What Do You Think Of Your Looks?

48 thoughts on What Do You Think Of Your Looks?

1. First an “incidentally”: I didn’t realise (but I suppose I should have guessed) that the “Creature Comforts” format had been done in the USA as well, but I guess the nature of it makes it perfect for export to just about anywhere!

   The pigs were an interesting element (the thing about “gender policing” was right there, with the “mother” pressuring her grown-up daughter to wear make-up). Also the dog in the pound, saying how when you look good, you “have to work to stay like it”.

   Personally, I’ve had a troubled relationship with my own appearance which meant that even when I was slim I didn’t know it. In my case this was part of the ground for comfort-eating, so by the time I realised what I could have had, I was already very overweight. But now, I’m much more comfortable with my appearance and am able to see myself positively.

2. I bodybuild. I like the muscle and the way it looks, but it feels like a guilty pleasure most of the time, something to be enjoyed at home but covered in public. You run into the idea that it’s unfeminine for women to be bodybuilders rather regularly, though I always wonder why it affects me so much.

3. The treatment for my endo precipitated 20lbs weight gain, and it’s made me rather uneasy. I was mostly happy with my body, which was padded but felt proportionate. I liked my tits, love my wide hips and full ass and thighs. Now my stomach is overbearing, it’s in the way, I can feel it when I’m all folded up in my chair and it makes me uncomfortable. I can’t hold the posture that would make me look like I just have a cute little tum. So it’s a full-on gut. And I’m having a hard time adjusting to that.

   That and my crooked teeth, and the dark circles under my eyes — they’re very dark and my eyes are set far back and sometimes it has the effect of making me look, well, sick. Which I am. But sometimes I just want to be normal. Sometimes I don’t want to look sick.

   What a statement of privilege, I know. But these are just my internal feelings. They don’t necessarily reflect how I things should be — it’s just the insecurities that were bred into me from childhood.

4. I dunno…I’m confused about how I look. I look around, and I don’t think very many other people have any sort of clarity about how they look either.

5. even when I was slim I didn’t know it.

   You know, I think that describes 98% of girls and women (and also a good deal of men) in this society. Honestly. There are some who know they are skinny and either hate themselves for it or flaunt it unabashedly, but most of them think they’re fat, or (as I rationalized it) they “have fat” somewhere (pudgy tum, hips, ass, whatever), or they know they’re slim but they still think they’re bigger than they should be because models and celebs are still waaaay smaller than they are (or appear so in the ‘shopped images…)

   There’s just some sort of mental block there. And it’s almost universal: two, five, ten years later, you look back and think “I looked amazing! I was so slim! Why did I think I was a fatass??” Always. And right now, you feel like a fatass. And ten years from now, you’ll look back and think: “I looked amazing! I was so slim!…”

   But the way you phrased it there, it just cuts right to the quick. That’s it.

6. My body is strong and functional. I’m not thrilled with the proportions esthetically-speaking (tomato on stilts), but I’d rather be this way than frail. Pretty-wise I’m not going to be winning any competitions, but I don’t break mirrors either. Good enough for all practical purposes.

   I love the anteater.

7. I think it depends on my mood. If you feel good, it’s easy to be confident about your looks. But there is always this gnawing sense of self-doubt waiting, ready for a bad day, and it’s easy to give into a lot of the (contradictory) messages that you have to be thinner, have bigger boobs, have a smaller butt, be taller, be somehow “prettier”, whatever. (That’s a very female-specific list; I’m sure a comparative list exists for males, but I’m just going from personal experience here.)

   That being said, I think there’s a lot of ways to think about your body. I know I used to (back when I was a runner) say that my favorite part of my body was my legs, because I liked the way they look. Now I say it’s my clitoris, for reasons that should be obvious ;D

   To quote Midwest Teen Sex Show: “Thanks masturbation!” (for making me think of my body as being for myself, not for show)

8. That was such a great way of doing the video! I love the whole Wallace and Grommit-type claymation. And we’re only left w/ the speakers’ perceptions. It’s a nifty way of avoiding objectification of the interviewees.

   I don’t like how much my appearance matters to me. Sometimes I think I look good, other times I think I look weird and just…wrong. Back in junior high there were about 300 kids who were only too happy to tell me all the ways I was ugly. And then there was the eating disorder…

   I try to focus on being healthy, and on what my body can do. I lift weights, and am fine w/ wearing clothes that show it in summer weather. As far as clothes go, my main considerations are comfort and practicality. Luckily, janitorial work really doesn’t require a major investment in fashion.

   I hate that I’m so self-conscious about my acne. And a whole laundry list of things about my body. And am I the only person here who absolutely loathes the low-rise pants plague? I have a long waist, so even slightly low-rise pants hang lower than I’d like…and after all normal-rise pants had vanished from the stores, somebody decided women only came in one set of proportions. Not my proportions. The last time I tried on a pair of ‘trendy’ jeans, they made me look freakishly deformed. Now I just hit the thrift stores w/ a tape measure. Saves lots of agony.

9. My body is a shell I inhabit.
   We live in a very visual society and I am highly aware of that.
   I have used my physical appearance to attract and to repel at various times in my life.

10. I wish I had more defined arm muscles and less frizzy hair. But I’m also aware of the many ways in which my looks (currently) come close to the ideal. No matter how hard you try, there are always going to be components that are out of whack (especially since the standards keep changing). Every time I think I’m on the verge of just giving up, though, something rekindles my need to work on being prettier.

    I’ve really enjoyed your posts! I like the video, too (although the pig with a southern accent and missing teeth strikes me as problematic).

11. After years of my family (mostly my mother) criticizing & scrutinizing my looks/weight/hygiene/wardrobe, I finally realized that I can’t live up to whatever it is other people want me to be.

    Once I got that, I started accepting what I look like. I’m much more confident now, and I focus more on feeling good and being healthy rather than my actual appearance. It’s hard, of course, and does vary from day to day, but usually I stay positive.

    The one thing I still have serious issues with is my hair. I’m pretty darn hairy. To make matters worse, my mother refused to let me shave until I was 16, so the “wolfy,” “hairy bear,” etc. nicknames were pretty standard. So that’s still something I’m dealing with even now, but I’m getting better. =/

12. I do not like my looks. I constantly deal with negative thoughts about my looks and I never seem to be satisfied. The problem with this is that when I feel, for example, that my thighs look huge, I often analyze the problem so much that I get extremely upset. And how do I deal with that? By eating (I eat for comfort – another one of my problems). And then I feel guilty about eating, thinking that eating will only make me look worse, and the problem perpetuates.

