On Girl Body Pride: The Problem of Loving My Body and Body As Object

I think about beauty and self-acceptance and love, and I think about how our culture, in an effort to beat back the ocean of self-loathing that women have been drowning in for so long, offers up this idea of loving our bodies, and this idea doesn't sit well with me. It seems just as dissociative as hating our bodies.



My body is not an object to be appraised by me like I would a beautiful vase or an animal separate from me. It is not here for me to hate or love or have a relationship with as I would something outside myself. It is here to carry me through my days on this earth. It is here as a vehicle that feels separate from my consciousness, but is inseparable from my experience of the world. It is not a costume I have put on in the same way that I put on clothing I like or dislike.

To hate or to love my body seems to put me outside of it. It divorces me from it, in a way. Whether it is love or hate I feel, it puts my body in the position of a thing that I appraise for worth of some kind, good or bad.

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