I am 41 years old. I have given birth to and nursed four children. This is the heaviest non-pregnant I’ve ever been in my life. I sometimes look at photos of myself from 15 and 20 years ago and pine for what I used to look like: thin, lean and angular, flat of stomach. It’s so true, that old saying, that youth is wasted on the young. I surely didn’t appreciate the body I had then. I didn’t even recognize that it was anything anyone might be envious of. It certainly never occurred to me that one day, several years into the future, I would look back at my younger, leaner self, and wish I still looked that way. It wasn’t anything I aspired to or put work into – it’s just the way my body wanted to be.
But now, time and eight pregnancies have changed this body forever. There are bulges and rolls where there used to be flat valleys. Certain areas are beginning to head a little southward. I have a belly covered with baggy skin from having been stretched out so far, so many times. My abdominal muscles are like pudding and just can’t hold it all in anymore.
When I glimpse myself in the mirror, unclothed, I quickly look away. I feel embarrassed about my body, and mildly contemptuous. Sometimes I fantasize about having plastic surgery – a little liposuction here, a little tuck there, and a little lift here.
Why do I do this to myself? If it were a friend saying all these exact things to me, I would say to her, “You’re beautiful. Look at all the amazing things your body has done. I am in awe of you.” But I know that I am not alone in these feelings. So many of my friends also have poor feelings about their mother-bodies. We lament and make jokes about the stretch marks and saggy boobs and flabby bellies. Why can’t we embrace who and what we’ve become? Why don’t we see the beauty in ourselves, in those very marks of motherhood, in what our bodies have accomplished? Why do we feel embarrassed and ashamed?
I have long been of the opinion that pregnant women are truly beautiful. Personally, I have never felt more beautiful, more complete, than when I have been pregnant. The rounder and fuller I grew, the more fulfilled and happy in my own skin I felt. I loved wearing form-fitting clothes when I was pregnant. I was not afraid to bare my belly.
I still remember after my first baby was born, taking a shower for the first time after giving birth, and being a little horrified at the shriveled, wrinkled little mound my belly had suddenly become. And I think ever since then I’ve been struggling with my body self-image – trying to make peace with what my body has become, and mostly failing. How can I love the body that is accomplishing something magical, and hate the body that is left in the wake of the magic?
Where does this notion come from, that youth and physical perfection are goals worthy of self-torment? Why do we mothers believe that firmer and harder is better, more beautiful? Can you imagine if we instilled in our children that physical perfection that holding onto youth, rather than being healthy and happy, is what they should strive for?
I am 41 years old and my body isn’t what it used to be. But it’s done some amazing things, and I would like to learn to take pride in that – in the physical evidence of what this body has accomplished.
Wow, that’s something to think about, isn’t it? Kind of makes you wonder at what point in our lives our priorities change so drastically. I know that it would break my heart to see my daughters develop this sense of self-loathing someday. I want them to believe in their beauty at every age.
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