Body Image by Tracy

Body image.  Yes, if you have a body and you can see, you have an image in your head that is likely not kind in its recollection of your body.  I am now 51 years of age, and for the first time since 1982, when I first gave birth, I am once again the shortest person in my family.  I used to be 5’2 ¼“, though I’m sure I’m closer to 5’2” (flat) nowadays.

As a child, since I was so tiny, people treated me as though I were younger than my actual age.  I was the oldest child in my family, in fact, I was the oldest grandchild on both sides of my family.  Still, I was a tiny thing.

In the sixth grade I was obsessed with breasts.  No, not in some sort of sexual way but with, well, any of my peers who actually HAD them.  You see, I was completely breast free.  In fact, my nickname was Flatsy.  Flatsy was a popular doll back then, and well, it was a fitting nickname. In the 8^th grade a friend coined the nickname Half Pint, which still makes me chuckle when I look back.  I wasn’t anywhere near a half pint then, and I’m certainly not now!

I can remember sitting in an assembly during sixth grade, surrounded by girls who were all wearing training bras.  Let me just say that I was perfectly comfortable back then lying on my tummy watching TV.  Think about that for a sec.  I’ll wait. Someone gave me a training bra, and I wore it and was sitting in that assembly fiddling with my bra strap so someone would notice.  One girl did, and I remember her now as being awfully compassionate and grown up for a sixth grader, bless her heart.  She noticed for me, just like I’d hoped someone would.

I finally started wearing a for-real bra in the 8^th grade.  And once I start growing, well, have you MET me?  I immediately seemed to transform from the flattest girl at Oak Grove Intermediate to someone whom others noticed because of my breasts.  

By my sophomore year, while all the other girls were settling in at the A to B range, I just kept growing.  When I was a junior, still growing, I spent about 15 minutes with the perfect figure.  Before I realized that wearing a bikini wasn’t so modest, I had one, and I looked amazing when I wore it.  I went to the Valentine’s dance with my first boyfriend, and his friends told him (and he told me) when they say our picture together, “Man, she’s stacked!” And stacked I was.

But young women who have the propensity to develop busty busts also have other girly fat scattered about their bodies.  Before too long, not only was I terribly self-conscious about my enormous breasts but I thought I was fat. I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t a stick figure anymore.

Do you have any idea how cruel girls are to other girls?  I had lots of comments when I was going through high school and even college.  People have commented and stared and treated me as though I am doing something wrong simply because of how I look.  I had a complaint once after I reported a deposition in Washington, DC.  I was working with an attorney who was not familiar with taking depositions, and I made the process as easy for him as I could.  I did a fantastic job not only that day but in the coming days as I transcribed the deposition.  Throughout the deposition a young attorney on the other side of the room started at my breasts the entire time.  It was very awkward for me.  And what did I receive a week later?  A complaint from that attorney's law firm because I wasn't wearing a blazer! I’m a smart, funny, friendly person.  I wonder, though, how many of those people who just had to comment even know that?

I’ve had seven children.  You want to know why I loved being pregnant?  Mostly because my breasts no longer seemed out of proportion with the rest of my body.  I could sort of relax and just be “normal.” Of course, then they would be born, and I would have the struggle for the next year or so with breastfeeding and the enormous breasts often betraying me by becoming “enormouser” and leaking all over my clothes.

A couple of years ago we went on a trip with family.  Someone told my husband that she was so surprised when she saw me in a bathing suit, because they just assumed I was “heavy” because that’s how they see me when I’m wearing regular clothes.  Yes, I look (to others and myself too) like a much-overweight woman because there just aren’t clothes in the stores where I can afford to shop that actually fit the kind of curves this body has.  So I tend to wear tent-like things some of the time.  When I'm wearing something I like that isn't tent-like, I am embarrassed by how my breasts simply won't be the shrinking violets I wish they would be. Still with the bad body image. And then there’s the times I see a picture of myself and reel in shock over just how large these things are.  

And the worst part?  This is crazy.  But when my mom told me she had breast cancer (she’s been cancer free for over five years now), I was actually jealous for about half a second and even fantasized about what it would be like to finally be able to remove these enormous fatty deposits.

Bless him, my husband loves them.  My babies all received nourishment from them.  They are a huge (pun intended) part of who I am.  But why, oh, why, are we unable to stop looking at the imperfections (as we see them) of others, judging them, thus knowing that others are doing the same to us?  

I came by them honestly.   Many of the women in my ancestry were also blessed.

My life has been restricted by them.  I HATE to run.  For all the normal reasons but mainly for the reason that it hurts my breasts to run.  I loved gymnastics when I was a child.  I’ll bet I would have liked ballet.  I was involved in ballroom dancing for a short while my senior year in high school.  I absolutely loved that.  But by then I was already lopsided, and athleticism just doesn’t develop as easily in the well-endowed body.

But really, who am I? I am a loved wife, mother, daughter.  I am a successful court reporter still perfecting my craft after 20 years in the field.  I am smart enough to belong to Mensa....if I wanted to hang out with boring smart people.  I have been blessed with the ability to recognize truth.  And that includes Truth.  I have a effervescent personality that seems to bubble out of me almost all of the time. I know I am a Daughter of my Heavenly Father.  And, that my friends, is the number one reason I am grateful to have been blessed with a body.  ANY body.  Because I want to continue to learn and grow and to one day be with Him again. He knows ME and loves ME.  Any questions?