What Are My Boobs For?

The life long practice of finding peace with my body.

Preface: As a white, cis, hetero, able-bodied, thin woman who more or less typically fits into the standard of beauty in American culture, it feels a little eye-rolly to be sharing this. And these words are true for me. Kind and constructive conversation is always welcome.

I spent the better part of 7 years being a fitness professional

I was mainly a yoga teacher but if we are honest about our Western culture’s adaptation of yoga, it’s fitness. 

I truly loved finding a way to marry breath with cardio, music, movement, and connection. I miss those days quite often. But as I’ve settled back into a physical movement practice after many years off, I’ve noticed how my intention and hope have, maybe, finally shifted. Peace and acceptance with my body feel closer and more tangible after many years of the opposite.

For so long I strived to make my body smaller

I learned early to believe that I held more value and power based on the way I look, and I did many a thing to maintain that. My formative years were the late 90s and early aughts. And I’ve been a lover of pop culture for as long as I can remember. I worshipped at the altar of Rachel and Monica.¹ Britney and Christina. Julia Stiles and Kirsten Duntz. I can’t even begin to describe my obsession with the Spice Girls. Waif was in and I wanted my body to fit that impossibly small mold. 

I grew up in a family that celebrated and loved food. My mom is an incredible cook. Carol is absolutely the host with the most. My dad was Italian so we revolved everything around food at my Nuna’s table. I don’t have any distinct memories of being shamed around food from my family of origin, but I do recall talk of diets and what a “healthy body” was. We were all (still are) swimming in the water of diet culture just trying to do our best.

With a pretty solid foundation of acceptance at home, I still wasn’t immune to the ways in which diet culture and the obsession with thinness dug their claws into me. I’ve been immersed in a culture that not only idolizes but prizes thinness. What I learned about my body came from being a girl out in the world.

I’ve restricted, I’ve cleansed, I’ve ex-laxed, I’ve missed out on wholly delicious moments in life. I don’t identify with having had an eating disorder but throughout my twenties, I absolutely cycled through disordered eating. As Kate Kennedy shares in her new book One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls & Fitting In:

The truth is, most of us weren’t okay. I never had an eating disorder, but I’d be lying if I said the patterns weren’t still problematic and disordered in many ways; just because it never got clinically bad, it doesn’t mean it was good.²

Maintaining my size and depriving myself gave me the ability to pass through the world with minimal judgment, find clothing in my size at any store, and mostly live without scrutiny. 

Yet when I was in my smallest body I was mentally miserable.

The ability to simply just be wasn’t possible. I was in a body that had achieved the cultural standard and I couldn’t freaking enjoy myself. It was mental gymnastics to pick out clothes and eat food.

I felt like I wasn’t enough, still do some days. It’s taken lots of time and lots of unlearning (there’s a resource list below) to break myself free of a standard I’d set for myself, thinking it was all on me. When in reality I live in a world that has designed and built a structure to make me feel this way. To lose touch with myself and the connection to my body in pursuit of a white supremacist agenda that wants me to think I have power when I really just uphold it for something else more harmful. And my experience pales in comparison to those with more marginalized identities. 

All of this makes me want to wear a t-shirt that says “We’re all losing.” There are folks who very clearly and systemically lose more than others, but we do all lose. Even those 1%-ers lose complete touch with humanity and reality. 

I recently passed the pencil test

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Sweetest Thing. I have three women in my life that I’ve been friends with since 2001 and this movie is our lighthouse. We can quote basically every line and it never gets old to receive a text message with a GIF or a reference to this film. It is a classic Y2K romcom that formed and bonded us to this day.

There’s a scene in which Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate are in a dressing room critiquing their own body (thin, white, abled) and how time and gravity have changed them. Here’s the clip³:

Now, almost 35, having had a kid and generally lived life, LOL at thinking a 28-year-old body was something on the decline. And in general, why must we always frame age and time through a negative lens?

Yet this stuck with me. Just the other day I was checking out my own boobs in the mirror, and while this exact train of thought didn’t come to me, a buried memory of a pencil test did.

I don’t know where TF it came from but I found myself calling Lee Singer into the bathroom to tell him I could in fact pass the pencil test. As in, if I put a pencil under my naked boobs, it will stay there on its own because I’ve got enough gravity and underboob to make it so. From sustaining a life to holding pencils, this is now what my boobs are for. 

Love is complicated

While our culture has made strides to be more accepting and actually name diet culture for what it is and what it does to us, it’s not exactly clear cut to just one day be untangled from the years of learning harmful things.

On an episode of the

Cult of Perfect

podcast with

Virginia Sole-Smith

and

Sara Petersen

, they clearly showcase that the body positivity movement of recent years has been coopted and diluted. They illuminate the truth that what started from the work and activism of fat, queer people of color has morphed into “loving yourself” from small-fat white women. This broad-strokes message misses the point and is just not enough to make systemic change, it actually can continue to uphold thin privilege.⁴

Personally, finding love for my body every day doesn’t feel possible. It can feel out of reach just on a practical level, and it can also feel like another new message from external culture that I’m not measuring up to. I need to find new perspectives to view my relationship with my body, and I need new words that don’t feel like social media bullet-point bullshit.