    This is really hurting me, especially lately when I’ve been stressed about my work. I know it’s not healthy at all…but I can’t seem to break this cycle…

13. I’m mostly OK with the way I look, which by some degree of luck coincides fairly well in basic essentials with both the prevailing beauty standard and how I’d like to look. I’m fairly tall and bone-thin, with smallish breasts that I went rather suddenly from wishing were bigger to preferring were smaller. My face is . . . well, mine; I dislike how I look in profile but as I prefer being pleasing to my own standards to being pleasing to everyone else’s, it doesn’t bother me much; I only ever see myself in profile in dressing-room mirrors.

    I used to be much worse with how I thought of my appearance, to the point of idly planning multiple types of cosmetic surgery. But I spent most of my teen years in a sort of patient “life will get better later (after X turning point), so it doesn’t matter if it sucks now. I can get beautiful later on” type of funk, and my wishes to fuss with my hairline, nose, chin, and so forth didn’t inspire much self-loathing.

    What really paved the way to self-acceptance was that I would play a game: I would look at the girls around me and consider whether I would prefer to have my body or hers—and I never once found one I’d prefer. There was stuff to nitpick on about everyone (wrong coloring, too short, don’t like the nose/hair/cheekbones/body shape)—and even when someone was drop-dead gorgeous, she wasn’t me. Nothing was better, really, than what I had.

    As the years passed and I gained in self-confidence, the flaws ceased to become as prominent to my eyes, and I had more and more moments where I saw myself as beautiful—my torso in a certain shirt as I twisted, back straight, to look at it, the reflection of my eyes in the microwave glass with my head tilted slightly down, my face reflected in the rearview mirror of my mother’s minivan with my head tilted to the left, my shape in shadow on the wall. Then in college I discovered feminism and the concept of nontraditional beauty as rebellion, the defiance of finding beauty in what is not beautiful by society’s standards, and cultural differences in what is considered beautiful, and as well the concept of things like scars and other blatant imperfections being beautiful—defiant, claimed, wearing marks you’re supposed to be ashamed of as a badge of honor—and my liking for myself continued to grow.

    Today I’m not completely in love with my appearance—my hair is brown where I wish it were black, my skin is pale where I wish it were tanned or bronze, and I have a birthmark on my back that I blatantly dislike. I wish I were more muscular and more flexible and more graceful. On the other hand, I have cellulite on hips and knees and I don’t give a damn, my legs are hairy unless I’m wearing a short skirt and I don’t give a damn (I live in jeans), I have a second, bigger but vastly different, birthmark higher up on my back and I don’t give a damn, and my chin and hair and nose are exactly as they were, and I either don’t care or don’t mind.

    I recently got a digital camera and brought a photograph of myself into Adobe Photoshop. I am standing on a rock ledge with a waterfall behind me, back straight and head held high; I am smiling and for once not worrying that it’ll make me look bad (I’ve always considered an open-mouthed smile to be unflattering to my face); I am in the shade and thus look a tad darker than I do in the sun. I brought it into Photoshop with the idea of playing with the image manipulations to make me look better. I lightened my teeth, slightly, with a single pass of the Dodge tool (lightening), and did the same for the whites of my eyes—the picture, panned in, was blurry so I could just use the round paintbrush tool in each corner, and added in the little dot of light in each pupil. And that’s it—I stopped and stared, in complete awe, at the idea that this was me—I looked like that, and all the flaw-fixing I ever wanted to do had narrowed down to a bit of teeth-whitening and some eye definition that was made necessary by the image quality more than anything else.

    It’s a start.

14. I love my body. Not to sound sanctimonious (I know I’m speaking from privilege on this issue), but it’s so tragic to read how many feminist women have body issues or had eating disorders. I was raised in a very safe household and was blessed with a body that is close enough to the ideal that I’ve had more issues with harassment than insecurity. Last summer there was a week or so when I dropped some weight, and my waist-belt no longer fit. I was terrified, and immediately determined to gain it back. This summer I’ve been putting on weight in my thighs and I love it.

    Every time I read one of these posts, half of me is compelled to respond because I know my experience is anomalous, and the other half thinks it’s too much like gloating. I don’t know if there’s any help for anyone else in reading how I’ve somehow escaped what is probably one of the most harmful branches of the patriarchy. I hope so. I’ve got a friend who’s absolutely beautiful- but not an hourglass, and she’s got a round face, and her body holds on to just a little extra flesh. And she’s internalized all this stuff to a point where, at 18, the emotion she most closely associates with sex is shame. That just breaks my heart. And I have no idea what I can do about it.

15. I used to have mad eating disorders. Then one time I was brushing my hair and it started coming out in clumps, and I thought “No, not my hair! It’s so beautiful! I’ll stop if only it’s saved!” And then I realised, hey, I think my hair is beautiful. So I was tricked out of some of my self-hatred, and since then I keep finding more I like, and without I hope sounding like an ass, in general nowadays, screw it, I think I look pretty.

    I agree with the person who said people don’t realise when they are, in fact, conventionally attractive. Sometimes I want to stop insecure-looking people and say “No really, take it from a stranger, you’re beautiful!” Although I realise this could only come off as creepy, so I never do… plus, it’s not like I think it should be that valuable or that distinctions need to be reinforced between prettiness/”ugliness”. But for their sadness’ sakes…

    Also, Girl Detective, you continue to rock my socks.

16. It’s really nice to hear how much other women like the way they look — Lauren, it doesn’t come off as gloating, it comes off as confident and inspiring. So much of female bonding revolves around talking about our various physical flaws that it’s nice to see women discussing their bodies in positive terms.

