I've always struggled with my body. I have memories as young as 7 or 8 where I was conscious of my body existing in space and the burden it posed.
I just recently rewatched some videos I made with friends in high school and marveled at how slender I was, and remembered how I thought I was too big then. I wondered what that me would think if she saw current me, whether she knew it was her future or if she just thought it was a stranger.
But I feel sexier now than I have at any of my smaller waist sizes or lower weights! Or at least, sometimes I do. But then there are new parts of me I've had to learn to love:
Like the belly I've let hang in this photo based on a famous painting by Édouard Manet.
Or the fold in my back, the roundness of my thigh, the fullness of my breast in this photo of myself that I somehow, despite it all, actually find quite beautiful.
Or the dimples in my cheeks that only recently showed up. I know they must come from lines deepening with age and more squish in my face, so you'd think I would resent it but look how cute???
This is all very incoherent. I used to be a writer but then I dropped out of my MFA program and stayed in a hospital for a while and I haven't been able to write since then. But I've been able to like how I look, and that's some sort of progress.
As a 27 year old suburban upper middle class white woman of average weight who is literally paid to be attractive, it feels downright stupid to be writing about this, or even feeling it.
I don't know how to write anymore. Tell me you think my dimples and folds and bulges and belly are beautiful.
