Three Cheers For My Weird Body

Tony Horton, I wish I knew how to quit you.

After some time away from my boyfriend, we are again together for a round of rolling on the floor and grunting, and finding strange and unsurpassable reasons to press the pause button. This time, I'm doing the Lean program, which focuses a bit more of core, cardio, and yoga, rather than bulky muscle. I kind of like having bulky muscle, but I'm trying to slim down a little from the winter weight I've been slowly accumulating like periwinkles under a dock since last winter when I dislocated my shoulder. Sure, I've been kickboxing, and raced bikes, and run the stairs (not as often as I should, at least this winter). But I feel all-over rather soft and doughy, rather than the animal body I felt when I was in the throws of P90X, especially the first go around.

Don't be fooled, though, kind readers. the Lean is still strengthening and muscle-building. Today's Core Synergistics had me doing probably 200 push-ups in varied forms (all harder and more complicated than the original, I promise you that). My measly 8-lb. weights began to feel heavy in some of the exercises. "But Carolyne," you may be saying, "you're such a weakling! You've said so yourself!" And you may be right, but from my perspective I'm still strong, I'm just a whole lot of other things as well.

This will be a good transition (as good as I'm willing to give you, anyway) for the other thing I've been thinking about lately. Modcloth did a great photo shoot recently that used their own employees to model their bathing suits. A lot of the deserved feedback resound of women feeling like their bodies were finally represented. It's important to have representation in photographs that are selling clothes — how will I know how this will look on me? (It looks great, by the way.) But it made me think about representation and my own perspectives on my body. I don't think my body can be represented. I'm awkward, I wear a 32-long pant leg and a small shirt, lengthwise. I'm muscly in some areas (namely my limbs) and doughy in others (this vague middle area). I love my body. I love what is can do, I love that it's mine and that no one really looks like me. I've earned every cell of fat or muscle, each pint of beer at the pub with friends or pint of ice cream at home alone, each "one more" run up the 36 flights of the Cathedral of Learning, each long way home on my bike or decision to run rather than walk through the park. It's all me, all mine.

The things I wish were different about my body aren't things that have to do with aesthetics. I wish my right side didn't light up in the dank Pittsburgh winter from all the times I've fallen on that side. I wish my epidermis wasn't numb, that I knew what this rash was that's all over my shoulders, neck, and chest, and that I still had as much energy as I did when I was 20. Oh well.

Even as a kid I didn't really judge myself, and I know I'm lucky for that. I had an older sister who was half my size and couldn't help but remind me of that all the time. But I'm lucky to have my parents, who made it a point to teach me that my sister and I couldn't be compared. I was heavier than my sister, but taller, different, my own person. And that was a great thing. It is a great thing. I still have a sister who is half my size, and I still love her and look up to her as she looks up to me (literally, because she's tiny.).

In fifth grade, a visitor came to class and asked us to each write down something we didn't like about ourselves. I couldn't think of anything, little brat that I was, so I put my eye color. My dad and I have always been a lot alike, but his eyes are blue and mine are brown and turn green when I'm upset. It doesn't bother me, but it was something that, sure, it could be changed I guess. A girl in my class, whose name I absolutely remember but I'll save her this memory, told me she could think of a lot of things she'd change about me. I don't remember whether she told me what they were, and certainly don't remember what I thought they might be, if anything. Why think about those things? I thought. I still think that, unless I buy a dress that I think will be my size and fit right because it fit the model, and the model looks nothing like me.

I feel the need to give this disclaimer in talking about doing the Lean program because I don't think people should feel bad in their bodies ever, unless there is something actually wrong that needs to be addressed. Do you feel bad because your appendix is about to burst? Get thee to a doctor! Do you feel bad because a waitress gave you a once over when you ordered fries with your burger? That sounds like a whole lot of her problem. But I like how I felt, on a physical level, when I was more fit. I liked feeling like a mammal, each muscle working towards a purpose of supporting another muscle, to propel my body forward for even the most basic actions. I didn't notice the physical change until I saw photos later, or until I started gaining some of that fat back (which I had sort of missed anyway).

I agree with the need for more representation, with the idea that having models all look the same is very dangerous because people are not built the same and will never achieve those beauty standards. But the word is Model. They are modeling clothes to show what they look like. It's helpful to have the models show what the clothes may actually look like on a variety of bodies, but don't take it as a representation of your own validity if you don't see yourself up there. You are your own body, my precious and beautiful reader. If you are tiny like my sister or muscular like me, if you are a feather or a whole hawk, if you have curves on curves on curves or are as linear as the Kansas horizon. It's your body. It isn't you, but it's your body. Learn it, love it, accept that it is probably weird and un-replicable. Now go out and make it do whatever it is that it does best.