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How do you feel about your body?

 
  

Page: (1)23

 
 
illmatic
14:37 / 15.08.05
This is one of those threads that falls between Headshop and Temple, really, perhaps with a bias towards the latter as I'm more interested in people's experience. I thought I'd put it in here as, hopefully, it'll get a wider range of responses.

I'm interested in what people's emotional feelings and attitudes are towards their bodies, and if they've every done anything to change these, either on a cognitive level - changing self-perception and attitudes, or in an actual way - diet, exercise, surgery even.

In what way do these feelings add to or detract from your self-estemm? To what degree do media images and sterotypes of what's acceptable and desireable detract from, or strengthen, these feelings?

Are we even body conscious at all, floating out here in the cyberspace aether?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
15:05 / 15.08.05
A bit sick of being a relatively fat teenager, and inspired by the example of Haile Selassie, who once said that having more than one meal a day turns you into a slave, (because on one level or another you're always thinking about food,) I pretty much stopped eating on a regular basis at around about the time of my eighteenth birthday. I wouldn't recommend this to everyone exactly, but it did work, and having never really got back into the three, two or sometimes even one meal a day thing since, I hardly even think about 'the body' at all any more, except as some kind of cheap, mobile pedal bin that gets 'the mind' around town.
 
 
Lugue
15:19 / 15.08.05
Oh, it's all big and awkward, and in my case, the teenness of it all makes it all the more amplified. You see, big feet, big hands, big nose, big eyes, big lips; there's a sort of freakish (well, from a typically self-deprecating point of view, at least, *sniffles*) nature to it all that makes just looking at it bizarre and not that much fun.

And besides the agressive extremities, I'm healthily aware of (what I see as) my unatractiveness, both resulting from inevitable (pretty generalized, I think) insecurity and some offhand comments I've heard (of course, the compliments aren't registered; how could the imploding victim live with them?). Essentially, because it comes down to it being, well, mine, and in a way, the vague notion that it's not quite done yet, what with the twenties still a few years far, I generally feel that... it really doesn't matter, even if I don't trust the thing.

And as to media portrayals of what-have-you's, I think that I (as a good deal of the people I know) am sort of detached enough from The Hottness That Is Trully Approved for it to make much of a difference; it hardly works by comparison.

But then, again. I'm one of the young'uns with the strange changes, yes.

(OMG LIKE FIRSTIES, GONE TOTALLY vaguely ANECDOTAL ON LITH LIKE OMG!)
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
15:31 / 15.08.05
Much like Alex, I went the whole "not eating" route (which did in itself become something of a problem for a while). Now I just have to get rid of the beer gut which really doesn't look good on a skinny fuck like myself, and maybe chuck in a few more bits of metal for decoration, and I'll be reasonably happy.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
15:34 / 15.08.05
I've never trusted my body or rather my brain consistently gets in its way. I don't trust my body to cartwheel but I suspect that's my brain being frightened of falling. For years I was very uncoordinated and I can't do stupid things like the grapevine move in aerobics- a constant anxiety for me. So in some ways (mostly coordinated ways) I feel very betrayed by my body and the brain that controls it. I have a very wasted capacity for physical exercise. I've never tried to change this or rather I spent years in school doing physical education classes and it never changed, which indicated to me that I was doomed in that area. My brain has to do things over and over and over again, have a break and then begin to do things over and over to get the hang of anything. It takes a lot of commitment and despite an anxiety when I'm made to do the stupid old grapevine (which is never these days) I don't feel like I have the time to learn one small foot movement.

On the other hand I have always liked my body. I'm quite thin but not unhealthily so. I can eat any food I like and put on very little weight but I prefer foods with a high sugar content anyway. My body loves chocolate, which is helpful because my brain does too and fast, absurd exercise, like running 100 meters down the street and an hour of over-enthusiastic dancing. This kind of exercise, the type I don't have to think about is something that my body has a huge amount of stamina for. I can dance for 6 hours with no food or drugs and feel bouncy afterwards. So really I love my body because it maintains health without any real input or deep thought from me.

