"Worry about loving yourself instead of loving the idea of other people loving you." - Kathleen's Story Part 1

I met Kathleen last year during one of my first pole transitions classes. I kinda sucked, she definitely didn't. I admired her fearlessness and confidence on the pole, and I looked forward to the day that I could exude the same. I asked for volunteers for a body positive charity project I am currently putting together and Kathleen eagerly stepped up. I was thrilled to have her and even more excited when she agreed to do a series of blog posts about her self-love journey. I relate to her first post and I hope some of you will too. Many thanks to Kathleen for sharing this side of herself with us.

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"Worry about loving yourself instead of loving the idea of other people loving you." - Kathleen's Story Part 1

Body image and self-esteem are funny things. It’s odd that it’s possible to love the big picture—to love yourself—but to still have parts of yourself that you’re uncomfortable with, or in some case even things that you hate. For me, it’s been a long process even to get to the point of loving myself in a broader sense.  I’ve always been seen as a little odd.  I’ve struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember, and whether I like it or not, my sense of self has been strongly impacted by these things. In school, I was made fun of for my weight. In middle and high school, I often was the biggest girl in my group of friends, relegated to shopping at stores targeted at grown women rather than teenage girls. I was demoralized by my lack of athleticism and inability to keep up with friends, classmates, and the expectations of gym class. For a long time, these things resulted in an intensely negative body image.

Me in high school (after my senior prom—hence the fancy hair and necklace with sweats!)

Things have changed a lot since then, and though I’ve learned to love myself fiercely—to own my oddness, and to appreciate my body for what it does for me and what it allows me to do—like most people, I still have a laundry list of things that I’m self-conscious about. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series of posts, each looking at one thing about my body that I still struggle to love and one thing that has contributed to my positive self-image—whether it’s a part of my body I’m particularly proud of or an activity that has helped me learn to love myself. I hope that by sharing some part of this constant journey, reconciling these disparate halves will become just a little bit easier. 

Struggle #1 – The Paunch

I’m going to start with one of the areas that most commonly causes insecurity: the belly. For me, it’s the lower tummy paunch in particular that I am self-conscious of, and that I do my best to keep contained under jeans (no super low rise here!) and spandex-laden workout clothes.

The dreaded paunch is visible from all angles

Even in pole class, where I’m generally comfortable in the booty shorts and sports bras that are standard fare, I often find myself looking in the mirror and tugging at the waistband of my shorts, trying to position it just so in order to flatten out and hide as much evidence of the paunch as possible, even though much of the rest of my body is on display.

I’ve done sit-ups and crunches of all sorts, and have made my abs sore more times than I can count in an effort to flatten my stomach (and yes, I know you can’t target fat loss that way, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried­) and obviously it has never succeeded the way I’d wanted it to. Though I have lost some of the belly I once had, I still dream of having that perfectly flat stomach that has been idealized in movies and magazines. I still stare in the mirror, sucking in my stomach and poking at pudge that I find there, uncomfortable with the idea of what other people think of my stomach, even though I now realize that most people probably do not notice or care.

Even then, I find my stomach hard to come to terms with. It’s easier to find benefits for the size of other parts of my body: my sizeable butt looks fantastic in jeans, and the extra weight on my thighs helps with the grip necessary to land many pole moves. But my stomach still mostly feels like unnecessary weight, just hanging out there and disrupting the line of my shirt or spilling over the waistband of my pants, and I haven’t quite figured out how to love it yet, though I hold out hope that one day I will.

Success #1 – Exercise

I know, I know, exercise is an obvious choice, but it has made a huge difference in my life and in how I look at myself. Exercise has not come easily to me. In high school, I hated gym class, and I’ve always struggled to find physical activities that I enjoy, though I’ve tried everything from yoga to softball, and martial arts to dance. In part, my lack of engagement has always been fear of judgement or failure, but it was also a matter of finding what inspires me. In my case, that’s pole dancing.

I feel most at home in my body when upside down.

I first tried pole on a whim—I’d moved home again after university and was unemployed and bored, looking for something new to try. I signed up for a 6 week session of beginner pole dancing, and even though I struggled with many of the moves even in those basic classes, I fell in love with it almost instantly.

These days I pole dance about three days a week, and on days when I don’t go to pole, I often do yoga with my roommate or go to GoodLife with coworkers. For someone who so long struggled to find the motivation to work out at all, it is a strange twist that somewhere along the way, going to the gym has become a routine and a refuge in many ways. I become restless when I go too many days without working out, I find that dancing it out in pole class or working up a sweat on an elliptical helps burn off frustration, and after working out I feel stronger and more in tune with my body.

I once thought that losing weight would be what made me love my body, and I’m not going to lie and say that the weight loss and overall toning that has happened as a result of exercise hasn’t helped my body image, because it undoubtedly has. It has helped me feel more comfortable in my body, and allowed me to feel less like I stand out only due to my size, which I often felt in high school. But the reality is that it is the other effects of exercise that I have found to make the most difference in my body image: exercise has helped me to realize my strengths—quite literally—and given me opportunities to work on my weaknesses and to overcome long-held fears about failure and not being able to keep up. It is these things, much more than weight loss, that have helped me to appreciate what my body can do and to keep pushing myself to improve.