*This subject is near and dear to my heart and comes with a major trigger warning for anyone who might be sensitive to the mention of eating disorders.*
This morning I was communicating with a friend via Snapchat, and she mentioned to me that she is trying to feel more acceptance towards her skin and go makeup-free at least a few days each week at work. I was 1. very proud of her and 2. very happy/honored that she chose to share this decision with me.
I have always been an appreciator of the “bare face” look. In high school and early college, I donned the bare face almost exclusively for the sake of convenience. While I have been known to be slow-moving in the morning, I found that forgoing makeup and choosing not to do anything to my hair beyond brushing it saved me a lot of time. At that time in my life, I would consider myself a “low-maintenance girl,” and while that is still true, it only presents half of the picture. The other half of the truth is that I was just blessed with “good skin.”
Until I wasn’t.
Luckily or unluckily depending on how you look at it, puberty did not do much to me physically. This is not to say that my periods and premenstrual dysphoric disorder were not sent straight out of hell but rather that my physical body did not seem to change too much. I remained small. I had a clear complexion. Considering that Western society currently pushes for women to be as skinny and hairless as children, this all worked out to my benefit.
Thennnnn college happened. There is a phenomenon that I have seen women discuss online that I strongly feel I experienced myself: second puberty. Think about the slowing down of your metabolism that happens in your 20s and 30s. Think about–in my case–adult acne.
Acne is no fun to have at any age, but I am disposed to think that adult acne is especially un-fun because everyone thinks that it is something that you leave behind in your teenage years. Untrue! My skin woes began to pop up when I was pushing 20, and let me tell you, my confidence took a nosedive. If you have never cried simply from looking at your face in the mirror, then I applaud you, but I do not relate. At this point in time, I had been dating my fiancé for just under a year, and one of my favorite phrases to throw at him was, “Well, at least I know you like me for my personality.”
What a nice and very mentally healthy thought to have, Alexa!
The kicker of this all is that I consider myself a feminist, a strong supporter of women’s equality across all domains. If men are allowed to go without makeup and show their natural skin, “defects” and all, at work, special events, and on the daily, shouldn’t that be the case for women as well? Aren’t our minds, hearts, and actions infinitely more important than our perceived attractiveness? I believe all of these things in theory but found that they were very difficult to apply to my own life and self-perception. This, I am finding, is a very common problem to have.
Last August I chose to come off hormonal birth control after using “the pill” for approximately nine years. My decision was motivated by a number of factors that don’t really hold any relevance to this post, but what is relevant here is the big bad post birth control syndrome. Everyone’s experiences with medication, birth control or other, are different, but my experience dropping birth control included an influx of mood swings, acne, and weight gain. That was certainly not a fun combination. And yet, during the six months between August 2022 and February 2023, when I was in my heaviest and most acne-prone body, I felt more self-assured than ever.
The reason for my self-assuredness is actually very funny and ironic in my opinion. Last summer, when I was working at a residential facility for teen girls, I was asked to lead a therapy group on the subject of self-esteem. Me, the person who had told Ian “at least I know you like me for my personality” only three years previously. Me, the person who had cried when I looked in the mirror. Me, the girl who had grown up surrounded by mirrors in dance class, low-key repulsed by my growing body in an extracurricular that sticks prepubescent girls into revealing two-piece costumes and fake eyelashes (my disdain for dance class is a topic for another day).
What????
Working with teen girls for much of the past year of my life was, although occasionally traumatizing, good for “healing my inner child” in a lot of different ways. Self-esteem group is a good example. Teenage girls will find anything and everything to hate about themselves, and discussing this in a group setting provided a good opportunity for the girls to realize that they are not alone and that we are often so much harder on ourselves than anyone else would be towards us.
While I was leading self-esteem group, I was also seeing a client who did lots of self-esteem work in our individual sessions as well. All of my former clients hold a special place in my heart, but I clicked with some of them more so than others, as is the case for all clinicians across the board. This client loved to read and write. I used a lot of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with clients, and this client created a trauma narrative in the form of a poetry book. She had also experienced severe acne since she was eight years old and shared that I was the first person with whom she felt comfortable discussing the impact her acne had had on her self-esteem.
Y’all, this client had been through indescribable trauma. Indescribable. And yet she cited concern about her physical appearance as having the same impact on her mental health as being physically and sexually abused and sent to nine placements in two years, including a juvenile detention center where she was denied medical care.
