More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament

by Lexie Kite

We learn that the most important thing about women is their bodies, and the most important

We see women, including ourselves, as bodies first and people second.

Regardless of how the definition of beauty expands, it’s still being reinforced as the most important thing about us.

Positive body image isn’t believing your body looks good; it is knowing your body is good, regardless of how it looks.

more than a body to be looked at, judged, consumed, and discarded.

Beauty can be fun and a creative expression.

more trying to squeeze ourselves into the narrow molds of our cultural beauty ideals, and no more trying to stretch our cultural beauty ideals to fit all of us. No more

Let’s imagine something better than beautiful for ourselves and everyone we love.

We all need to be aware of the significant backlash faced by many people who don’t fit neatly into the stereotypical male/female binary or otherwise break gender norms in how they appear.

we acknowledge our privileges in a world that values whiteness, heterosexuality, middle-class status, and able bodies.

you are more—more than beautiful, more than parts in need of fixing, more than an object to be looked at and evaluated.

When how you looked had no influence on whether or not you joined in a game with friends or talked to someone or ran down the sidewalk?

you might experience longing, homesickness, regret, envy, or sadness for what once was and what might have been. These feelings are an important step in your body image path, so don’t push them aside or numb them away. Let these emotions call out to you, inviting you down a liberating path back home to yourself.

women’s bodies in particular are prized above all other aspects of their humanity and all of the ways women are taught they should look and act in order to be accepted, respected, valued, or desired.

How did you first wade into the sea of objectification?

Was it noticing which girls in your class got the most attention?

We forget about our carefree inner children, whose lives and hopes and imaginations weren’t distracted or limited by envisioning how they looked, and learn to cope with the demands of our new environment.

meaning it is perfectly normal for girls and women to feel bad about our bodies most of the time.

If we do see the discomfort in our self-objectification and shame, we write it off as just another part of womanhood.

You might not even consider body shame and appearance fixation to be problems because they are so seemingly justified—after all, if you could simply muster enough self-control to abstain from sugar or carbs, or stick to your workout regimen, or not sleep on your side and not talk with so much expression to avoid all those wrinkles, you wouldn’t have to worry about looking and feeling so awful.

You become convinced that if you could just get it together, your body image would stay confidently afloat without the constant anxiety and exhaustion of failing on your diet or restarting a cardio routine after an indulgent vacation or investing the time and

You hate your body instead of hating the expectation that your body fit a certain mold. You hate your weakness and lack of discipline instead of hating the profit-driven solutions that are designed to require a lifetime of purchases but still leave you short of perpetually out of reach ideals.

dehumanization of women and girls that contributes to widespread violence and abuse.

Some people—especially some men—are privileged to rarely be defined by or primarily valued for their appearance.

they cause you to feel self-doubt, shame, fear, or anxiety about your body, and they demand your attention and response.

When feeling beautiful and desirable remains the only solution we can imagine to the large-scale problem of body image concerns, of course we are left feeling worthless and deserving of pain.

When the “fixing” doesn’t do the trick or your flaws seem too overwhelming to even try to change them, you might simply sit it out. You hide by opting out of anything that would require being seen.

my legs, seeing my eyes ringed by goggle lines, the

mentally making plans to fix ourselves so we could “qualify” to go next time.

The resiliency model developed by Richardson illustrates three possible responses to deal with disruptions: reintegration with loss (or what we call sinking into shame), reintegration back to the comfort zone (or clinging to your comfort zone by hiding and fixing), and resilient reintegration (rising with resilience).

women get stuck being evaluated by their appearance and then become their own evaluators, with few practical solutions to interrupt or end that cycle.

prioritize your own first-person perspective on your incredible body—regardless of how you look or how you or others feel about your looks.

reconnecting with your life’s power, purpose, and possibilities outside the framework of looking or feeling beautiful is what will make the difference between adapting to an uncomfortable environment and fighting for a better one.

shrinking bodies or clearer skin

instead. I don’t watch myself live—I live. I rise with body image resilience.

confront shame rather than simply adapt to it and let it be your new normal.

in a culture that values our bodies first and our humanity second.

about 12 percent of women in our research responded by describing what their bodies could do, the things they had accomplished and experienced with their bodies, and how they felt within their bodies, all without prioritizing an outsider’s perspective to simply describe their appearances. Those same women who didn’t respond

My purpose is to bring light into this world, not to decorate it.”

Girls get the message, from very early on, that what’s most important is how they look, that their value, their worth depends on that. Boys get the message that this is what’s important about girls. We get it from advertising, we get it from films, we get it from television shows, video games—everywhere we look. So no matter what else a woman does, no matter what else her achievements, her value still depends on how she looks. —Jean Kilbourne, creator of the film series Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women

where X marks the spot at the destination of “feel beautiful.”

you’ve got a good idea of what media’s definition of an attractive, healthy, “normal” woman looks like, and it likely shows up in your own body image map.

there is no shortage of options promising you happiness, comfort, love, and success, as long as you stick to the path or pay the right people to guide you.

that thinness is paramount, leading women’s primary role is looking hot and being pursued by men, and women and girls who aren’t conventionally attractive are the funny sidekicks, supportive friends, ghastly villains, or the butt of the jokes, but never qualified to be the star or love interest.

making our bodies into something to be seen, not sensed.

Our body images moved from a part of our holistic self-perceptions, experienced from inside ourselves, to a separate, external, one-dimensional vision.

we sought body confidence and the kind of thinness and beauty that would make us worthy of love and success—and what we found was almost always nothing. A mirage. A lie. We followed those maps as if our lives depended on it, but even our most dutiful attempts at clearing up our skin or buying the coolest name-brand clothes or losing weight didn’t yield the results we were promised.

my joy was wrapped up in the hopeful anticipation that I was shrinking my little-girl body and it would be visible to the other kids at school.

we pursue idealized destinations of beauty/thinness/happiness that are advertised to us as totally reachable if we just implement simple beauty and “health” solutions, but those destinations always prove to be mirages that move farther and farther into the horizon the closer we get to them.

our happiness, health, power, and relationship status depend upon our consumability—how good we look to others and how irresistibly sexy we are.