Because the only type of strong, negative emotion I've felt about my body was when my feet were moving in the wrong direction I'm not sure how to explain its relation to self esteem. It's not that I feel disconnected from my body, rather that I feel so connected that it doesn't invade my time. I have days when I feel very ugly but I think those are really hormonal rather than actual negative feelings. They don't effect my self esteem generally, just for a few hours here and there. Likewise the grapevine makes me feel awful but only for a little while as I remember my humiliation. So no, I don't think my body really matters to me in that way... except for when there's a supermodel in the room. Actual physical beauty can't be ignored.

To what degree do media images and sterotypes of what's acceptable and desireable detract from, or strengthen, these feelings?

Media images aren't like real people. I don't mean that practically, I'm not talking about air-brushing. I mean that when I look at a fashion photo I don't see a woman who goes into her corner shop for a carton of juice or a bottle of wine. Beautiful women are far more frightening and ground shaking when they're sitting directly in front of you and that doesn't happen often because a lot of beautiful women wear clothes that don't fit them. Thank god. Most models actually do look amazing, just not when they're on screen, their waists in particular are objects of fascination and envy to me. Do I care when they leave the room? No. Media images are constructed and to idolise a woman who was made to look fabulous by 20 other people is a little silly. I also never want to sleep with famous people- they're very rarely awkward enough to be interested in (I invariably like people who are a little bit clumsy) so I can't really map my desires for my body onto media images.

I feel like I haven't answered any of the questions.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
15:40 / 15.08.05
Bit fraught, that. I've never been entirely comfortable in my body--tall kid, realtively early growth-spurt/puberty, got roundly sneered at by adults who should've known better. I've got one of those very high-oestrogen body types: broad hips, round belly, large bosom, and as a teenager I hated it. At 17 I fulfilled the DSM criteria for anorexia for a while; managed to pull out of that particular nosedive, but I've never had a healthy relationship with food. It's improved over the years and I'm mostly out of the starve/binge cycle, but I'm fatter than is really healthy for me.

The big problem is really that this is a very feminine body type, and I just can't relate to it. I don't feel "female" in that way, and I object to being essentially forced by my body-type to present as "female." I've tried to adjust, feeling that to change matters was to play into the hands of the diet nazis, but it's just not working. I'm the one that's got to live in here, after all.

I've pretty much decided that this is the year I begin creating a body I can live with. This doesn't mean starving myself, setting ridiculous exercise targets, or taking dangerous chemicals. It means taking simple but firm action: moderate, healthy excercise, aerobic as well as muscle-building, and a sensible diet featuring less crap and more of the good stuff. I'm also gradually cutting back on my alcohol intake. I think that it's embracing health that will allow me to express the "masculine" in me; compassion for that secret self, not punishment of the visible female.
 
 
Axolotl
15:46 / 15.08.05
Due to my teenage years and a certain lardiness that went with that I have to say I'm not a big fan of my body. Since then I have lost a fair amount of weight, and that coupled with a fairly regular exercise schedule have kind of realised, at least on an intellectual level, that now it's in not too bad a shape. Despite this I still think of my self as fat, and am still not really comfortable with my body. This is coupled with a self-conciousness about some scars which means I would still never even consider going shirtless in the park for example.
I think probably the most useful thing in trying to correct my feelings was actually going down the gym, a process that really helped me connect with my body in a way that I never had before.
 
 
charrellz
15:50 / 15.08.05
Being ridiculed in school has made me quite conscious of my oversized girth. Granted, I was never huge, but I was always a bit...chubby. I'm trying that whole "eat right, get off your ass" thing, and it seems to be working. I have lost some weight, but feel there's still plenty more to go. That, or I've developed an eating disorder (my girlfriend keeps telling me that I'm not fat anymore, but I think she's just being nice, or I'm nuts).

Oh yeah, and my fingers look funny too.

I'm just gonna throw out a guess here that the majority of people who spend too much time on an internet forum probably don't have the best self-image...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
15:54 / 15.08.05
This thread has taught me that it's much more difficult to describe liking your body than disliking it. Whether that's because the latter is the cultural norm is tough to identify...
 
