First Guest Post!

Nikki says: I'm fickle, confident, shy, crafty, and giving.
I know her from school. She's wonderful, whimsical, cheerful, always willing to help out or cheer up anyone who needs it, and has the most beautiful smile. She's 19, wants to be a teacher, and I read this post on her blog, Provocative and Talkative, and knew that THIS is what I wanted for my first guest post. It's so wonderful, and inspiring, and beautiful. So, here's what Nikki has to say!


This post is stemming from a comment made by Lily (that link, by the way, is to her blog we were required to make for an art class and hers has a nice humor that a lot of the others don't) on my post about being naked. She said that she was jealous of the level of comfort that I have with my body and it got me thinking about how I became so confident in my own skin.

It's definitely a process and it takes a long time. And I definitely did not hold the views I have today in high school, or even last year.

Middle school sucked. It sucks for everyone, I'm sure, and I'm most certainly not trying to out-suck anyone else's middle school experience, but I was at a different school every year, sometimes twice a year. The moving prevented me from having friends really, so I would spend most of my time at home reading (read: sitting still for hours on end while eating Oreos). Needless to say, I wasn't the skinniest kid around -- add that to the fact that it's not easy to make friends in a place where kids are ruthless about almost constant fat jokes and it's a recipe for an anti-social thirteen year old. I would sometimes read these books that, while not really above my maturity or reading level, were definitely aimed at an older audience, like twenty-five year old heterosexual women. They focused on being sexy, being thin, having a rich, handsome boyfriend -- they were basically Cosmopolitan in book form.

High school rolled around and my school situation became more stable (two schools in four years!) and, with that stability, eventually came friends. However, having a more significant presence among my peers made me more self-conscious and body-loathing than I had ever been. People were looking at me and talking to me and I felt constantly criticized. Because of this, between October and February of my sophomore year, I lost forty pounds.

These pounds that I lost weren't lost healthfully. I didn't eat breakfast or lunch and I criticized my body every time I walked past a mirror (and when I walked past a boy, and when I walked past a girl, and when I walked past a teacher...). My relationship with food was a very negative one.

So, I ate less, lost the weight, and was smaller than I could ever remember being. I stopped hanging out at home alone, made some new friends, and had a few boyfriends. I contributed it all to my new body, not at all to coming out of my shell or actually trying to meet people for once. I had confidence in the way I looked and the way I felt. I felt beautiful, sexy, and desired. I figured out how to get the boys to want me and what to do once they wanted me (which, by the way, isn't always the best thing to learn at fifteen).

Then, early in the summer after my junior year -- which I still think was one of the most amazing summers ever -- I gained half of the weight back. It was shocking and I hated it. I felt huge. None of my clothes fit anymore. My confidence plummeted. But, the boys stuck around until I kicked them to the curb, the friends stuck around, and my summer was still awesome despite half of it being spent in a bathing suit and senior pictures being taken.

My confidence stayed pretty low and it wasn't until fairly recently that I started re-evaluating what it means to be me, to be beautiful, and to be worthy of love from myself and others.

1. I had to realize that those images in magazines and descriptions in books are not real or practical and I do not have to conform to them. It's okay that I have a hips and my boobs are slightly bigger than a B cup.
2. I pushed personality to the forefront. I'm a good person. I'm caring and kind and even funny sometimes. These things overrule the fact that I have a larger-than-normal butt.
3. I took a Women's Studies course. It was life-changing.
4. I started looking at the women around me to establish a new beauty ideal. When I started sleeping with women, I discovered that I'm attracted to all types of women regardless of size. My attraction to these other body types made me realize that someone also might find my own body attractive.
5. I had to re-think my relationship with food. Eating is good for me. Food is what powers my body.
6. I made a conscious effort to see the good things about my body. At first, I focused on the things my body could do. Then, I gradually started actually seeing the beauty in my curves. Also, my skin's really soft.
7. This is kind of lame, but I have motivational backgrounds on my computer. The sometimes cheesy sayings remind me what's important and what's not. My current one says, "You (yes, you) are going to have an awesome day tomorrow. You will kick ass and take names. I promise." Others say things like, "You are enough" and "Go. Be. Love. The world needs you."