My dear friend Sarah Jane Chapman is a yoga therapist whose work is all about finding peace within your body. The language she uses and the way she reframes internal thoughts toward bodies have been illuminating and healing for me:

When we look to the relationships of our loved ones that we sustain relationships with, we see the ups and downs. Their quirks become annoying and we love them both in spite of and because of those imperfections. When we hold our bodies to the same standards, then, no, loving your body is not impossible. You may simply need to adjust your view of love. 

Like your loved ones, your body will disappoint you. Like your loved ones, your body will act in ways you wish they hadn’t. Like your loved ones, your body will hold you up, keep you going, and simply want the best for you.

A body with a purpose

It’s interesting and in some ways refreshing to see all those above-mentioned celebrities today. Some have gracefully allowed age to actually happen, making them softer and more beautiful IMO. Others have lived in the Hollywood bubble for so long that there is no escaping a frozen forehead and swollen lips. Some have been open about their regretful decisions to inject and enhance. 

What’s been embedded from my formative years and all the time that’s followed, has evolved into a continuous practice that sometimes makes progress.

Can look at my body and love her from all unique angles? Some days that’s easy and possible, other days it’s not. 

Can I see this body as an entity that has grown, been resilient, and created life? I have to remind myself regularly that pregnancy was a transformative time when I finally met some peace within myself and that isn’t gone forever. 

Can I give my aching body grace for the years of over-exercise and find movement that is joyful again? Slowly but surely and with lots of support from a physical therapist. 

Can I embrace age and counter the cultural narrative, let my body ease-fully settle into the woman she’s always wanted to become? *deeeeep exhaleeee* With great hope and hard work, this feels a bit closer and more tangible.

Resources for making peace with your body

In hard or hopeless moments, I find it heartening to realize that I can pull together a list of solid, impactful resources off the top of my head with ease. I admire and fangirl all of these people, and this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. There are SO many more diverse, powerful voices and bodies advocating for change and sharing their truth. I hope this is a starting place to dig deeper.

Here’s to unlearning, relearning, and working to accept and honor ourselves for who we are.

• Virginia Sole-Smith
  writes the newsletter
  Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith
  (which also does podcast episodes) and she is a leading journalist for the anti-diet and body liberation movement. I feel so smart and educated from the work she puts out into the world.

• Dacy Gillespie
  writes the newsletter
  unflattering
  that is a deep and critical look into how we dress ourselves and why. Her clear insights have informed my shopping and styling habits in such a profound way. 

• Sarah Jane Chapman who I mentioned above also created the stunning Be With Your Body Tarot deck that supports us in creating rituals and connection with our bodies. 

• Noha Beshir
  writes the newsletter
  Letters from a Muslim Woman
  and her piece Beauty in the Eye of the Hijab (and all her essays, really) have graciously and beautifully given me a window into a lived experience different from my own, and for that I’m grateful. 

• Shana Minei Spence
  writes the newsletter
  The Nutrition Tea Substack
   and her perspective as a dietician intersects with diet culture, race, and social change. Her work is thoughtful, well-researched, and has just the right amount of humor that I deeply enjoy. 

• Sara Petersen
  writes the newsletter
  In Pursuit of Clean Countertops
  and her recent interview with musician Farideh brings light and validation to the feeling of needing to do just another thing the right way when it comes to our bodies and motherhood.

• The Gloria Newsletter is for adult women written by women who are not quite old, but no longer young. While the fashion focus is a bit too aspirational for me, the news stories on women’s health, reproductive rights, and our aging bodies are solid. 

If you’re reading this or engaging with it on the Substack site or app and you enjoyed it, please tap the Like or Restack button. That helps me grow and also makes my heart go boom-clap. I post new entries once or twice a month and you can catch up on my thoughts about boobs, regret, mothering, the internet, and finding meaning in it all until the next one arrives. <3

1. My new fave pod is the Handsome Podcast, and on a recent episode, they talked about how cool and inspiring it was that the main women of Friends were also an example of women being silly and standing in female comedic power. Even while being symbols that upheld cultural beauty standards, that was empowering to see. And I’ve been really embracing my long-last Phoebe Era these days too. 

2. This is not to diminish or make light of clinical eating disorders. If you or someone you know is suffering from ED, Eating Disorder Hope is an organization with a full list of support and resources. 

3. As with most movies from this time period, they haven’t aged very well. I’m sure the film is filled with cancelable and cringey offenses that just do not hold up today. Not to mention the messages I was internalizing about my body from a particular scene like this. And yet, I still giggle when watching, and most importantly cherish the fond memories I have of being a young teenage girl laughing with her best friends at a basement sleepover.

4. Thin privilege is the experience of the world as being built for your body, as defined by Virginia.