 
Smoothly
15:58 / 15.08.05
I think I became less body conscious the more I began to believe that as long as you look reasonably inoffensive, it doesn’t really matter that much what you look like. I mean, I’d love to have a body like Brad Pitt or Matthew Fox, but if I did, I’m really not confident that it would make any noticeable difference to my life. I might turn a few heads, but I’m not in that market anymore and it’d probably be more trouble than it was worth.
Although there’s a movement to resist this kind of investment in the body, I sometimes get a feeling that people like to identify the failings of their bodies because it’s something they can – at least in theory - *do* something about. It’s comforting to believe that you don’t get the boys/girls/jobs you want because you’re fat or thin or tall or short or whatever. So people divorce their bodies from themselves (as Alex says – ‘it’s just a vehicle for my mind’). That way you can blame your body for stuff without really taking any of the hit yourself. It much harder to entertain the idea that it might be my *personality* that’s holding me back, I’d far rather blame it on the fact that I *look* a bit ropey. So in a way, style magazines, the beauty industry, ‘body fascism’ generally props up our vanity rather than undermines it. It feeds the myth that we’re underestimated because our *bodies* don’t measure up.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
16:06 / 15.08.05
I like the way it feels, I just don't like the way the wretched thing looks half the time... (especially in photographs, I do not photograph well at all).

I mean, I like inhabiting my body, and I enjoy finding out new things about it (I recall being very excited the first time I realised that I could feel my hip-bone, and spending some time investigating it). And I do like the way it allows me to relate to the outside world through the senses, though I probably don't make as much use of this as I could or should. I like all sorts of sensual things like eating and drinking and feeling interesting fabrics and cool breezes.

However, I am yet another person who has been chubbier than I thought I should be at some times, and though I'm all right now ('overweight' according to my doctor, but I really don't think it's too bad!) I still feel lumpy and pink and shiny and cumbersome on many more occasions than I would like. I am pretty much constantly looking at other people around me and wondering what they see when they look at me and I don't like this feeling at all. (I too find other real people in front of me much more anxiety-inducing than media stuff.) I wish I didn't care! But I also wish I had been born with natural grace and elegance.
 
 
Quantum
16:49 / 15.08.05
I like Illmatic's body.

Weirdly, I have no body image problem particularly but I was afflicted with a sort of enforced bulimia at about 18 (Achalasia). This left me with very little desire to eat, so I am skinny but relatively fit, and not very body-conscious at all, which appears to be quite unusual. Most people I know (especially women, especially teens) feel fattish and unhappy with their body, because they have normal bodies. Ironically, the waif-like and elven tall/tiny skinny beautiful girls I know (who receive glares from many women who are jealous of their figures) are no happier with their bodies than normal girls. The grass is always greener I suppose.
Does my bum look big in this ficsuit?
 
 
Triplets
17:00 / 15.08.05
My body's good. No major health defects and no heridtary patterns of baldness, heart disease or cancer.

I'm a small guy naturally and this led to no expense of jokes about it growing up. It was abbbouuut 13 or so that I came to the realisation that, yeah, I was going to be like this pretty much until I popped my clogs. A relief really.

Since then (I'm 21) I've filled out more and put muscle on. With some exercise and aerobics I've turned my scrawnyness into a toned sinewyness which is a lot better.

Having glasses used to be a pain but with the advent of (sort of) affordable designer lenses this is not too big a deal for me now. And it's like a sort-of jewelery for me, which is neat.

I could probably do with better hair and teeth. That's long-term.

In summary: Pleased with progress, but room for improvement. B+
 
 
perhellen
17:37 / 15.08.05
due to having eaten several slices of a packet of smoked meat which were found buried in an antiquated part of the freezer, and, which going by the sell-by date, was five years overripe, I feel the acidic content of my otherwise calm stomach incrementally rising, past an already weakened spinchter, through my gastric tract, and up into the back of my throat, causing pain, discomfort, nausea and a slow dissolution of my mucosae in the process. rotting soil nurturing growing brain, my body is.

other than that I'm rake thin, slightly atopic, and positively teeming with inane low-level physiological ailments which serve as a daily reminder of the existence of my body, and thus are a constantly renewed source for the joyous affirmation of life.