I guess what I'm trying to accomplish with this list, and this whole post, is to show that people don't just pop out of the womb feeling good about themselves. It takes time and, sometimes, a very conscious effort to acknowledge what's good about you and why those things make you worthy of love. It's bigger than liking your eyes or thinking you have nice hair. It's taking all of those things, adding that your personality rocks in addition to your body, and accepting them as true -- that's where true confidence comes from. It's a struggle and it's hard and it takes a lot of time, but it's worth it.

Body Image, Women's College, Resources

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this before, but I go to a private women's college. The curriculum is fast-paced, in-depth, and challenging. Social life is full of pettiness, disloyalty, and back-stabbing. Pressure is there to not only succeed in academics, have a full social life, work (if your parents aren't rich enough to provide you with spending money), but to look damn good while you're doing it, too. Whenever I go to the gym (and it's a tiny gym) there are tons of people in there. Of course, I don't know their individual reasons for working out, so who am I to judge? I wouldn't say that there is a huge emphasis on working out in order to look good or be skinny; the emphasis is more on being healthy. For instance, the school has started a Scottie Fit program (our mascot) in which participants can buy a pass, $5 each class, and do things like aerobics, swimming, and cultural dances in order to get fit. However, this is coming from a school that is low on healthy food options, posts the caloric content of the food in the dining hall (this is what enrages me the most), has inconsistant portion sizes, and has little in the way of awareness about eating disorders and healthy eating. Yes, this week is Love Your Body week and National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and we annually have a "Be Comfortable in Your Genes!" jeans drive for womens' shelters and a Candlelight Vigil to honor those who have passed and who are struggling with an eating disorder, but this week is, to my knowledge, when the majority of positive body talk and eating disorder awareness goes on on my campus. A campus filled with women. Women who are challenged to perform on a higher emotional, intellectual, and mental level than most of their non-private women's college attending peers. These stressors lead to higher rates of depression and anxiety, which in many cases, I'm afraid, could lead to eating disorders or the relapse of an eating disordered individual. While this hasn't been studied, I know from what I've observed that it definitely leads to the abuse of alcohol, drugs like Adderal and Rittalin, and risky behaviors. I've also had multiple people reveal to me that they are suffering from eating disorders or disordered eating behaviors, and it worries me.

What is my college doing wrong? They are hardly doing anything. Yes, you can seek personal counseling or a referral to a therapy from our Wellness Center. Yes, they have the ability to monitor the health and weight of those with eating disorders in tandem with an off-campus treatment team. But do they hold support groups? No. Do they even advertise groups held in the community? Only if those groups in the community reach out to the school, not the other way around. Is there any open dialogue surrounding eating disorders, healthy body image, and resources for help? Not really. Only during Love Your Body week are these types of problems addressed. And while I can't speak for the whole college or those in attendance here, I do not see these things being provided.

And my biggest question is: Why?

What do you think would help our college community? What have your schools done? What would you like to see implemented?

Crazy Grandma

So, I've noticed that I've gotten stronger. It's an awesome feeling. The past two days that I've worked out, I haven't been sore the day after. I've been able to actually complete the 10x5 (modified) push-ups that Allie and I do without crapping out half-way through the fourth and fifth reps. I've also begun to look forward to Allie and my 11 o'clock work-out sessions. Last night we were both really pumped up, and she told me not to do crunches that would make Crazy Grandma cry, and so I was laying there, crunching, repeating "Crazy Grandma, Crazy Grandma," over and over in my head as I did my sit-ups. See, Allie has two Grandmas; Crazy Grandma, and Nine-Fingered Grandma, and she tells us their antics all the time. All in all, hilarity was had by all last night, and hopefully Crazy Grandma didn't cry because of my poor crunch form.