin. That my legs were skinny, stick-like figures. That I looked just like my best friend. I didn’t want my father’s legs.
Six years later, I found a body I wasn’t ashamed of. I was headed to a private high school with a prominent athletics program. I never considered myself an athlete – I rode horses and it had been years since I’d been on a field without a two-ton thoroughbred galloping beneath me. So I chose swimming, a sport that required no field at all.
Three months later, I had a body I barely recognized, both in ability and appearance. I could run for 40 minutes straight and swim 20 laps without stopping. My eyebrows had been bleached by the excess of chlorine and lean, toned muscle took the place of any baby fat that had ever clung to my bones. Boys called me “hot” and Hollister clothing fit my trim figure without any lumps or bulges. My once self-described massive thighs had finally slimmed and now blended seamlessly with my long, smooth silhouette. For the first time, I was proud of my body.
The thing about bodies is, they change. We work them and mold them until they mirror the image we’ve concocted in our minds with the help of celebrities and internet phenomena. We’re merciless with our bodies, making them work for food, as if a five mile run is justification for the need to eat. As if hunger is the cost and exercise the currency. We punish our bodies for their natural urges, we see cravings as weakness and pleasure as defeat. We ask our bodies to keep us alive and scold them when they try.
My mother is Guatemalan and descends from a long line of very petite women. My mother, along with her mother, her sister, and almost every female relative on her side of the family, has always been petite. My grandmother never made it past the height of 4’11.” My mother wears a size 4.5 shoe and has never enjoyed shoe shopping as a result. I have cousins in Guatemala whose waists are half the size of my own, after having children. Small boned, we say.
Size has always been a difficult concept in my family, especially when you’re me, with a gene pool smack dab in the middle of opposite sides. I have my mother’s facial structure and my father’s coloring. I’m 5’3”, taller than most of the women on my mom’s side and shorter than all the women on my dad’s. My shoe size is 7.5, a size my maternal grandmother used to call “big foot,” but three sizes smaller than any female foot in my paternal family tree. I’m considered petite for the average American woman, but in Guatemala I’m obese. For all the weight I’ve ever lost, I’ll always be 20 pounds heavier than my mom.
“How sad would it be?” I thought while our golf cart whizzed it’s way to the next hole.
“An entire lifetime spent hating the only body you have.”
A lot has changed since I silently begged my dad to tell me I was thin over bowls of pasta. I’ve lost weight only to gain it, I’ve exercised only to stop, I’ve dieted only to realize I love food. I’ve stunted the experience of living only to realize it was the only thing I was ever supposed to do.
Age brings physical proof that time is passing, that we are getting older. There’s an appreciation for the days of going to the doctors simply for an annual physical, days absent of monthly blood work or intimidating test results. There’s a sense of nostalgia related to a guaranteed clean bill of health, perfect cholesterol, or a time when stress wasn’t gnawing away beneath the flesh. We realize how simple it all was, to be young and healthy without effort, simply because we played and laughed and ate what our mothers fed us. We look at ourselves in the mirror and miss the version we were ten years ago, the version we failed to see until now.
As the sun set over the golf course and hews of orange trickled through the sky, I felt my legs beneath me, my heart in my chest, my feet on the grass. The bodies we’re given are the only ones we have. They are different in every way and powerful beyond comprehension. They do not bend to the will of meager minds like ours and the rules they adhere to are far superior to any demands we could make. They are required to inhale and exhale, every second of every day for decades, centuries for the lucky few. They beat without stopping, circulate without rest. When we’re sick they must fight and when we’re well they must maintain. Their reward is not vanity or pride, or acceptance in a physical world, ridiculous and impossible in its expectations. Their reward is simple. Their reward is life, for as long as we’ll allow.