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We recently welcomed a group of new clients into my brand new full-service women’s health practice (name: pending. It’s *that* new.)
As part of the onboarding process, I ask a few simple questions to gauge where women are at with their body image, self-perception & confidence— my area of expertise within the practice.
I intentionally leave these questions vague and open ended, because they tend to invite more discussion, or are at least met with a follow-up “clarification question,” which is always, in itself, telling.
“How would you describe your current body image?” I ask.
“I think it’s pretty good,” a woman responds, “I mean, I hardly ever think about my body to be honest,” she adds with a laugh.
And it’s true: that is funny.
That we can be grown @ss adult women, dressing our bodies, feeding our bodies, potentially sharing our bodies with a partner, and doing our best to take care of said bodies… yet “hardly ever” thinking about our bodies.
And deeming that a good thing!
And listen— I get it.
In the most well-intentioned efforts to get women to stop thinking about their bodies so much, society has sort of pushed us too far the other way and told us, “Just don’t think about them at all! Eff it. There are far more important things than the way your body looks.”
And that is 150% true.
There are infinitely more important things about you than the size of your waist or the visibility of your pores.
But as is the case with most things, either end of the spectrum is dangerous:
thinking about our bodies too much, and thinking about them too little.
If your relationship with your body were an external relationship with a friend, would it be a sign of a thriving relationship if you said, “I honestly never think about her at all!”
(If yes, we probably wouldn’t be good friends 😅.)
In the very-beautiful-but-eventually-unhelpful push to get women to stop caring so much about their bodies (and I’m behind these initial efforts because you kinda have to be “extreme” with movements in the beginning in order to get people to pay attention) we forgot to consider that there exists a space between thinking about your body too much and thinking about it too little.
And that space looks different for every woman, but it’s where we each need to discover and live if we want to have a truly thriving relationship with our bodies.
Why does a “thriving” relationship with your body even matter?
Think of it like this:
you know how you feel when you roll up somewhere in an outfit you love vs one you’re not really feeling?
That’s the difference.
That’s why it matters.
When you truly love, respect and become friends with the body you have, you act differently.
You speak differently.
You enjoy things differently.
You care for yourself differently.
You initiate things differently.
You relax differently.
You move differently.
You exist differently.
Ok that was weird! Had to reauthenticate. Love this & totally agree!!