Essay: Woman in the mirror
On the tyranny of self-love
“Body my house / my horse my hound / what will I do when you are fallen.” —May Swenson
When I was 8 years old, I fell face first into a concrete wall and cracked my front tooth clean in half. The pain in my body was so bright, it glittered. Because we lived overseas at the time, it was years before I saw a proper dentist. I grew up smiling lopsided. Learning to laugh, closed-mouthed.
I was pudgy as a kid too. In 7th grade, my grandmother promised me five dollars for every five pounds I lost. I began counting calories, waking before my parents to do recorded Tae Bo workouts in the living room. By 13, I’d developed severe acid reflux from going long periods without eating. At lunch, I’d watch Shelby, my skinny friend, retreat to the bathroom and purge. She’d return smiling, flick her long brown hair and shrug like it was all part of this job called being a girl.
When we returned from living abroad, I perpetually began to study other girls. I envied and loved them simultaneously. Their tan volleyball legs, American childhoods, and easy belonging. The way they could laugh, open mouthed, with all their teeth showing. I watched their American faces and practiced their American sayings. Talk to the hand, the face is busy, I’d mouth silently to the bathroom mirror.
By the time I was 14, my chub had rounded into full hips and a large ass that felt perpetually vulgar. As if my body was cursing without permission. On the street, pickups began to loiter behind me, sometimes passing then doubling back. Men leaned out of the driver’s side panting with wicked excitement, tongues between their fingers. Threats, even silent ones, are easily understood.
In highschool, I weighed 137 lbs which, at the time, seemed monstrous. Once, after walking home late, I told my mother not to worry about me being abducted because I wasn’t pretty enough. I said it in that casually cruel way sixteen-year-olds suddenly adopt. The first time I was groped by a boy in class, I was both mortified and grateful.
By age 25, I could tell you exactly how many grams of fats, proteins, and carbs are in an egg, a banana, a four ounce cut of wild salmon. I kept food logs and added up all the calories in neat columns marked good days and bad days.
I don’t remember the first man who told me I was beautiful, but I knew it was because he wanted sex. That this phrase was offered as a kind of password to unlock a door. It wasn’t really a compliment but more a calculated request. The first time I was assaulted, I froze. The second time, I learned how to neatly exit my body. To climb out my own throat.
The term hip dips made the rounds on social media, and I suddenly discovered them on my body. Someone mentioned “dilated pores,” and I then spent hours in painful microneedling to disappear them. A man on the internet once told me I had a “horrifying tooth to gum ratio,” and now, I use botox to relax the muscles that control my smile.
I’ve lived my life continuously viewing my body as if it was a leaking boat. As if I was only one small repair away from finally being solved. One tweak away from finally Being Good.
In the last year, I lost 30 pounds. And I got veneers on my front teeth so they would finally match. This has made smiling easier and jean shopping less awful, but rather disappointingly, it didn’t heal my attachment style, fix my social anxiety, or cure my depression.
To be honest, I’m tired of folks who preach body love with the tyranny of zealots. I have no interest in shaming women for trying to survive or for being baffled by the cost of being alive. I really hate the church of self-love mostly because it never really offers anything helpful. It just yells in wingdings. All caps. No instructions.
I once had a therapist tell me (and I quote): to go home, get naked, stand in front of the mirror and find some way to love myself. So that night, I undressed in front of the mirror. And for many nights after. And some nights, I still do. And at 38, I’m not really sure I’ve learned to “love” my body. But I am learning not to hate it. This creaky jewel box. This tired lighthouse.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I like myself, but therapy and psychedelics and erotic dance class and making love to men who actually love me makes me feel less like slicing my heart out and feeding it to rats on the subway. And I don’t know if I’m at home in my body, but I certainly am no longer filing for eviction.
Last night, I sat in the hot tub with my ex-partner. We squint at each other in the steam, between us the odd intimacy of once-lovers. We’re twin scars that sit just above the other’s rib. There’s something so rare and lucky about being loved by this man who loved me first in a different body. The one with hip dips. My gummy smile, ruthless bite, and semi-American heart. Before botox and weight loss. The one who loves me still. With all my crooked unbelonging.
You’re beautiful, he says. The sentence always stings, but this time, I don’t rush to block it. There is nothing he wants. Nothing he is asking. So the words just sit there in the air between us almost long enough to land.
November’s Field Assignment: This tired lighthouse 🌊
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