Happy with my body trying to say I am. yes.
 
 
Cherielabombe
18:10 / 15.08.05
Wow, interesting. You know, I am a "big girl" and I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me I should hate my body. But, here's the funny thing: I don't. In fact, for the most part, I really LIKE my body!! But I always feel like I'm doing something I shouldn't - I feel like I should hate my body because I'm overweight and that's so frowned upon in our culture, but I just can't hate myself that way.

And why should I? I'm proud of my body! I walk 45 minutes to work every day with this body. I climb up and down 7 flights of stairs nearly every day with this body. This body allows me to go dancing for hours and is very flexible and healthy and rarely lets me down in terms of illness or lack of energy.

I have had a long history with this body. I have been thin and fat and thin and fat and thin and fat again, and I can honestly I say I like myself more now than I did when I was thin. Which doesn't mean it's better to be fat, just that I know I am currently happier in my own skin than I've ever been.

I think my body is sexy, too!! And it's weird writing that, because again I get the feeling I'm doing something I shouldn't. But I like my breasts and my butt and my legs and believe it or not I even like my tummy!!

Don't get me wrong, although I am happy in my body, I would also be happy to lose a few pounds and be closer to the cultural ideal, but I have never in my life wanted to be 'skinny.' I think there's a lot of cool skinny people out there, but I don't need to be one of them.
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
18:10 / 15.08.05
I'm perfectly happy with my body, although I was sexier a few years ago, when I was very fit. Since then all of my muscles have turned soft and I've grown a minor beer gut, but you wouldn't notice either unless I was shirtless. I'm quite the handsome devil, if I do say so myself. Just so long as I'm clothed.
 
 
lekvar
18:45 / 15.08.05
At nearly 32, my bod is starting to show some of the results of my misspent youth-a little creakier, a little more wrinkled, and what appears to be (pleasepleaseplease) the beginnings of a shock of grey hair at my temple.

I love my body. It's wonderful. I like my face, my hair... I think I'm pretty good looking. I'm no narcissist, I don't think that Brad Pitt has anything to worry about from me, but I'm happy with the way I look.

When I was a young'un I was pretty chubby, but my parents got me a bike and the pounds melted off when I started riding to school instead of taking the bus. Girls started noticing me. This did wonders for my acceptance of my frame.

A couple of years ago my desk job started catching up to me and I, like many of my fellow Americans, found myself toeing the line between "merely chubby" and "obese." Literally obese, not "oh, I don't like what I see in the mirror, why can't I be thin like the people on TV." So I started making changes in my diet. The main change was Eat Less Taco Bell. I don't even like Taco Bell, but there's one close to work. The other change was to increase my level of activity... OK, if I'm going to eat Taco Bell because I'm too stupid to pack a lunch, walk there instead of driving.

These changes made me feel pretty good about myself, especially when I stared getting thinner, so I joined a gym a couple months ago. Now I'm working on a nice set of shoulders and reducing the love handles a bit.

There are some parts I'm not too keen on, but nothing I can't change or adapt to. My teeth are pretty yellow from years of smoking. My fingernails look funny 'cause I chew them. I sweat more than most people and my body chemistry doesn't react well with polyester, but I hate synthetic fabrics so it's a moot point.
 
 
Quantum
18:46 / 15.08.05
I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me I should hate my body. But, here's the funny thing: I don't. In fact, for the most part, I really LIKE my body!

Sweet! Everyone should be that way, you are my cultural ideal. I think people should *feel* sexy, that's what makes people sexy.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
18:49 / 15.08.05
So really I love my body because it maintains health without any real input or deep thought from me.

I'd thought of a really long post on this topic, and then I come here and realise Cherielabombe has said a lot of what I was going to say! But anyway..

I think that what Nina said, (quoted above) is what a lot of the whole self esteem thing is about for me -the time I was happiest with my body was when I was at university, rowing or doing weights for about 2 hours every day, and eating loads to compensate. I also weighed significantly more (about two stone) than I do now. I suppose that my rationale was that this was something that I really enjoyed doing, and if in order to do that I had to feed my body two cooked breakfasts a day*, a bag of cookies from Sainbury's, a little quelque chose of bread, cheese and Marmite as elevenses, and a good square meal in the evening, then that was how things had to be. Now that I write that down, it really does seem like quite a lot of food, but at the time if I think I'd seen an "All You Can Eat" type table of everything I ate in a week, I would have cackled and said, "I know! Great, isn't it!".

