Let Me Tell You about this Amazing Body

hi everyone

my name is phoebe chartock i’m 18 years

old and a senior in high school

and i’d like to share with you some of

the things that i think about on the

daily

because they range from like good

smelling soap to politics

to wondering if i should go blonde to

trying to remember to water my plants i

usually forget

and like most people i’m thinking about

my body

the way it looks and the way it and i

are perceived

and among that myriad of different

topics that is the one that has been by

far the most obsessively consistent

throughout my life

and my first memory of that real

fixation happened when i was just seven

and see when i think about this all i

can think about are my seven-year-old

cousins

and the fact that i’ve been a camp

counselor for kids that age who barely

came up past my waist

all the while knowing that at that age i

sat worried in a bathtub

about the lack of space between my

thighs

and this breaks my heart knowing that at

that age i began to build for myself the

foundation

of a body hating mindset with life

experience only as far as second grade

and following that several years later

when i was about eight or nine

i was given a book and this book as i’ve

discovered in recent years serves as

something of a unifying experience for

many many young pre-teen girls

and it is the american girl care and

keeping a view

and in this book among its delightful

caricatures and graphics

i learned about periods cup and band

sizes body odor and toxic shock syndrome

and moving on from that particular page

slightly scarred and promising myself i

would never go near tampon in my life

i happened upon a page and learned for

the first time in my

life about eating disorders and about a

really specific kind of dialogue

i would come to encounter again and

again throughout my life

that i would grow to think of as the

abcs of eating disorders

it’s the dialogue that tells you about

anorexia

about bulimia and that there are clinics

and crisis lines available

the emotional component doesn’t get

discussed nor does the fact

all eating disorders fit the

descriptions firmly of those two

the book described an eating disorder as

reaching an extent

to which a skinny girl could look in the

mirror and still see someone fat

and it really shocks me the amount of

reductive language we allow to be a part

of this narrative

introduced at such a young age we now

know that less than six percent of

people diagnosed with eating disorders

have been medically diagnosed as

underweight but we’ve pushed to

ourselves a really specific image of

what someone with an eating disorder

looks like

and we have to understand that

statistically that simply isn’t true

and that disordered eating occurs in the

widest varieties of identities and of

people

but if you look up that image on the

internet you’ll find that the images are

dominated by and catered to women

and more specifically dominated by thin

white women

the narrative we have about eating

disorders doesn’t do

its part to recognize or be inclusive to

the entire community of people

especially considering the increased way

that black and indigenous people of

color

members the lgbtq community and people

with disabilities are impacted by

disordered eating

and it was this lack of information that

got reinforced for me

time and time again throughout my life

and specifically an instance around

seven years after i first read this book

in my freshman year health class i

encountered that dialogue again

and those two terms and then they were

quickly moved on from for the sake of

furthering our nutrition unit

wherein i was handed a calorie counter

app

and in the hands of an insecure 15 year

old trying to learn to grow into her

body

that was one of the most dangerous tools

i’ve ever been handed

and one of the most vivid times in my

life i can recall being the most

disappointed

and comfortable and the education system

my classmates and i were cycling through

and this represented a turning point for

me at the time of reading the american

girl book

i was uncomfortably conscious of my body

but my young brain hadn’t yet

established the connection between my

body image

and my ability to have a healthy

relationship with food

the concepts were co-existing in my mind

without a strong impact on each other

and of course throughout growing those

pieces fused

i learned in a very real way when

quarantine began last spring

about the difference between hunger and

appetite the body’s physical biological

need for sustenance

as opposed to the psychological desire

for food

i very quickly forgot what it was like

to have an appetite

and without that emotional want for food

being hungry just felt

painful and weakening which drove the

cycle forward

and what really shocked me was how easy

it was to fall into that place

during the first month of quarantine my

grandfather was dying

and i remember the morning after he had

gone trying to force myself to eat any

kind of anything

but that behavior was what grew to be my

habit force-feeding myself

and a lot of people told me that that

was a good thing because i was keeping a

pattern and establishing a rhythm

but it hurt knowing that the only way

during that time period i knew how to

coexist with food

was by forcing it and then there were

the days that i couldn’t bring myself to

force it

where i forgot what it was like to enjoy

taste or that it had ever been something

that i craved

and i want to add a disclaimer i am not

qualified to talk about how to have a

healthy relationship with food

or the concrete steps that you can take

to get there

i’m not a psychologist i don’t have a

medical degree

and i’m not a nutritionist or a

specialist of any kind

i don’t even have a high school diploma

but i do know that the only way i

started to climb out of that hole i felt

myself

falling down was by talking about it

and by letting people in and by trusting

much more than it was my instinct to do

so

and very very slowly i started to regain

that control

i had lost over my relationship with

food

and it’s something i’m still struggling

with and going through

and in the midst of the hardest months

my friend asked me

how much i thought that struggle had to

do with my body image

and at the time i lacked a concrete

answer

but i have realized so much in

reflection about the way that

cat calls and slut-shaming and

photoshopped images of celebrities

and diet culture and calorie counter

apps and simply existing

in a world that will always tell you

that you don’t measure up and that you

are not enough

had led me to think obsessively about

the way my body was perceived every hour

of every day

and that connection between our body

image and our ability to have healthy

relationships with food

is so real and not one that we can

ignore the lasting impacts of

a couple of weeks ago my best friend

asked me if i ate lunch

knowing that it was something i was

having a hard time bringing myself to do

and i told him yes and he goes i’m proud

of you

and the initial complete shame in that

moment that i felt

hearing those words made me want to

crawl out of my skin

and i didn’t tell him how bad it made me

feel

having someone be proud of me for

something i had accomplished years upon

years when i was a child

without any complication or need for

encouragement

for something that should have been as

instinctual as seeing or as breathing

but it occurred to me a little while

after that

that some people wear glasses

and that some people use inhalers and

some people use

oxygen tanks and then if i wanted i

could compare eating as being as

instinctual

as hearing or as crying or as laughing

but for every single one of those things

some of us struggle because that

in its essence is exactly what it is to

be human

and that is not to say the eating

disorders or that damaged relationships

with food

should be casualized or romanticized in

any sense

it is only to say that we are unified in

the sense that we are struggling

that we have fallen short that nothing

is more human than failing and falling

but learning to heal again

and ultimately that we are powerful

bodies and that

instinctual is not equated for everyone

a therapist i talked to told me that

someday

after all this failing and falling and

hating and crying and growing and loving

that i will do in my lifetime

and that every one of you will do too

i’m going to be able to look in the

mirror

at my gray hair and loose skin and at

the wrinkles around my eyes and be able

to say let me tell you

about this amazing body and i don’t know

why those words were so powerful for me

to hear but they were

so all i can do for myself is claim them

now

and offer them to you to claim for

yourself let me tell you what this body

can do

how far it has carried me how many more

times it’s going to heal itself

how many more meals it’s going to eat

and enjoy

and until then we’re learning together

how to have healthy relationships with

food and our body image

how to advance that conversation and the

dialogue and the inclusivity that we

need

and the key word in that is together

people of all body shapes and types

across

all ages identities and abilities all

united

solely by humanity and by beauty

so let me tell you about this amazing

body

because right now it’s just grateful to

be a person here

existing trying to figure it all out as

well

thank you

you