Sagging chin. Need to lose weight. Flabby here, saggy there. Why does that jiggle? That neck, oh my god that aging neck.
The never-ending inventory of my aging body continues between my two ears and has been the topic of many a conversation with my girlfriends. As we age, my friends and I seem to carve out more and more of our together time doing an inventory of all of our detestable bits and pieces. One friend says her eyelids are too heavy. I just don't see it. I love her eyes just the way they are, exactly, precisely the way they are.
Often friends don't see what we see. Other times they are simply polite and offer the obligatory "I have no idea what you are talking about, I just don't see it." Sometimes, as with my friend's lovely lids, we either don't notice or don't perceive what they do as a flaw.
A few months ago an older friend who has had several successful plastic surgeries suggested I should consider addressing my chin's unattractive saggy situation. It appears the floor is beckoning it with a treat. I protested inside and out, thinking I was too young to start waging this war (I'm not, it turns out) and confirming to myself "I'm not the plastic surgery type!" I have had dreams of aging gracefully and loving my body in all of its incarnations. Methinks I doth protest too much though.
In response to her suggestion I proceeded to get obsessed with my chin, looking in the mirror more often than I ever had before, hoping to catch a glimpse of it that would either prove my plastic surgery proponent friend right or wrong. I was keeping a tally in my head. The more I watched it, the more swiftly it seemed to lose its elasticity, as if my vigil was encouraging the aging process. I started thinking my obsession might actually be making me age faster!
The day after Valentine's Day I was sitting at a dinner with friends and suggested to the women at the table that it would be a great Valentine's gift to ourselves if we gave up criticizing our bodies for a year. I asked who was up for the challenge, assuming that others would and that I, too, would rally. But none of us wanted to commit.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about the fact that of all the kick ass women at that table not one of us was up for the challenge. Since that night I have found myself averting self-criticism about 50% of the opportunities that presented themselves. It's a start, but not enough. A higher part of myself is craving a moratorium on public floggings. So in a few weeks on my birthday I will be taking one year off from the public self-criticism of my body. I don't get to speak negatively about how fat or old I look in front of another human from March 22, 2015 through March 21, 2016.
Will I slip up? Probably, but if I fall I'll get back on the wagon. And I know I won't be able to eliminate the chatter between my ears, but I will get to see how much it decreases because of this experiment.
Honestly I can't imagine not speaking ill of my body's weight with someone, anyone, for an entire year. No matter what weight I have been, it's been a lifelong topic of conversation. The aging thing is a hot new topic of the last several years. It's still got a lot of juice left, particularly with the recent chin debacle upon me. I'll have to look for other adrenaline rushes.
I've got a few weeks to milk it all for what it's worth, but I don't think I will because I'm starting to enjoy the winding down from the highest heights of the self-judgment mountain. Just thinking about the prospect of proclaiming this publicly has curbed my desire substantially, and makes me want to help my friends curb theirs as well. Self-criticism hurts. It's one of the worst kinds of bullying around.
Happy Birthday to me. I get to start learning how to be my own better friend.
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