I've no idea if this is the right place to ask this, probably not but I'm a bit desperate since I've got no one to talk to irl about this. I feel massive, my bmi is considered healthy, people would describe me as average in every aspect, at least from the side. From the front I feel I look like a personified bulldog, an ox, stupid dumb eyes, weirdly shaped mouth, and my face is still kind of my main selling point. I've got big shoulders, broad hips and upper tights, mostly muscle, I done very little to get them. When I went to the gym I built up a bit more muscle and quit immediately it just highlighted everything even more, that stuff luckily went away after a while but only as far as what I gained through the exercises, the rest stayed. I probably would be completely ok with myself if I had grown a bit taller, the proportions would fit a lot better then.
Next to other women (and enough men) I feel like a cartoon character that was placed into the wrong series, a completely other "drawing style" for lack of better words. I hate myself so much, I don't leave the house other than for work and chores anymore, I always feel like a clown. I apologize for the word vomit, but I'm desperate, do you have any suggestions? Anything I could read, listen to?
You seem to have a very skewered perception of your body. From what you have written, you’re healthy and strong, so you have little to worry about health wise? You don’t describe having trouble to carry out any action physically, so you are in good physical condition? And apparently, you get strong fast when you put yourself into it? All of this sound great to me. We often aren’t good judges of wether we’ve put a lot of work into getting things done, so I’m taking your affirmation that you did very little to earn your muscles with a grain of salt. It’s more likely that you have fallen into a habit of discounting your own work. That, and the fact that not all women have the same metabolism. We don’t all built muscle the same way, and in that case you’d certainly be better served by working into looking at it gratefully, instead of putting yourself down for something you’re naturally better at than other women. Life is not a competition, we have different characteristics and advantages from the beginning, and denying it or pretending it has any moral weight does not help you move forward.
You’re not a clown, you very likely look nothing like a bulldog nor an ox. You’re maybe a little on the short side, but a strong woman. You would feel better about yourself if you focused on what you have: a functioning, healthy, strong body, one which allows you to carry out the tasks you want to do. What others think about your face is irrelevant, because 1. you can’t do anything about it (you can’t control their minds) 2. you can’t do anything about it (are you going to get plastic surgery? to switch bodies?) 3. do you really want to hold yourself to the irrealistic standards of social media? there’s nothing genuine about full make-up photoshopped faces and bodies, so your scale of judgement is never going to be satisfied 4. why do you let others have all the power over your feelings about yourself?
Do you judge other women you see in the street like this? Do you think to yourself “oh she’s an elephant”, “oh she has a dog’s face”, “oh her proportions are crazy”? I bet not. You’re walking and worrying about how they judge you. Except they aren’t, just like you they are wondering “does she think i’m too short and too wide?”, “does she think my haircut makes me look old?”, … There are way less people judging you than you think, and for those who do, do you think they obsess over you specifically all day? At worst, they see you, you register in their brain, they make a comment to themselves, and then they move on. You don’t live rent-free in people’s heads. We all have better things to do and bigger fish to fry than ponder the BMI of strangers on the street and then obsess over it for days.
A small exercise to put things into perspective, would you talk about one of your friend like this? Would you disparage her like this? Then why is it acceptable to do it to you? You should treat yourself like you would a friend. You need to be your own friend.
Being short is not a moral failing, it’s just a fact. Being strong, having big shoulders, broad hips, strong thighs and muscle is not a bad thing. It only makes you a normal woman. And we all have to accept that we are just ourselves, nothing more, and that we’ll never be anybody else. There’s no point in wishing you were more like “other women” because it won’t happen, you’re just setting yourself up for lifelong misery. I guarantee you that you are not a cartoon character next to other women. Women have an extensive range of body shapes, we’re not all just carbon-copies of each other with you as the single outlier.
Maybe you’re not looking at yourself enough, or looking at yourself too much with others’ eyes. By the latter I mean that you’re always looking at yourself in mirrors or in pictures, in the reflections in glass windows when you go out. You’re not looking directly at yourself. You’re looking at a distorted, at a filtered image of yourself. You’re looking at something distinct from yourself, something alien. Cover mirrors, stop taking selfies, try to forget that constructed image for a while. Look at yourself with your own two eyes and nothing else if you really have to look. Don’t focus so much on having an appearance while you exist and instead focus on existing. Pretend you’re invisible. Wear your sloppiest clothes on a grocery errand and realise that no one cares. You’re not going to be arrested over it, the cashier is not going to refuse your money for it. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to matter.
You have nothing you need to hate yourself for. You are just a woman, alive. That’s what you should focus on. You’re fine, you’re normal, you’re average, you’re just alive. Push yourself a little, get out there, nothing will happen to you and it will become easier.
If anyone has any reading or listening to suggest, feel free to link it in the notes. But I think that what you need most, here, is to cultivate an attitude of not caring about it. Try to relax about existing. There’s mental reframing to do, certainly, but most important is repeated practise. Go out there and exist.