*To be fair, one of these was for lunch.

I'm interested in what I've read here about divorce[ing] their bodies from themselves, because I think that the time I was writing about was the time when I felt most like my body was working with rather than against me, and so was the "most like me"... not sure that that makes sense, might be back to clarify.
 
 
JOY NO WRY
18:51 / 15.08.05
I've always got very mixed messages from other people about my body, roughly half of all comments being that I'm good looking, and the other half that I'm really, really not. Its always seemed to look after itself, pretty much. I'm very tall and thin, and the only time I've seen any real change is when I was doing kung fu for a couple of years. My face got pretty badly mashed up recently, but once I was sure everything still worked, I wasn't really bothered by it. Anybody who gets past my abrasive personality isn't likely to have a problem with what I look like, and I've got better things to worry about.
 
 
Triplets
19:05 / 15.08.05
You're all beautiful.

Remember it.
 
 
grant
19:33 / 15.08.05
I think I'd be happier with my body if it didn't appear to have suddenly decided it was allergic to things over the past couple of years. I'm not really sure what (marriage? construction dust?), but something gives me the sniffles at annoyingly regular intervals, to the point where I don't think it can be one of my too-frequent colds.

I'm also a bit flabby right now. I think it's middle-agedness. I can still lift great weights and climb mighty heights, swim to awesome depths and vanquish criminals. That's what really counts.
 
 
Brunner
19:46 / 15.08.05
I thought my body was great till I turned 14. Then almost overnight, I grew a foot taller than all the other guys in my class, started shaving and sprouted hairy legs. All the weedy guys at school took the piss out of me until they realised I could run faster than them (and therefore catch them and deal out retribution). That should have been the end of it but then a teacher decided to join in the name calling and set my confidence back years.
Once everyone else had caught up physically, it was soon apparent to me that not all girls like hairy men. A friends girlfriend once proclaimed to an entire room full of guests "...if I wasn't going out with X I'd be going out with (Brunner) but I'd make him wax his back first." What an awful comment! I can't remember what I said but there was some comparison between her face and that of a pig. Most women I've known like hairy men (or at least tolerate hair) but after reading silly mags like Men's Health, I've often come away with the impression that remaining hairy is the biggest faux pas a man can make! I'd like to say I ignore it, but it does get to me, especially on the beach.
Aside from that I'm reasonably happy with my body. Pattern baldness (thanks Dad) means close cut hair but its no big deal. Years of beer drinking means a belly which wobbles when I run, but I'm exercising a lot lately and know I have the power to do something about it as I have always had a reasonably good diet. Essentially, the older I get, the less I care what it all looks like and the more I care about it functioning well into old age.
 
 
Smoothly
19:49 / 15.08.05
I'm rake thin, slightly atopic, and positively teeming with inane low-level physiological ailments which serve as a daily reminder of the existence of my body, and thus are a constantly renewed source for the joyous affirmation of life.

Just to say, I like perhellen already.
This is something I've been thinking about too - how it's imperfections, failures and limitations of our bodies that really make us feel alive. As if it gives our physical existance a shape and contours we can mentally trace. I think this might be quite a big part of what makes us feel like us, but my thoughts are still poorly formed. I suppose in my mind I'm thinking about how phony this separation of body from self actually is, but I haven't the words. Will come back to it.
 
 
Shrug
21:39 / 15.08.05
Well I'm slight and flexible though short of being wiry.
I can't run great distances because of asthma but can walk for miles. I always feel scuzzy and unhealthy until at least midday.

A friend told me recently that I was referred to subjectively as "that attractive boy" by acquaintances of hers and someone else once commented that "clothes just seem to hang well on your frame".
I treasure unsolicited comments like this from people I know a little too much I think but conversely hate it in the extreme if any unknown or just-met person comments on physicality even if positively (almost especially positively) in anyway.