    Of course, that said, if I’m going to be honest I hate my body. Hate it, want a new one, would trade it in for a whole lot of others. I look in the mirror and I feel disgusted. It doesn’t help that in three years I lost and then re-gained about 20 pounds — losing when I was depressed and miserable and on medication that made my drop a bunch of weight (but skinny!) and gaining when I was happiest, but then beating myself up for letting myself get bigger. I lost some weight in law school, and then went to Germany for the winter and gained a lot for my small frame, putting me right back to where I was in college. I work out five or six times a week, I eat very well (lots and lots of vegetables, very little processed, probably too many carbs but not egregiously) and I still can’t manage to shake a single pound or a single inch. I feel like I just have extra flesh attached to me — it’s unfamiliar and while I’ve never been at all happy with how I looked (even when I was thinner), I feel like this is currently the worst my appearance has ever been. It’s frustrating because, in addition to feeling like I’m working my ass off and my body just isn’t changing, I also feel like Teh Worst Feminist Ever for caring about this stuff. And I look at other women, and I never think negative things about their bodies; I think diets are ridiculous; I like the way curvier bodies look on other women; I love food and will often talk myself into just letting go and enjoying it because I do enjoy it so much (but then I feel bad afterwards); and I think the cult of female self-hate is thoroughly fucked. But I do it. So it’s Food Guilt mixed up with Feminist Guilt mixed up with Guilt-for-even-caring (because don’t I have better things to do?) mixed up with general body-hate. And it is not a fun place to be in.

    But reading this thread makes me happy — it is really inspiring and relieving to hear women say good things about themselves, and it makes me think that I should be better about not just cutting myself slack, but actually enjoying all the things that come will living in this body. It’s also helpful to hear how people got to where they are. So sorry if I just turned the tone negative, this just touched a nerve. I will say that I like my eyes because they’re green and that’s neat, and I like the way my body feels stronger since I’ve been boxing (I can do push-ups into the double digits and run twice as far as I could before and my arms are looking pretty toned), and I love how years of living in a fifth-floor walk-up has really built up my upper-ass muscles and now my butt sticks out a lot and is wonderfully round, and I like that my nose is crooked and makes my profile different on each side (and that I always remember my “good side” because it’s pierced).

17. Jill – no joke, feminist guilt is a killer!

    Lauren – no no, it’s not gloating. In fact I think it’s pretty important that the default acceptable attitude for women to voice about their bodies is something OTHER than insecurity – sometimes it seems that it’s almost rude to be anything other than self-deprecatory about one’s body (not here: this is a positive, safe thread specifically set up for honest discussion; I mean more in casual settings among women). “The most radical thing a woman can do is love her body,” I once read on a poster.

18. Personally, I try to be logical and view looks as a statistical curve. On one wing are the people who are widely considered attractive, on the other the generally unattractive, and a ginormous subjective mess in the middle. Add to that opinion my being naturally fatalistic, and you have a guy who doesn’t particularly care about being stuck in the ugly wing. In a bizarre way, this was actually a benefit; by never really expecting anyone to appreciate my appearance (or anything else, for that matter), I handily circumvented all the disappointments and personality hang-ups that come with being repeatedly shot down or insulted (having recognized, even as a hormone-addled teen, that those were the norm for my…class? caste?).

    Granted, I’m an outlier. And, again, male, so I doubt this post was directed at me to begin with.

19. If Creature Comforts had interviewed me, I’d have told them that:
    My left ear is pointed like an elf’s – I love that.
    Also, I was wearing my new sneakers the other day, and started to run… I love that I can go so fast! Thanks, legs!
    They probably would have made my animal a… desert fox, like this one!

20. While I may not fit any of the so-called standards of beauty that surround me, I think I’m stunning. It’s hard to explain,but my body defines me. When I look in the mirror, the image I see reflects who I am. My arms may be bigger than most, but I think they show my strength. My hair may be frizzy and not silky like the movie stars but they show how active my life is. Its definetly not easy to think this way, especially when I am surrounded by people who try (and succeed) to look like the ideals of beauty, but I take comfort in the fact that I can see things that they can’t. So yes, I’m beautiful, whether or not I’m the only person who thinks so.

21. Other than having a slight paunch on my belly, having very little upper-body strength, slightly crooked teeth, and occasionally being annoyed at being mistaken on occasion for an older adolescent by corporate/university officials due to my nearly straight thin profile and the fact most non-Asians IME have a hard time discerning the actual ages of Asian/Asian-Americans, on the whole…I am quite currently happy with my body. Can’t complain about being slighly above average in height nor weighing well within my comfort level and being able to enjoy fast walking 1.4-2 miles per day…even on a hot day like today.

    I did not always feel this way as before my dramatic summer growth at the age of 15 (5’2″ – 5’7″ in three months), I was one of those short fat kids who was socially gunshy from surviving incessant ridicule from family/acquaintances along with beatings from junior high classmates because of my weight, my race, and the fact I was one of the better performing students. It was probably due to this that I started to exercise more intensively while simultaneously reducing my daily caloric intake. When I graduated and left for college at 17, I was around 5’10” and so thin that the same relatives who once picked on me for being “too fat” were now horrified that I was underweight. Didn’t really mind it then as I felt good physically and didn’t see what the big deal was….especially after hearing stories from parents and older relatives about how much more bare and spartan the lifestyle of most Chinese college students were in Taiwan during the 1950s. Compared to them, I was quite privileged even with the economic constraints I had back then.

    Didn’t help matters that due to more exercising and becoming distracted with being engrossed in my academic studies and campus activities that I not only skipped meals due to not wanting to take the time….I also started to literally forget to eat for long stretches of time due to being so distracted. Not surprisingly, instead of experiencing the stereotypical “freshman 15” of gaining 15 pounds, I ended up losing 15 by the end of my first year to the dismay of older relatives, parents, and a few high school buddies.

    Regarding my looks, I have no major issues….though I still have some difficulties with accepting any criticisms or complements about my appearance because of the fact no one in my high school cared….and the campus culture at my undergrad tended to be harshly critical with anyone who would use one’s physical looks/appearances as a basis for judging someone. One impression I got from being in such environments was that not only judging someone by appearance was being shallow, but that anyone who takes excess pride in one’s looks and physical appearances is often presumed to be compensating for some intellectual deficiency…or has their priorities screwed up at the very least. Some of that thinking rubbed off on me which caused me some minor misunderstandings at one office where not too long after I was hired, several female co-workers complemented me by saying I looked “cute” and the first thought in my mind was “What did I do to give them the impression I was overcompensating for some intellectual shortcoming?” 🙄

22. kakodaimon – thank you! 😀

23. The best my body has ever been – looks- and health-wise, was the period before I left for Canada, in 2003; I was slim, running up and down the stairs every few minutes (so I was really keeping in shape), I could hike a steep hill without a problem, and I felt really healthy.

