I hate my legs and other stories

On body image issues, hating yourself and never feeling quite enough. Some thoughts can be triggering.

This is one of those things that I have wanted to write forever, but was avoiding at all costs. I think privacy is a beautiful thing and that over sharing with strangers online can sometimes get a bit too cringe. I also have terrible anxiety about what other people are going to say or think about what I write. But that’s not all of it. If you struggle with body image issues, then you know why — sometimes it’s just too hard to talk about it. I have hated my body for years and wasted countless hours and days picking apart every inch of skin, muscle and bone. First, I hated my boobs. They were too big, too saggy, didn’t fit right in any bra or bikini, and made me feel like I couldn’t wear all those nice tops and dresses without looking like I wanted some form of attention. Then, I hated my arms and my shoulders. I thought they looked too manly. And if that wasn’t enough, I hated my legs. I thought they looked disgusting in shorter pieces of clothing. Too big, too large, too fat. Horrible to look at. I still do to this day.

I remember being 18 years old when I first liked my body. I was emotionally drained after a terrible breakup. I had little to no appetite, skipped meals and barely ate anything. I was a dancer at that time and spent several hours everyday going over intense choreography. I wasn’t happy. But my waist was tiny. My arms were thin. My legs even more. People would look me in the eyes with a certain degree of pity and tell me that I looked too skinny. And as much as it hurts to admit, I loved it.

I grew up listening to women around me complain about how fat they looked and picking themselves (and each other) apart  — on TV, on magazines, and at home. “I don’t fit in those jeans anymore”, “I shouldn’t really eat that piece of cake, I’m on a diet”, “No, I’m not getting in the pool. My legs look horrible, haven’t you seen my cellulite?”. I had a hard time processing why they felt this way. To me, they were beautiful, elegant, graceful. It didn’t take much time for my brain to do the obvious math — if these women are fat, then what am I? If they look like that and I look like this, where does that leave me? And in a blink of an eye, I became one of them.

Looking back, it’s not hard to understand why many of us struggle with body image issues and have such a hard time liking ourselves as we are. We grew up believing that being (extremely) thin was an accolade, and skipping dessert was a sort of triumph. We were sold the idea that being (extremely) skinny was the ultimate life goal. Never mind being happy or healthy — what does the scale say? We were bombarded with images of tiny supermodels and pop stars with toxic headlines on the side, and led to believe that “putting on a few pounds” was a sign of laziness. If a woman was no longer a size 0, she had let herself go. Given up. No longer worthy or interesting. And if that wasn’t enough, we also had the extreme diets and even more extreme makeovers. The intense workouts that just made you feel worse and the 10 day meal plan to turn you into the best version of yourself. Whatever that means.

Despite all of this, there was a brief time when I was neutral towards my body. I didn’t think too much of it, which meant I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it, either. But at least I didn’t have any extreme feelings about it. That was nice. This was also a time when things seemed to be changing — but they weren’t, really. Even though we wanted to fiercely believe that the air was now clear of toxic discourse and behavior towards the female body, the truth is that we were still breathing it all in. Maybe it was more subtle, until it wasn’t anymore. The neutrality was gone, and the hate came back. Only this time it was worse.

When you struggle with body image issues, nothing is ever good enough. No matter how much you do (or don’t), you never feel satisfied, happy, or at peace. You set a certain expectation that is unreasonable and unattainable. You compare yourself to unhealthy  and unrealistic standards. You wish you could shrink yourself, make yourself smaller. You start your day looking in the mirror and hating yourself, and you go to bed crying because your legs looked fat in that photo that your friend posted on Instagram. You can’t take a compliment. You do things for the wrong reasons, not out of love or respect for your body and for yourself, but out of hate for everything it represents. You start to struggle with everything else, too. It’s an exhausting and draining thing that triggers a lot of complicated feelings and emotions, some of which you never had to deal with before. Some days you hardly even recognize yourself. And even though you know all of this is slowly killing you inside, you let yourself enjoy your deathbed.

When I went back to therapy this year to learn that I was on the verge of a depression, I had to, maybe for the first time in my life, admit that I hated myself. That I hated my body. That I sometimes wanted to disappear and leave my physical self. That despite working out everyday and trying to lead a healthy and balanced life, eating intuitively and not saying no when I feel like saying yes, I was never satisfied with the way I looked. That although everyone told me that I looked thin, maybe even too thin, I saw the opposite when I looked in the mirror. Despite living at war with my body for so long, saying those words out loud was a whole different story. It was horrible. But also liberating.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be at peace with my body. I don’t know if I’ll ever accept the way my body looks. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to change the toxic thought of “my legs are not skinny enough, I hate my legs” to the much nicer “my legs allow me to walk, run, dance, have fun. They take me where I want to go. I love my legs”. Love might be an extreme feeling for someone like me, so I’ll happily settle for some degree of appreciation or acceptance. What I do know is that it takes a lot of healing. It also takes a lot of courage and vulnerability. And it will take a lot of time. But maybe one day, who knows, those other stories I tell myself won’t be so bad.