I get very tense sometimes and clasp my jaw unconsciously leading a little muscle under my chin to spasm painfully.
I also have a tendency to sleepwalk which always leaves me feeling that my body (sleeping self) is unquestionably the enemy.
I feel very uncomfortable in it at times to such an extent that my walk begins to feel wrong.

Whine whine whine moan moan moan etc.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
22:27 / 15.08.05
I'm old and fat and pleased to have got to this age with no major thing going wrong.

*pauses to touch some wood*

I have always liked my face, my arms and legs. I have sloping shoulders and am envious of Ganesh's broad ones. I have grown to be the largest known land mammal since giving up smoking (several times) and have been veering that way since my late twenties. I have been very thin on a couple of occasions, usually simultaneous with being utterly miserable, and I didn't look good. I always fatten up when I'm in love, according to my sister.

I hate my feet but then I hate feet in general. Can't bear to have them touched. My hands are a bit crap too. Particularly now they're beginning to be freckled with liver spots. The fingers are short and fat with nails bitten to quick.

I don't really dislike any part of this old, weatherbeaten body though. I'm so used to it and if it were significantly different, that would freak me. I do go to the gym but I won't be turning into Schwarzenegger any time soon. I do that because I feel better for it. Doesn't make me look much different.

My spleen, though, is very attractive, and I have a beautiful pancreas.
 
 
HCE
22:30 / 15.08.05
Like Nina, I get frustrated with it sometimes when it won't do what I tell it, as when trying to get down a new swimming stroke or hit a particular note. As a mechanical thing, it's got lots of weak bits but it can be coaxed via willpower into doing more than it's really built for, such as moving heavy furniture or taking long hikes. It didn't really feel like mine until it got sort of lived-in, around age thirty. I really like it now, and find all the quirks sort of endearing. We've had some good times together and I look forward to many more to come. We make a pretty good team.
 
 
HCE
22:38 / 15.08.05
Oh, and regarding food -- I wish I could eat two breakfasts and elevenses and more -- sounds so jolly, like a hobbit. The only thing I miss about being young is the ferocious appetite I used to have. There was a certain macho satisfaction in weighing ninety pounds and eating what three other people would eat. Now I can only eat toddler-sized portions, which is heartbreaking as I love food and love abundance.
 
 
Lama glama
23:49 / 15.08.05
I quite like my symmetrical face. At times I feel like taking a marker to my face and just drawing a line down it. I don't like my ears, which seem to continue on much longer than normal ears do. They almost taper at the end, which I find slightly annoying.

I'm very uncomfortable about my body size. I'm fat, but it has been commented that I would tone up nicely with little effort. Little effort is still effort though, so I shall remain soft and squishy for the time being.
 
 
diz
01:09 / 16.08.05
i was totally comfortable with my body until that meanie Flyboy told me that i wasn't nearly as good-looking in person as i was in my pic, and he though that i posted deceptive pictures of myself online so that people would think i was better looking than i am.

now i binge and purge and cry myself to sleep.
 
 
fuckbaked
03:50 / 16.08.05
I like the way I feel when I’ve had enough food and sleep and nothing hurts. I like walking in the forrest. I love my hands because they can type fast and do other good stuff. I like what I’ve got in my pants. I like my eyebrows and my body hair (and I want to grow a beard, but I don’t think it would look right on me).

The way I look when I’m naked is sort of creepy.

Sometimes it makes me sad to think how different I look from most guys my age. I try not to think about it much.
 
 
Lilly Nowhere Late
06:17 / 16.08.05
I couldn't possilby speak about all the body issues I've had over the years but I'll share about one aspect. I spent over three decades hating my breasts while others envied them and their over indulgent endowment. Only after I had my child and they had a completely valid non-sexual use to fufill, and did so admirably, did I finally appreciate them for what they are and for what they make me. My daughter still loves my breasts and tells me so often which is the most lovely feeling. The whole experience has softened my extremely harsh attitude towards my whole body and indeed self so that now I'm quite proud of my breasts and body in general, most days. (tho like CLB I do feel slightly odd saying so)
 
 
Not in the Face
07:08 / 16.08.05
Like a lot of people who've posted I had real problems with my body-image, but then I suspect thats a universal. Just made worse in these days of photoshop.