    But then I lived on campus, and the food available was really crappy, plus, no one does anything in winter, so I put on frosh fifteen, and I’ve never been able to quite get back into shape the way I was. It sort of makes me sad, and it’s not something I can do without being home in Malaysia where I’d have someone (Dad) to go hiking with me on a regular basis. The food here is also different, too. It’s weird because Malaysian food has a TON of empty carbs.

    The singular worst thing though? I developed hives in my second year here. I’d never had hives before, so I thought I had a skin condition, and I swear to Maude, it’s the one thing that can ruin EVERYTHING. I can be looking really good, and hives will make me feel ugly as all hell. It’s really annoying. Otherwise I’ll be all right. Most days I wouldn’t pay too much attention to myself, but for some reason, hives will make me look more closely at all my “flaws”. All doctors can do is tell me to “avoid” whatever it is that’s giving me hives, but… it’s like, I dunno, avoiding all the ills women face: want to not have these problems? Stay home and stop living!!

    Hives is the one thing that’s stopping me from going back to my modeling hobby, because I never know when I’m going to get it, even though I take a pill every day.

    Everything else? I can control it. At least, I think so. I’ve taken to running every other day when I can to get back to optimal fitness and get rid of all this extra flab which seems to keep piling on every month… it’s not vanity that makes me conscious, but the fact that I DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO KEEP BUYING NEW CLOTHES. Argh! >_< I have pants in sizes ranging from 2 to 8 now, and I can’t keep doing this. It’s taking up space in my wardrobe and making things hard to find.

    …. I’m so money-minded.

24. I flip-flop. There are never days that I like the way I look, unfortunately, but there are days when I just accept it and then there are the days where I actively hate the way I look. And the latter is definitely the most prevalent…. I would say 95% of the time I hate the way I look. I’ve never been tiny/skinny but ever since having children, I’ve put on weight that I can not seem to lose, no matter what I do. I did drop about 25 pounds last year, but I have another 30 that I so badly want to get rid of and despite a huge increase in my activity level, it’s going nowhere. In addition, I have stretch marks that go from my breasts to the top of my thighs (literally) and they make me so self conscious. I really can’t think of a single thing about my body that I like and that makes me so profoundly sad, because my body has done some pretty cool things. Jill pretty much said exactly how I feel- I hate my body but I feel bad about hating my body because I know I should know better. I read blogs where people are not only comfortable with their bodies no matter their size/shape and I really, really want to be the woman who just accepts how she looks and focuses on the cool things I can do. I’m just so not there yet. I’m the one who reads a post on size acceptance and thinks “Yeah! That’s awesome- except clearly not for me, because I still look like this and there’s no way I can accept that”. I really don’t know how to combat it either.

25. Hmm… I missed part of that sentence. It was supposed to say “I read blogs where people are not only comfortable with their bodies no matter their size/shape, but they like their bodies and celebrate what they can do with them and I really, really want to be the woman who just accepts how she looks and focuses on the cool things I can do”

26. I’m skinny, which I like- it means I can usually squeeze behind people’s chairs without having to ask them to move, and that my clothes are small so that I can fit more into a small bag, for instance. My back is too skinny- I get rid of any photos that have it in, as it resembles one of those shock horror anorexic model photos that crop up in newspaper scare articles. Aesthetically, I like it, although I am always trying to put on a few pounds because I’m underweight (am currently 7s2lb, which is only 2 below my all-time high) and struggle to keep weight on, especially as a vegetarian. My face, I’m not too sure- lots of my friends seem to think I’m really pretty, but I think I look too much like my dad, brother and grandpa and not enough like my mum! I’ve never seen a woman with the same facial bone structure as me, so I find it hard to know what “sort” of face I’ve got. I don’t know why I feel that that matters, but nevertheless I would like to have a general idea of how I look.

    I don’t have a problem with trying to or wanting to look nice- I think it’s really important that a distinction is made between wanting to look good in order to fit in with other people’s expectations and/or societal norms, and wanting to look good because you think it’s aesthetically pleasing. There is nothing wrong about having a sense of aesthetics, and I’d hazard that there are few if any people who don’t think that certain things intuitively look nicer than other things to them. For example, I’ll shave my legs if I’m wearing sheer white tights, because I think that hairs plastered under nylon looks bad. If I’m going bare-legged, I won’t shave, because I don’t find the look of hair on skin displeasing. I don’t care what other people think of my aesthetic sensibilities, but they’re important to me; I’d rather that I thought I looked nice.

27. My opinion of my looks fluctuates incredibly rapidly, to the point that I”ll be standing in front of the mirror literally thinking “You’re a rock star!” and then “But a fat cow” and then again “You’re a rock star!” I am relatively tall, I have waist length hair that is shiny, a little wavy, and very light brown/dark blonde and (like Jill, yay) I have green eyes.

    When I was 21 I gained forty pounds in one year. I have stayed at that weight since then, putting me at a size 14-16. I walk at least two miles a day, and eat heaps of vegetables, but I try to do that because I like to and it makes me feel good and to not to care about it too much about shrinking since my body as is doesn’t prevent me from doing anything I want to do. This attitude is new, and very much thanks to my discovering Fat Acceptance blogs.

    In the past I pretty much hated my body and felt I should be changing it, but still didn’t take any real steps to do so and just hated myself for it and completely internalized the message that it was because I was lazy and disgusting and that I would never find anyone to love me again. This was compounded by a really bad breakup from my boyfriend of four years that I convinced myself was because I got so fat.

    Part of what’s been strange for me is that a few years ago I moved to Israel, where I am much closer to the cultural ideal for women. When I cross the border into Jordan people literally stop me and ask me if I’m a model or an actress. It’s been a real education in just how flexible cultural norms of attractive are, but I still find myself thinking somehow that these people are “wrong” about what they find attractive, even though I have no idea what this would mean. I was talking about this with a guy friend and I joked that maybe I should just move to Jordan, and he said, “That just seems like cheating, to just move somewhere where your body is more ideal.”

    Which I guess just indicates that for him (and to an extent me) we don’t just unfortunately struggle with our bodies and how we look, but that we somehow feel this is the right way to feel.

