Self Esteem
Brooke Thomas (12-3)
Photographed by Theo Wyss- Flamm
One day when I was in the first grade, I came home with my spring photos. They were inside of one of those Lifetouch envelopes with the clear cellophane-y window that made it easier for your teacher to hand them out. I left the folder on the kitchen table and went to my bedroom without saying a word to my mother.
I loathed those photos. I thought that I looked fat, no I knew it. I was six years old. I was six years old and I already didn't want to live inside of my body.
We can just fast forward to middle school now. I was (un)lucky enough to be well endowed in the sixth grade. To me, my boobs were a nuisance more than anything, but they were a point of interest to the people around me. At home I plotted ways to get rid of them. My aunt gifted me Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.” I thought that Margaret was such a f***ing idiot. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why she wanted bigger breasts. It seemed then and still does now, that body image problems are some big cosmic joke because for every person who would like to get rid of something there is someone who would gladly take it (probably).
I went through this phase where I wanted to have my widow’s peak permanently removed but my mother said I would regret it. Around that time my grandfather told me that he wished he could get rid of the chicken pox scars on his face but that if everyone who wanted to change something about themselves got in line to talk to God, the line would wrap around the Earth a hundred times. I thought that anecdote was stupid because my widow’s peak was still on my face. They left me no choice but to shave it off myself, nicking my forehead in the process and making it look way bigger than it used to.
To me, they were an obstacle to getting to know the person that lived inside of my body. A girl that was funny and smart and had a lot of reading recommendations. But as that year went on I realized that there was some sort of power in using your physical body as a gateway into... the thing that was most important to me at the time... boys. I thought that maybe if they liked my boobs then sooner than later they would listen to me. I was wrong. It made me embarrassed, it made me feel detached from my body like they owned it like it was there for them and not me like I was renting like I was just passing through. I felt like a visitor in my own skin and I spent the majority of my time wanting to check out. I poked and prodded at my body because there were so many things that I ached to change about myself.
Self-hatred becomes so exhausting and all-encompassing at some point that you stop and think about what has been unthinkable for so long: Maybe I should look for things that I actually like about myself instead.
It's incredible what you can find when you actually start looking.
I have always believed myself to be one of the funniest women on the planet so I leaned into that. Sooner than later I started to tell boys when I didn’t think that their jokes were funny because sometimes they were my friends and I didn’t want them to embarrass themselves but more often it was to take back my power.
I didn't just decide one day that I would love or even like myself. It doesn't happen that easily. But, it has been happening slowly but surely for me.
My mother gave me an extremely long leash in terms of self-expression, never long enough for me to hang myself but definitely long enough that I could get into messes. I'm not as ill-mannered as I used to be but that energy that my mom let me cultivate my entire life has manifested as me being able to be the person that I am today. So it wasn’t difficult for me to stop laughing at jokes that weren’t funny, or to stop being afraid to tell people what I really thought.
This piece was inspired in part by an image that I saved on my phone over a year ago. It's a screenshot of a Reductress article titled: "How to Stop Trying to Be The Girl He Wants You to Be and Become His Waking Nightmare.” I wouldn't necessarily call myself a “waking nightmare” but I definitely don’t want to live my life as the dream of anyone other than myself. I am the permanent resident of my body, and I am still teaching myself to take up as much space as I need as I so please.