I still have some issues around it but most them relate to future fears. Truth be told I am quite happy with myself at the moment but am terrified - at the age of 31 - of where it could all go wrong. My particular worry is that I carry a lot of weight - 19 stone at the moment - without really showing it thanks to a combination of height and, I suspect, the fact is all focused around my heart. I can easily see that increasing if I'm not careful which worries me from a health perspective as my knees are already a bit shot.

For me, the main problem was never my body - it was always me feelings of my body. A combination of being one of the larger kids in my class, liking the feeling of being 'full' - rather than the quality of what I was eating and being poor at sports and therefore labelled as 'fat', meant it became an image that I bought into because it helped reinforce general low self-esteem - women wouldn't want to talk to me anyway and because I was physically unattractice this made it doubly so, therefore it was easier not to worry about that contrary to the demands of my hormones. and helped me . This lasted throughout my teens and into my mid-twenties, a perception of myself as a chubby guy with an unattractive body. I stuck to it even when flatly told otherwise by girlfriends and through losing 4 stone through living in China.

What changed matters for me was increasing self-confidence in who I was which helped me look sensibly at my body, but the biggest impetus for change was having ten sessions with a personal trainer.

While it probably sounds quite wanky and certainly was expensive (£300 plus the cost of the gym) I can recommend it to anyone. Not because it got me fit (it did but then I lost it again), but because the trainer focused as much on educating me about my body as on the fitness. This was a very empowering message - that my body can be understood as a natural process and that there is nothing strange or foreign about it (like others I had also believed in the 'just meat' point of view). It didn't give me the drive to spend all day in the gym, but it did educate me about what I was and wasn't physically based not on my own mental image, or the comments of others but on physical evidence of what my body could do - which turned out to be a lot.

Now although I've not maintained the standards of fitness O got then, I am happier with how my body works because of that understanding and because I accept its going to be a balance - would I like a six-pack? Sure, but not at the expense of giving up the food and drink I like.
 
 
Evil Scientist
07:17 / 16.08.05
I basically think of my body as a machine. Monstrous, and not at all pretty. But damn useful for getting about the place in. The last four years of regular gym visits and Tai Chi have helped with the co-ordination and strength that I lacked at school.

It does it's job, I have no real complaints. I'm sure it'd be nice to trade it in for a better looking model, but it's "thug meets serial killer" look does mean I rarely have to worry about getting mugged.

Better eyes'd be handy. But I like wearing glasses.
 
 
illmatic
07:51 / 16.08.05
Well, I’d wondered about starting this thread because I felt it might degenerate into oneliners and Lord Morgue posting photos of his arse, but how wrong I was. So much interesting stuff here….

Smoothy: When you say I think I became less body conscious the more I began to believe that as long as you look reasonably inoffensive, it doesn’t really matter that much what you look like. I think this is partly to do with covering ourself up with clothes, is it not? When I was in Santa Cruz a couple of years ago, most of the people I met seemed a lot more into being physical, more body conscious in a narcissistic way, because they spent so much more time with half their clothes off. And this how it's imperfections, failures and limitations of our bodies that really make us feel alive. As if it gives our physical existance a shape and contours we can mentally trace reminded of this quote, which I like a lot:

What I mean to say is that living in the body, being aware of the positivity of the material bodily principle (to quote Bakhtin) is in fact a form of resistance, a martial art, if you will. In a world where the body is so degraded, so de-emphasized on the one hand by the empire of the image and on the other hand where the body is degraded by a kind of obsessive narcissism, athletics, fashion, and health, that somewhere in between these extremes to me is the ordinary body which, as the Zen masters would say, is the Zen body, to rephrase the saying that the ordinary mind is the Zen mind. To be conscious and aware of this is already to take a stance of resistance against the obliteration of the body in media or the pseudo-apotheosis of the body in modern sports, or fast food or all this kind of degradation of the body which occurs along with its erasure.

It’s perhaps a bit more wanky/theoretical but interesting nonetheless (from Hakim Bey). More in a sec…
 
  

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