I ask my stepson, "Do you love yourself?"
Without hesitation, he answers, "Yes."
Amused by his
lack
of a lack of self-esteem, I question him further. "When you look in the mirror, what do you see?"
"A cool guy."
We should all be this up on ourselves, I think. At 16, Zander's already a good model for the rest of us. But let's break this down. I of course believe my stepson is the bee's knees, but look, he's no Hollywood it-boy, no Justin Bieber of the moment. Or, using his own standard measurement for success, he's no mega-rap star, like Hopsin. Washboard abs, this kid does not possess.
But none of that matters. In Zander's pubescent wisdom, he's got it goin' on. He's smart, funny, sensitive. His friends adore him. He gets along--most of the time--with all of his parents. He has the gift of gab, is comfortable in his own skin, and looks to the future with optimism. He can't afford the cool jeans at retail, but he knows how to spot them in a thrift store.
Zander makes self-acceptance look easy, but it's a struggle for many of us. I've written about this before in a post called "
I Suck at Self-Love." The problem is mighty, and it comes first in the form of our parents, who might not have fostered the kind of self-acceptance that Zander exhibits, and then in the form of society, which likely isn't providing stunning examples of individuals who look, sound, and act like us.
It's particularly tough in the area of body image. Even if you've excelled in your career or as a parent, you might still berate that image of you in the mirror.
And this is the case no matter what you actually look like. In his book
How to Have Style
, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi writes:
There's something I need to get off my chest. Every girl I've ever met, skinny, large, or average, thinks she's fat. I have rarely met a girl whose appearance matches her self-perception. No one is comfortable in her own skin. Ironically, to me, most of the time she looks just right.
Mizrahi's mission in the book is to guide women toward true style, going against the fact that most women do not resemble the women who model his own clothing lines. It's a small step toward making fashion and style more accessible.
But I want to go further and expand our notion of what beauty--and health--look like. Here are a few facts.
Skinny doesn't equate to healthy. Perhaps you've heard of the "skinny fat" phenomenon, which is when people "with stellar metabolisms and magical genes," to quote
this Time article, develop diseases we tend to associate with obesity, such as type 2 diabetes, blood sugar issues, and high blood pressure or cholesterol. There are also many examples of athletes whose body types defy the skinny mandate, not to mention a growing recognition that a lot of the stereotypes we hold just aren't true. For example, a lot of people think of yoga bodies as long and lean, but
here, demonstrating advanced poses, are some yogis who don't conform to that stereotype
.
In fact, it looks like weight could actually be a sign of health. Recent research confirms that some people with body sizes we have traditionally considered overweight or maybe even slightly obese are actually protected from a wide variety of diseases, by virtue of their weight. This seeming "paradox" has basically rocked the medical establishment. You can
read more about it here
.
The common denominators are nutrition and fitness, regardless of size. The above shouldn't be taken as an invitation to eat with reckless abandon and embrace your inner couch potato. Quite the contrary. It seems kind of obvious when you think about it, but the research points to a need to measure such things as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other biometric markers
instead
of fixating on weight.
There's even a
Health at Any Size movement, which pledges "compassionate self-care" comprised of "eating in a flexible and attuned manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite" and "finding the joy in moving one's body and being active."
Gee, that last part sounds familiar, doesn't it?
I invite you to join me in perhaps the greatest challenge of all these 90 days: self-acceptance. Let's gaze compassionately at ourselves and each other in the mirror, honoring the diversity in the room and recognizing that, like my stepson, we're all pretty cool!