The mountains on the horizon, there in the West, are particularly beautiful this morning: the sky is heavy with grey (rain?) clouds everywhere except for right over the mountains, which are all covered in white from yesterday’s snowfall and now gleaming in the sunshine, in those rays of light that seem to be there just to point out this gorgeous landscape, to remind the world of that beauty.
Is this an omen for the feeling that I could have with respect to my own body, there, in the future but within reach, if I wanted it?
Since last summer/autumn I have come to really accept and like my body as it is, after a quarter of a century of body-image issues and struggles. But more recently, I have started actually asking myself if I’m happy with just accepting it or whether I would like more?
I believe that having finally found acceptance of my body as it is now is a huge step for me. But until recently I thought that was the “end station” for my relationship with my body. Now I’m realizing that there could be more: more work for me to do but also, and especially, more gratification and more feeling really myself as I want to be, as I see myself, as I am.
I have come to accept the layer of fat on my thighs which, while still not being much, definitely gives my thighs a female shape. I’ve come to accept it partly because I know that I need a minimum amount of fat in my body for it to function in a healthy way as a female body and to thus stave off problems such as osteoporosis later in life; and partly because my body shape, including or maybe especially that layer of fat rounding my thighs and butt, has brought me approval from the external world (basically, it’s been one of the things that made me attractive to males I’ve liked). But are social approval/sexual attractiveness and being rational about making the best of my body’s genetic features enough, especially if I can change my body?
My whole life I have wanted to get rid of my round thighs: not because I didn’t want to be fat but, rather, because I wanted to be lean and muscular, I wanted the straight body because that meant being masculine which felt more like me. It’s not that I wanted to be skinny: I didn’t want to be a woman because I felt I wasn’t one.
And now that I am finally meeting people who have gone through different processes of changing their body to make it more aligned to their identity, now that I’m actually hearing and seeing that it’s possible, now that I’m seeing the beautiful results (both physical and mental/emotional beauty) that these interventions can bring — now I’m finally allowing myself to entertain the idea of doing it myself: not just trying to get the biggest shoulders I can with intense exercise and protein (plant-based, not easy!) and creatinine supplements sometimes, but actually taking testosterone. Not just hiding my small breasts in billowy shirts or squishing them in tight sports bras, or ditching bras altogether, but actually getting a mastectomy. Not just accepting my rounded thighs and hiding them, sometimes, in big baggy trousers or under a long sweater, but actually waiting for testosterone to help change those, too. Not just living with organs I’ve never needed and never will need and that might actually give me nuisances as I move through my forties and then age, but actually getting a hysterectomy. How would I feel then?
It’s a fact that the part of my body I love and praise the most is my strong, lean, boyish upper body (with the exception of my small breasts) and that when my muscle mass is reduced from less exercise (like moments of sickness and/or injury), all I can think of is getting it back, as much and as soon as I can, in order to see the boy in me reflected back to me in the mirror.
If I could really choose, what is the body I would truly want, the body that would truly feel like me?
The Little Prince and the Fox 