    Even though my body feels good to me to walk around in, and even though pretty much all the outside attention is positive, I am still having to work hard to change this idea in my head that thinner is always better, no matter what the cost is to my psychological health, no matter how much time, energy, and money I have to put into it, and no matter how unsatisfying I know any “result” would be.

    Before I gained weight I was quite thin, I can see this now in pictures and everyone told me at the time. If I lost weight now, I know I would still think I was not thin enough. I know that, but I still wish for it, even though it really is a situation where, for me, the only way to win is not to play.

28. Wow – the one person on this thread whom I’ve met is really hot, and I’m a certifiably anal looks analyzer. So if she doesn’t like her body, maybe I should rethink mine!

    I’m finally at a place where I do like my looks. I was a gymnast and then a model in my teens/20s and at 5’5″ was either too tall or too short, and although a size 0-2, usually heavier than others doing what I was doing but called anorexic (and I was, borderline) when I wasn’t doing it.

    At 40, I feel like I’m at a good place but I am very scared of aging, and probably will take steps down the line to curb whatever visible affects there are. I’m lucky with olive skin and genes I don’t have wrinkles yet, but I’m sure that will change soon. I am more paranoid and aware of these things than I know is ideal.

    Body-wise, one thing that has really helped is developing some muscle. I used to read fashion mags and now read Oxygen or Women’s Fitness. These women have the fat content I obsessively like for myself (although I’m not a harsh judge of others; I like a variety of body types for women, although I’m pretty harsh on men), but they have normal weights and even get to eat more than the normal amount of calories because muscle burns better. Because I absolutely hate dieting, I work at home and have plenty of opportunities to eat, the accomodation to my obsessiveness of adding some muscle helps to have four meals a day and not have to watch the calories too much. Of course, the amount of exercise is what a lot of people would call obsessive, and they’d be right.

29. I’m not what society might deem good looking, particularly because I’m bigger than size 8 (or whatever we’re “supposed” to be these days). But I’m comfortable in my own body and don’t give any thought to what other people think about it.

    I think that’s a good thing.

30. Also, I learned at a young age that beauty is a projection.
    My mother is what we call an “Oshun” (the Orisha of love and beauty) type in NOLA.
    If you dissect her parts, you may see a bigger nose than is usually considered beautiful, smaller teeth, squarer jaw-
    but, it all comes together as striking beauty because that is how she projects it.
    People have always been in awe of her beauty, and I recall in youth noticing that those features on anyone else would be flaws.

    With that knowledge, I’ve been able to project myself as beautiful or homely as I wish.
    How do I personally feel about my body?
    I am grateful for good health. I am grateful for the comfort I have with it, same comfort I had at a size 2 dancer/yoga instructor as I have now in my size 8-10 film production crew size.
    When I was a dancer I was noticed by men a lot more, now I am relieved to say, I am not noticed as much.
    I am happy with my body, I love my face, big eyes, bump in nose n all.
    I love my menses every month and will miss it in a few years when I begin pari- menopause.

    At 42 I am as happy with my body now as I was in my 20’s and 30’s.

    It is the shell I was given to grow in during this incarnation.
    I am grateful for it.

    Oh, and I didn’t watch TV for 16 years, or read magazines designed to make me feel ugly- so that could have had something to do with my positive self image as well.

31. I am deeply convicted about my looks and about my weight. I like my hair and I like that my face is symmetrical and I have quite cupid’s bow shaped lips. I do take time over what I wear because I know some things make me look awful and some, well, don’t and I like colours to match. But I am fat, very, very fat, and I know I should lose weight if only so I can have nicer clothes and better health. Thing is, sometimes, I feel like I can be hidden behind my weight. That people see the weight and dismiss me and therefore I don’t need to deal with them and there BS. And then sometimes I’m lonely and I’d quite like more people in my life but the weight makes me feel like I don’t deserve it, or rather my perceptions of my weight makes me feel like I don’t deserve it. Well, that and the fact that my PCOS gives me delightful hair on my face which adds to the whole “not really a girl” thing that my weight gives me a little bit, but not to the same extent.

    I’m trying to change this. Sometimes I feel frozen in place as if, no matter what I do, it won’t matter because I’ll never be thin enough, and I’ll never be pretty enough. I don’t want to end up obsessed and desperate to watch everything I eat and constantly watching those dire reality shows they seem to be designed to make the participants feel awful and the watchers see why they too should feel awful. I don’t want to end up sitting in the house wondering why I’m 28 and unmarried and childless and not yet in a position career wise that I’m happy with. Amusing thing about that is I don’t want to be married, I’m not ready to have children, and I’m working on the career thing and am, currently, on track with the plan… but I am still plagued by niggling worries that I should be all those things, esp. with my father telling me most women are married by my age. Of course my father is a great source of crippling insecurity and self-censorship. His latest was telling me that, back when he was making my life miserable as a teenager by constantly harping on about what I weighed and what I ate and how I looked, I wasn’t really fat, I was normal, unlike now. I really do love my father… but sometimes I don’t like him.

32. Since the ‘edit’ thing doesn’t seem to be working… that ‘convicted’ should be ‘conflicted’. Helps to read over comments before I press submit. 😀

33. I love my body.

    I know I wrote in another thread that I don’t fit the standardized beauty idea, and I don’t. In part because I eat whatever I like, and hey, that’s a positive body experience too!

    I put on a lot of winter fat, and i guess some winters i get close to what you could call overweighed, but on the whole, my weight is just sucking healthy average, no matter what Heidi Klum would have you think.

    I like the proportions of my body, no matter if Im in winter or summer mode. And other than that… I’m cute. It’s a bit of a niche thing if you will (also half Asian here, also looking 10 years younger to most people) but I enjoy it, most of the time.
    And I’ve always found people who either like just this type or enjoy the positive attitude I have towards my body (read: go for me even though I’m technically not their type)

    The only thing that sometimes annoys me, like exholt,is when I still get carded for 16 (I’m 29) or when I date guys who simply look a lot older than me and they get glared at for holding my hand in the street. But I’ve always thought of taht as a social issue, not something that makes me wish I looked different.

    And as for the whole female bonding thing: I actively refuse to take part in those female rituals of hacking down your own looks to get comfort or compassion from others. Either I don’t react at all, or I say very matter of factly that I’m fine with my looks.