The way we view ourselves and our bodies does not only harm us. There is always someone else watching, and the way we talk about our bodies often becomes the inner voice for all of the little girls in our lives. I read a lot of statistics from the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) while preparing to write this post, but the one that I found most jarring is as follows:
By age 6!!!!!
The question, after reading this jarring statistic and any of the innumerable others at the link provided, is what can we do to improve little girls’ (and grown women’s) self-image? The answer is anything but simple.
So much in our society comes back to money, and there is a thriving beauty industry that capitalizes on women hating themselves. We are sold foundation and concealer to hide our skin. Exercise programs and calorie-counting apps to lower our weights. Hair dye to hide any gray. Retinol to smooth over any wrinkles. Plastic surgery to alter our features.
There is a song that one of the clients in my self-esteem group shared with me that I think does a very good job illustrating the way the beauty industry makes money off women’s insecurities. At this point, I have heard this song so many times that it grates against my ears, but the message is still important. The song is called Victoria’s Secret, and it was written by the artist Jax. Here are some of the lyrics:
“God, I wish somebody would've told me
When I was younger that all bodies aren't the same
Photoshop itty bitty models on magazine covers
Told me I was overweight
I stopped eating, what a bummer
Can't have carbs in a hot girl summer
If I could go back and tell myself
When I was younger, I'd say, "Psst
I know Victoria's secret
And, girl, you wouldn't believe
She's an old man who lives in Ohio
Making money off of girls like me"
Cashin' in on body issues
Sellin' skin and bones with big boobs
I know Victoria's secret
She was made up by a dude”
Powerful statements, right?
We also can’t deny the impact that entertainment media has on our self-esteem and as a society. I remember learning about a concept called the “halo effect” in my college social psychology course and thinking, well that makes a lot of sense. Basically, the halo effect occurs when we think that traditionally beautiful people possess other positive attributes too, such as kindness, intelligence, etc. I love a good Disney movie, but Disney as a company LOVES the halo effect. Think about the fact that all of the “good guys” in Disney movies are typically classically beautiful, whereas the “bad guys” can have features that we deem ugly. Can you imagine the impact that this can have on children with those features?
(As a side note, my niece has been super into Shrek recently, and I am all about it. Shrek is a beautiful antithesis to the halo effect.)
Over the past two decades, it seems like advertisements and sources of entertainment have gradually moved to include more inclusive and more “real” subjects and protagonists, but we still have a long way to go to undo the negative conditioning and objectification of women that often goes along with the media and the beauty industry. In the meantime, we can all work on ourselves.
Something that has been integral to me in my journey of relearning self-acceptance and self-love is the concept of “body neutrality.” Body positivity, for those who don’t know, is a movement that was created by Black, queer, and fat women who found themselves underrepresented and overtly shamed in Western society. This is not my area of expertise, but there are lots of good, important resources on the subject. (This article from PubMed is a great primer.) Body neutrality, on the other hand, is a movement that encourages us not to attach positive or negative thoughts to our bodies at all but rather to think of them as the vehicles that carry us through life.
I love love love body neutrality and have worked very hard to incorporate it into my own life by focusing more on who I am as a person–who I am at my soul–rather than what I look like.
Viewing my body as “my home” has also helped me to develop a healthy relationship with exercise. I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but going to the gym is something I have come to look forward to. The gym is often a place where people go because they hate their bodies, but what if we all came to view it as somewhere we go because we love our bodies? These days, when I am running or walking or participating in strength-building exercises, I remind myself that what I am doing will keep me happy and healthy (we love endorphins!) and try to practice gratitude that I have a body that allows me to do these things.
I think I could write on this topic for hours and hours and hours, but at nearly 2,000 words it feels like it is about time for me to wrap it up. I leave you all with a few questions that I would encourage you to ask yourselves next time you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see.
Who/what taught me to feel this way?
Who profits when I feel this way?
What would I tell a friend/loved one who feels this way?
Until next time,
Alexa
Some pictures, as usual:
Doing yoga has really helped me to work towards viewing my body as my home. Doing yoga with cats around is a challenge.
Reading Beyond Beautiful by Anuschka Rees also really helped me along my journey to body neutrality. I also used some of the questions and “toolboxes” in here in my self-esteem therapy group.
Here’s a nice little illustration from Beyond Beautiful.
Body neutrality has been instrumental to me as well! I frequently think of the phrase "clothes are meant to fit me, I am not meant to fit them" when thinking about my body and the feelings I hold towards it. A neutral approach to our flesh prisons is a difficult thing, but your words and thoughts on this are as always, insightful, and feel like a warm hug.