My Body, Myself.

I have always been fairly athletic. I like playing sports, being aggressive, and occasionally fitting into my butch lesbian stereotype quite neatly. I have played soccer (football) since the tender age of eight, and along the way played basketball, volleyball, tennis, flag football, baseball, done track and field, and wrestling. I was also an accomplished equestrienne (suck on that, stereotypes) with ribbons for dressage, show jumping, and eventing.

Because you clearly want to know insane amounts of information about me, I have a great set of health stats, including an insanely healthy blood pressure, low resting heart rate, and an excellent lung capacity. I can run a 5k without pushing myself in under 30 minutes, and then continue on to do hours of weight training and other fitness. I can do push-ups (including ones with my feet elevated) for days. I've got a great level of aerobic fitness and recovery.

On most days, I eat non-fat, plain yogurt for breakfast (generally about 200grams) with fruit, usually a nectarine or strawberries. Lunch is probably a lean protein and veggies, maybe with some rice or potatoes, and dinner generally follows in the same pattern. Usually my calorie count is somewhere under 1400 calories a day.

I exercise probably three to five times a week for about two hours each time. I also take the stairs instead of the elevator, in most cases, and I purposely set up situations where I can walk further away.

I'm 5'4" and I weigh somewhere in the range of about 160lbs. This makes me overweight- not exceptionally overweight, by any means, though I was once considered obese by the government (I did, however, have a nice extra 28 or so pounds on my frame). There was once a time when I really didn't care what I looked like, but starting in my stint at boarding school, I started to get more upset with my body as the years have continued. Maybe it was because I started putting on weight, but I was never 'slim' or 'skinny'. In fact, when I went away to school at 15, I weighed about as much as I do now. Then, I was happy with my body, and now I am miserable.

I have undergone various diets in attempts to lose weight, I have exercised more, and I have changed all sorts of habits and patterns in my life because I have been surrounded by a culture which informs me that my only currency is how I look.

I'm fairly intelligent and creative, as far as those things can be self-assessed, but if I state that I am "stupid" or most other derivatives surrounding my intellect, people will laugh as long as I say it with some humor. This occurs regardless of why I have decided to insult myself. It generally springs from self-consciousness, but society doesn't repeat it at me, so I can generally recover pretty quickly from bouts of insecurity about my brain capacity.

If I dare suggest that I am 'fat' or 'ugly' or 'overweight' I am treated to the chorus of society deniers who assure me that I am not overweight, fat, or ugly. I say that they are society deniers because pop-culture has informed me that I am all of these things. I struggle to find myself attractive in a world where beauty is assigned by physical qualities such as size and femininity. I constantly quantify my personal beauty by saying "I'm attractive to women who like women, but not men." or "I'm attractive facially but my body isn't." There is no space in my mind for me to be both overweight and attractive, now, because I have somehow internalized my culture's definitions of what it means to be a modern woman.

I have bleached my teeth, grown out my hair, plucked my eyebrows, shaved hair off of the majority of the places it grows naturally, used acne treatments, purposely lost weight, changed my diet and lifestyle,  my way of dressing, talking, acting, and even writing because the looming dictatorial presence of "SOCIETY" has informed me that I need to fit in to a mold that they have graciously created for me. Whether other people find me attractive or charming or fashionable is irrelevant because a good chunk of my life has been dedicated to having society as a whole find me attractive, charming, and fashionable.

I know that I am lucky in many ways. My parents are financially secure, I'm well-educated, white, and likely to also be financially secure because of the life my parents were able to provide. I am not generally discriminated against, because I live in a liberal city, and I have most all of the rights that a heterosexual in my situation would. I'm not large enough that I need to find clothes from plus-size distributers, and I am not generally looked down upon for my size in obvious ways.

The ways, however, that I am looked down upon, are there. Small but insidious, they creep under my skin. People do not believe me when I tell them my fitness level. Athletic organizations assume my skill must be lower than it is, or patronize me when it's high. I have heard people in day to day life, and seen people on the internet, refer to me as fat or ugly. It is easier to believe these small comments that sneak into my periphery because they match the image I am compared to. Beauty is being small, athleticism is having under 15% body fat.

I don't believe it's impossible to lose weight and keep it off. I was 188 two years ago and haven't been since I started trying to actively lose weight. It takes hard work, and I don't even care about that. I'm a dedicated person, and I will probably continue on the downward trend, weight-wise, I have started for myself.

I like my new eating habits, because I do feel more energy, and more healthy and nutritionally satisfied. I don't even miss most of the junky things I liked eating. I don't care that this journey has made me into a healthier individual, because that's a positive, and has improved my stability in mood.

What I do care about is how I feel like I cannot indulge in any vice of food without society judging my choices and telling me "That is why you're fat." I'm sorry, but the candy bar I have maybe (maybe) once a week or the ice cream I eat maybe once a month, if that, does not magically make me overweight, especially when I factor it into the daily calorie count I cannot help tabulating in my head.

I care that I am so guilty about it. I care that I have lost some of myself in the pursuit of being "better looking", because I know that once I've gotten there, all of the importance that I've assigned to being physically fit will not magically solve any of the insecurities I have. It will not make me more attractive or less attractive to anyone but this mysterious and poisonous "society". I care because of the countless other women and men that will be plagued with the same sensitivity to how they are perceived by others to the point of losing the trees for the forest. Even if I become "fit", I will have shown I do not regard myself as much as I regard what culture thinks of me. I will have shown that I am just another cog in the machine of image oppression, whirring away as I micro-analyze every inflated "imperfection" I have.

Behind my formulated appearance, what will be left? I don't want to be a person who makes choices based on media's pervasive influence, because it contradicts with my personal assessment of intelligence. I shouldn't feel this way, because everything about beauty and aesthetics is relative.

I should be the only person I try to appeal to. It is my body, after all, and it does not belong to "society." It belongs to me.