34. Like everyone else, it varies. I’m generally aware that on my geeky college campus, I’m quite attractive. As my weight fluctuates I’d say I move in and out of “uberattractive” territory–I’m short (something I like about myself) and cute, and I have nice cheekbones and regular features, and a pronounced hourglass figure. I also get hit on and catcalled a fair amount, on and off the campus, which I don’t enjoy or welcome but I do recognize what it represents in terms of how I look. Simultaneously, I think I’m a fat cow who only becomes acceptable (not even thin) about ten pounds below what I weigh now, despite the fact that at that weight my hipbones and ribs stick out.

    I am eating disordered, see, which means two things:

    1. My body and how I look actually does change a fair amount, sometimes quite rapidly. If I lose five pounds in a week, yeah, I’m gonna look different (I’m short). Certain things will make me feel and look like hell, and certain things will make me look great (by my disordered standards) and feel like hell, and some will make me feel and look great. The variation is quite real.

    2. Reality aside, my perceptions are varied. For example, for years when I was younger I only wore jeans because I looked like a house in skirts and dresses (I was a chubby kid and early adolescent). Then I noticed I’d developed more of a figure and I actually looked better in skirts and dresses than in pants sometimes–but only knee length. These past few months, despite weight gain that I absolutely hate and am trying very hard to get rid of, I suddenly find my legs to be my most acceptable part–when for literally as long as I can remember they were my greatest shame.

    I find myself constantly wondering if my body composition has changed so even if I weigh a familiar number my fat is distributed differently, or if for some reason I am seeing my legs clearly for the first time.

    Also, what’s very strange to me is that I totally buy into HAES and Fat Acceptance. I fully believe that there’s a range your body likes to hang out at and sooner or later you’ll end up back there. It has very little effect on my behavior–I cut calories knowing I’m just slowing my metabolism, but I do it anyway.

    I think part of the reason I can do that without much cognitive dissonance is that to me, an eating disorder is much less about fat and thin than it is about narrative, and about an outlet for whatever it is you can’t deal with. At the moment I can’t figure out what I’m expressing through this behavior, since what I thought I was expressing a year ago has been pretty much resolved, but I know there must be something.

35. Wow – the one person on this thread whom I’ve met is really hot, and I’m a certifiably anal looks analyzer. So if she doesn’t like her body, maybe I should rethink mine!

    Don’t re-think! I hesitated to put up my comment in the first place because I don’t want to start a “oh-I’m-so-ugly” thing on a thread where most of the comments have been positive. It’s a fine line to walk, between being honest an being able to discuss the fact that, like a lot of women, I dislike the way I look, and trying to be honest in a way that doesn’t imply that other women should dislike the way that they look. Most people are far more self-involved and self-critical than they are of others (I know I am, anyway); I try to remind myself of that on the bad days.

    Anyway, I really wasn’t trying to take the thread to a bad place, or make anyone else feel like they should be feeling bad. Reading this stuff has made me feel really good — and like another commenter said upthread, reading Fat Acceptance blogs and trying to surround myself with positive, self-confident women has done wonders. I put up the comment also to show that there are no perfect feminists, and to put it out there that the women reading here but not commenting who don’t feel good about themselves aren’t alone — and they aren’t failures to feminism, either. They’re just human.

    And Octo, you are a hottie 🙂

36. I’ve put on a lot of weight since Chef and I got together from food and drink alike. The thing is I eat better foods than I did before and learned what certain foods are supposed to taste like. I don’t exercise as much as I used to due to the job, so combined with the new appetite I’m bigger than before.

    The thing is, I don’t care all that much. There are certain clothes that look good on me and I wear them, and other than that there isn’t much of a conflict for me. Sometimes I think, oh I wish I could get away with that dress, but hell, I’m still as attractive at a size 12 as I was as a size six, but I’m also having more fun and I’m less down on myself for straying from my self-imposed diet crap that I used to cling to.

    And like other people on this thread, I’m far more critical of myself than I am of others, so where I see a big woman looking fine and I’m sure to compliment her on it (or alternately express how great she looks when she’s vocally down on herself) where I’d dismiss the same from my own body as less-than or wanting.

    In the last year or so I’ve made a conscious decision to move away from self-directed attention specifically about looks, and that’s made a difference. That kind of dialog tends to be toxic for me, and I don’t like the way it makes me feel.

37. I quite like my appearance. Like everyone else ever, finding clothes that fit properly is tricky, but that applies to everyone.

    The one thing that’s bothering me at the moment is that I’ve put on a little weight. I involuntarily crash-dieted in the spring because I had glandular fever and the act of eating tired me out, so I didn’t eat very much and lost weight. It was enough that my boyfriend noticed and was worried about me. Now, of course, I’ve gained it back plus the statutory ten percent, and the ten percent is the part I notice. My tummy in particular is bigger than I’m used to. I think it’s not being used to it that’s bothering me.

    The thing that’s surprised me recently is the discovery that I have moderately large breasts. I had always regarded them as being small, but I wear a cup size larger than my mother, who does not, to look at, have small breasts. I’m an inch shorter and a fair bit slimmer, so proportionally, my breasts must be reasonably big.

    It’s not that either a slightly larger tummy than I’m used to or bigger breasts than I thought are bad things. It’s just that I don’t have the body I thought I had, which is an odd feeling. I expect it’ll go away.

38. I used to hate my hair. It’s inconsistent (curly in the front, straight in the back), it needs to be washed every single day or it looks greasy, and it’s just hard to deal with. Then I shaved it off, and now I LOVE my hair. The buzzed look is great on me, and I was lucky to be blessed with a nicely-shaped head. But now I have to deal with people staring, and asking that asinine question “So, why do you cut your hair like that?” (hint: because I WANT TO, jackass.) Not to mention getting mistaken for a man, despite being 5’4″ and having d-cup breasts, but I find that more amusing than offensive anyway.

    Other than the hair (problem solved!) I love my body. I think I look great. The only thing I don’t like is that I can’t buy pants OR bras that fit. I have 36″ hips and a 27″ waist and if I want pants to fit me I have to pay $100 for them. Which, you know, ouch. I’m also a 32D, and it’s hard to find bras in my size (though companies are getting better about it) so shopping for clothing gets very frustrating very quickly, and tends to bring out all of my anxieties about my appearance. Occasionally I’ll have a moment where I think “I wish my ass weren’t so big” but it always passes, because I love my curves. They’re worth all the aggravation.

