Combat, I'm Ready for Combat. I Say I Don't Want That But What if I do?

Here is how body image issues get to me:

Yesterday my active wear from Lane Bryant arrived after much anticipation. I was so excited that I didn’t waste any time putting on the elastic pants pulling them up over my large hanging stomach and feeling the thick band secure around my waist. Skeptically I walked briskly out of the bathroom and around our downstairs living area. The pants stayed firmly around my waist. I jiggled my body. Nothing. I beamed.  I sat down, then got up again. Beamed again. They were staying firmly around my hips and holding the hanging fat of my stomach closer to my body which helped moving around without issue. 

This was monumental for me purely for the fact that I had always struggled with pants staying up around my waist and struggled even more with finding leggings or any type of pant that would allow me to move my body freely without constant disruption of holding my pants up with my hands.

It’s not that I don’t like moving my body or exercising, its that exercising has always been more of a task than simply getting out and moving. It became an exercise in futility against the never-ending struggle of wearing pants on my body, and thus I avoided any activity that required too much movement out of frustration.

I spent the entirety of the day in my new active clothes mostly listening to an audio book and hanging round downstairs and texting a few people about my excitement. “Nice! I’m glad you found something! Show off the pants!” My friend texted me.  “Show off the butt and be like OMG guys these are so comfy!”

I smirked in agreement. They ARE comfy. But I was unsure my butt was really going to all that life changing. I pushed the commentary off with a casual, “I will when I get near the ring light or the mirror.” Knowing full well that the bliss I felt would be zapped if I actually saw the right side of my stomach hanging low in the mirror and causing a distorted uneven projection in the mirror, not the image of how I looked when I put the clothes on. I’ve talked about this before when I bought a pair of jeans that fit me (even with the same, falling down issues of wearing pants.)

Even with companies using larger bodies in their advertising and website, they still use women and men who fall within an acceptable range whose bodies don’t hang unevenly or photos that are edited to hide these so-called imperfections. But when I make the purchases, the way the clothing fits, is the idea I have in my head before I see myself in the mirror. Cute. Ready to move, an acceptable fat and I struggle with reminding myself that comparison is the thief of joy. To remind myself that whether I am in a large body whose clothes fit tightly, exposing parts of me I hide with loose flowy dresses, make up and pretty hair, I am not alone in these struggles and there are others who quite possibly feel the same way.

And at the end of the day…I have pants that will allow me to move my body in ways that I don’t often feel comfortable doing which is more important than the low hanging fat or the skewed vision I have of myself because as I accept these parts of me and more companies become inclusive, I can come out of a self-inflicted hiding spot and remind myself and others that we deserve to be seen and feel good and beautiful and our bodies are not the cause of shame but the standards and negative self-talk can be changed. I’m learning to quiet the negative voice in my mind little by little.