39. I don’t have a problem with trying to or wanting to look nice- I think it’s really important that a distinction is made between wanting to look good in order to fit in with other people’s expectations and/or societal norms, and wanting to look good because you think it’s aesthetically pleasing.

    I recently read a book, in which one it states that a women of one particular country (10 points for guessing which!) did really pursue this….that many of them strive to achieve beauty not to look good for either men OR women or because society tells them they need to look beautiful to be successful, but because they consider it as something akin to achieving an aesthetic ideal (in pursuit of achieving certain aesthetic standards)…ie. Beauty for Beauty’s sake. And this country is very well known for being populated with women who people would consider beautiful.

    [However, the book also suggested that the women of this country did this because they did not have many opportunities for expression, and were limited in work opportunities, etc. Therefore, this pursuit of beauty may be a by-product of that.]

    While I do think that there is a distinction between the two (because of societal norms and the aesthetic objective), I don’t see chasing beauty for beauty’s sake that much more noble than doing it because we all feel pressured by society to look a certain way. Afterall, even if one wanted to look beautiful for aesthetic purposes…there comes a point where you have to ask yourself….why is this particular look aesthetically pleasing? Is it because of its inherent nature (for example, a symmetrical face and body), or is it simply because society has already decreed that that particular look is pleasing, and hence we as humans think of that feature as attractive or beautiful (big eyes)? In short, the features that we think of aesthetically pleasing …how much of is because of the inherent nature of the feature, and how much is because we have come to think of that feature as attractive due to societal norms.

40. Jill, thanks! And no worries, I don’t think your comment was a downer, just honest, and not particularly negative relative to women in general.

    I think anytime one has experienced getting positive affirmation for something, whether it’s learned or genetic, physical or skill-related, or a combination, it’s hard to not want to maintain that level of affirmation. If men were more often complimented for looks, they would feel the same way; I think male actors and models probably do. Similarly, guys tend to react harder to job demotions and firings, in my anecdotal experience, for similar reasons.

    Since looks are viewed as more superficial than other assets, lend themselves to more extreme and potentially destructive maintenance measures, and are more subject to the whims of fashion than absolute measures (such as running a fast sprint or being good at math), caring about them gets a bad rap. Which makes sense to a degree, but if one can remain healthy and balanced (still working on that one) I’m not sure it’s so bad. Some looks goals do overlap with health and fitness.

    So I don’t know, is it wrong to want to cultivate an asset that can be an assist at life, even though it seems like it’s not as worthy an asset as the math one, even if the latter’s genetic too? I think it’s wrong only if it’s too depended upon, since looks are fleeting. Math skills too, but not AS fleeting.

41. Froth: The thing that’s surprised me recently is the discovery that I have moderately large breasts. I had always regarded them as being small, but I wear a cup size larger than my mother, who does not, to look at, have small breasts. I’m an inch shorter and a fair bit slimmer, so proportionally, my breasts must be reasonably big.

    ME TOO! The only good thing about having gained weight during my freshman year is that somehow, although I’ve lost some of it, my boobs are pretty nifty. I went from an A to a C cup, and losing weight meant I went down to a B, which is just the right size. Surprised the heck out of me when I realized this.

42. I like my body. There are parts that bother me occasionally, but on the whole, I like it. The one thing that has helped me to be happy with my body more than any other?

    Sewing my own clothes.

    Seriously, it’s amazing how the nasty messages of body image can seep in so subconciously when you have to look at skinny mannequins, try on endless ill-fitting garments, read the ridiculous size numbers (or worse, have your size described in terms of your ‘largeness’), and then pay money for this experience.

43. Haha, I also started growing actual boobs when I was about 21/22. At first it scared the hell out of me and I ran for a pregnancy test as soon as I noticed, but I think I was simply putting on weight andthen lost it again everywhere else. I think they’re probably somewhere around a C now, though i have no idea since I don’t wear bras.

44. My body-image issues are kind of odd, because I’ve been bulimic since high school and I used to work for a fashion magazine that didn’t exactly encourage healthy body perceptions (or feminism, for that matter). It’s been more than a decade, for me, of learning to feel comfortable in my body.

    Right now, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, and it’s the first time I’ve ever been technically overweight, which is disconcerting. I’ve always been curvy and well-padded, but now, when I look in the mirror, I see jiggly thighs and a muffin top.

    The funny thing is that I’ll notice the love handles and think, “Ugh,” but within a second, I’m looking at my waist and saying, “That’s pretty cool.” Or I’ll be looking at my thighs and thinking, “Ugh,” but then I turn just a bit and look at my round ass and think, “There we go.” I like my arms, because they’re strong. I like my calves, because they’re round and they came from walking to and from work every day. I like my stomach, because it’s flat but has a little bit of softness on top of the muscle.

    I love my face. I’ve got awesome eyes, a really nice smile, and my dad’s nose, which is kind of wide but, well, it’s Dad’s. My hair color is… exactly the color I intended it to be when I poured it out of the bottle.

    I never assess other people the way I assess myself. My boyfriend, who used to be a competitive martial artist and a dancer, constantly complains about the weight he’s put on since he had a knee injury, and I don’t notice it for a second. It’s just his eyes and his legs and his smile and the shape of his head and his personality. But for me, I have to go through the checklist, and even if I like what I see, I don’t like that I feel the need to examine it critically all the time.

45. I believe that I am very beautiful, but it’s taken a long time for me to think that. I use (and sell) Mary Kay and take really good care of my skin — although, I do have a couple of nasty habits that sort of developed alongside another nasty habit (cutting) that I managed to break several years ago: I compulsively tweeze my eyebrows and will pick at any blemish that dare cross my face. So, I put a lot of effort into maintaining my own personal beauty standards. I also spend a lot of time and money on my hair, which is (not naturally) red and its vibrancy tells people a lot about my personality.

    My shoulders are too broad for me to wear the cute silky things that smaller girls can, even if my huge tits were smaller. It took me a while to get comfortable with wearing clothes that fit the shape I have rather than the one I want. I think that is a big part of why my friends and loved ones think I’m thinner than I was when I started college. (I haven’t. My lifestyle has changed dramatically, but because of an up-until-recently-undiagnosed thyroid issue, I haven’t lost any actual weight.)

    There are parts of my body that I wish I could change. I have gross backfat. I want a butt that isn’t flat. I’d like my thighs and stomach to be leaner. I’m working on these things, by being active and doing yoga a few times a week. Over all I’m in pretty good shape (heart and lungwise at least), and what I don’t like about my body I can fix and am working on. Most of all I want to be healthy. I don’t want to be stick thin, because that’s just not me. I’m comfortable in my skin, overall, and my style reflects that, and the things I want to change I want to change for myself, not anyone else.

46. I’ve been reading this thread on and off today while at work, and thinking of the ways that I like or don’t like my looks. I sort of have this feeling like my core self is very strong and has great self-esteem, but yet there’s this other part of me, the part that hurts due to negative body criticism at an early age, that sometimes feels disgusted or ashamed. I constantly feel like I am trying to stay with what I feel is my core self and not the insecure, bothered-by-society’s-expectations self.

    Looks-wise, objectively speaking, I have a pretty average build, which includes being not skinny. I’m somewhat short and thick, and as I was talking with a friend yesterday (who is also short and thick, with glasses and dark hair), who told me that for the fifth time, someone refered to her as “Ugly Betty,” being “ugly” in our stupid mainstream media culture often means short and/or thick.

    My ethnicity has endowed me with some traits that will never translate into the WASPy ideal, but fuck that, who cares. Why bother chasing that, really, if it’s not your natural body type (sort of a rhetorical question)? I was listening to the Addicted to Race podcast about race and beauty standards not too long ago (with Carmen Van Kerckhove and LaToya Peterson), and Peterson was talking about how if she were down to 120-130 lbs, she would be emaciated, and I totally related to that; even though I’m short, I would be and more importantly, feel, emaciated at that weight, even though according to BS BMI standards, that’s what I should be going for. If I was 120 lbs, my ass would require at least 10-20 of those lbs, and that doesn’t leave a lot for the rest of me!

    An interesting phenomenon: When I was in a relationship with a woman and more a part of the lesbian community, I think I had more confidence about my body, partially because I could experience more gender fluidity. I am naturally kind of masculine in certain ways, i.e. I’m hairy and build muscle easily. With all the best intentions, now, with a male partner, I often feel more insecure, as femme presentation is still “doing gender” to me…

    This was also a thought I had. My looks have helped me get totally hot partners, including my current one who makes love to me all the time; my body, with all my mixed up/fucked up feelings surrounding it, still manages to provide me with anywhere from three to a dozen or more orgasms every time we do it. Hopefully that doesn’t sound like “gloating,” but enjoying my body and my looks in that context makes me feel Damn Good! 😉

47. I’ve only been lurking so far, but somehow now feel compelled to make the leap. I hope no one minds…
    It’s a battle every day, really, and it always has been. In my first years in school, I used to get teased quite a lot for being ‘a fat cow’, though in retrospect I was actually quite slim. My suspicion is that most of the boys weren’t so able or willing to deal with a girl who didn’t seem to care too much for their attention, approval or opinion and who didn’t feel like dressing the girly part, either. Needless to say, the taunts stung all the same – so in my eyes I was a fat cow. Ugly, worthless, unattractive, unlovable.
    My mum’s always been thin and a looker and I wasn’t; she also made sure she got that message across. ‘Why don’t you dress a little prettier?’ Then around 17 I gained a bit of weight – I still wasn’t overweight, but there was flab and I thoroughly hated it. Sometimes it seems we’re all lacking perspective of how and what we really are when it comes to our bodies; I certainly do.
    So, yes, I hated myself pretty much all my life, for various things. The fact that I am not entirely (read: not at all) happy with having a female body doesn’t exactly improve my attitude to the cards I’ve been dealt. However, over the last 10 months or so, I managed to lose weight and I feel very, very good about the fact – especially since it meant getting rid of a lot of ‘feminine curves’ (Don’t get me wrong, I love them in most women, I just don’t want them on myself so much.), which allows for somewhat different clothes without looking like a freak.
    What is a lot less pleasing is how quickly the whole thing develops its own dynamic: I starve myself silly, I eat myself silly, I purge occasionally (then again thinking that I haven’t been given a mind just to obsess about food, but it’s always just a matter of time until I give in again), and on the whole I am thinner, better-looking (in my eyes), but not a tiny bit happier.
    I do get more attention from men, but that’s not what I was in for. I’d have rather remained oblivious as to how much the average guy is going for the skinny-look; it’s kind of hard to believe they really don’t mind ‘this-and-that’ in a body as they say they don’t when before they used to say the very same thing about perfectly normal female bodies and now have become a lot friendlier towards an ex-perfectly-normal,-now-skinny body they previously used to ignore.
    Now more than ever, I am under the impression that my worth and attractiveness as a human being are defined entirely by the way I look, and it makes me absolutely self-conscious about what, why and when I eat. Given that I am in the midst of my MA finals, you should think that there were more important things to worry about…
    So on the whole I am okay with the way I look, but getting there has left me a lot less okay as a person – there’s always more weight to lose (though intellectually the advantage of being underweight is a mystery to me, it still seems very appealing), there’s always the threat of gaining weight, of drawing too much or too little attention, of still not being attractive (though weirdly enough I won’t be attractive on the grounds I’d like to be in any case, so why do I worry so much?). I dissect myself on a daily basis. The more comfortable I get with my body, the more I seem to define myself solely by my looks, and that – overall – is a pretty sad statement to make.
    (I apologise for the lack of brevity and coherency and the occasional mistake in my English – at the moment, my life and my exams are driving me nuts. I hope you don’t mind me commenting.)

48. I generally like the way I look. I have off-days, naturally. Who doesn’t?

    I’m considered pretty, and sometimes I feel like I won the lottery with my body. I’m too lazy to exercise or eat well, but somehow I stay thin. I have an hourglass figure, and I do almost nothing to maintain it. I love my breasts. They’re very large and perky.

    I feel like the reason I like my body so much is because I’m a slut. Most of my body issues went away when I started having sex, and realized that if other people were going to appreciate my body that much, I should probably start. When I sleep with people who are very attractive, I feel like a large part of what I get out of it is a kind of validation — “Hey, he’s drop dead gorgeous, and he slept with ME. I can’t be that bad.” I don’t know whether or not this is healthy, but it’s how my brain works.

    I’m incredibly grateful to be pretty. I feel like it helps me out a lot.

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