I Sing the Body Electric
Any body but mine.
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
—“I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman
For a Halloween party this weekend, I dressed up as one of my favorite low-effort costumes: the iconic 90s photograph of Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson wearing a black turtleneck, neck chain, and a fanny pack. I already owned all of these things and the ensemble was warm enough for the outdoor party, so it was the perfect costume for the situation.
I took a selfie of myself in the costume and compared it to the original picture. And then I flipped between the pictures a few more times. And I hated the difference between the two. I suddenly felt conscious about the enormous gap between me and who I was dressed up as. Logically speaking, it makes a ton of sense that I do not have the same physique as a professional wrestler in the 90s, but I felt hyperaware of my smallness nonetheless. It was stupid, but when had my opinions on my own body ever been rational?
I was ten years old the first time I remember feeling conscious of how my body looked. The tradition at my elementary school was to have a big pool party for the last day of fifth grade to celebrate our graduation to middle school. And while everyone seemed really excited for this event, I remember worrying for months in advance that I’d have to take my shirt off in front of my peers, embarrassed of how fat I thought was despite the fact that I was a literal child. I still think of a single picture of the event that I saw later and feeling uncomfortable at the sight of my ten-year-old body, happily eating pizza with swim goggles on.
It never really stopped after that. I’ve never really felt fully comfortable in the body that I have, always finding something wrong with it, usually having to do with too little muscle and too much fat. I wasn’t naturally gifted at anything athletic, so I focused my time on things that used my brain instead of my body and tried my hardest to ignore my body as much as possible.
Once I got to college, my worsened diet, increased stress, and lack of sleep all led me to getting sick more often than I ever had before. I grew used to getting a cold at least once a month and exhausting an entire box of Kleenex before I started to feel better after a couple of days. In these moments of sickness, I only disliked my body more. Not only did it not look how I wanted it to, it refused to function how I wanted it to as well.
I couldn’t ignore my body entirely, because ultimately I was vain and wanted to be fashionable and look good. In high school, I avoided wearing t-shirts entirely to hide my body entirely. Later on, I would try on different aesthetics sometimes, but I was convinced that the proportions of my body made it difficult for me to try any atypical styles. I often thought about the quote from fashion designer Rick Owens, "Working out is modern couture. No outfit is going to make you look or feel as good as having a fit body. Buy less clothing and go to the gym instead.” I decided that I’d never be able to be as fashionable as other people, limited by my mortal coil.
I’ve been on a self-improvement journey since I was so young, wanting to be more than myself. What business does a middle schooler have reading about David Allen’s Getting Things Done framework? What was there to get done at that point? Couldn’t I just focus on being a kid and play more Pokémon instead?
My working theory is that I’ve always been searching for a way to make myself like I was good enough to be worthy of all of the blessings I’ve received. I’ve been endlessly fortunate to receive so much love from my family & friends and to have grown up with the privileges that I have. Despite it all, it’s always been hard to accept that I deserve any of it. What did I do to earn such a wonderful life? How could it be that I was worth any of this? How could the way that I am naturally am be enough to deserve these blessings? They felt better suited for someone kinder, someone smarter, someone fitter, someone else entirely.
So I worked hard to try and feel worthy of anything at all. I had goals to be more social, to be a creative person, to be someone. Most of this was driven by a self-flagellating form of motivation, attempting to relieve myself of a disgust I held for my own perceived inadequacy. Despite this, I made progress. I stopped being as shy and awkward around strangers, I found confidence in my ability to write, I read more books than I ever had before, and I felt like understood the world a little bit more clearly. These changes helped a little bit, as I not only improved but gained bits of respect for myself in the process. I let myself be impressed by my ability to learn and the fact that I could continuously change for the better. The disgust lessened, bit by bit.
In college, I started to go to the gym, which I was inconsistent with until 2020. Since then, I’ve consistently worked out multiple times a week. Working out for years has made me marginally stronger, and has helped me appreciate and find gratitude for what my body lets me do. I’ve come to love and rely on exercise for all of the happy chemicals. I’ve come to know that lifting or running can fix most poor moods and that eating healthier has improved my immune system. And yet, my body seems to be the endless self-improvement challenge that constantly eludes me.
Even as I gain appreciation of my body, even as I try to accept the way that it is, even as I realize how absurd it is to not look like the Rock, even as I am impressed by my ability to run in the rain, to push through the pain of a heavy lift, to keep getting better, to continue living and changing on a beautiful blue marble in the middle of space, to carry and shape my thoughts and brain, I still struggle to love and accept it.
I struggle to achieve my fitness goals and try to focus on the fact that I’m improving my health. But it’s hard to stop thinking about how my body fat percentage is too high and my jawline is too invisible and my shirts fit wrong and a million other things that no one else would ever care about. Yet, they seemed to define my self-worth. “Who would love me looking the way that I do?”
I never think about how my family or closest friends look in these terms. I never think less of them if they gain some weight here or there or if they look off in these small ways, yet I imagine the world must judge me so harshly for my own deficiencies. It’s illogical, but logic often fails when dealing with a mind’s habitual self-criticism. Some days logic wins and I feel okay, and other days I fall into my old patterns.
I was missing some of my friends from college that I don’t hear from much these days and went looking in my old journals for mentions of them. Perhaps I had spent my time telling stories of our times together, fun anecdotes shared over tea. Instead, I leafed through page after page of to-do lists and habit trackers, finding only scribbled paragraphs about all of the ways that I felt I wasn’t doing enough. Each entry sounded something like “I need to be doing more X,” “I spent too much time with M instead of spending more time working on my portfolio,” “I need to eat healthier and lose weight.”
I went through my old photos after, finally finding evidence of the friends who used to mean the world to me. As expected from any good trip down memory lane, I felt a deluge of emotions: nostalgia, wistfulness, a distant waterfall of tears, and joy to have experienced it all. My journals brought me a twisted view of that time: the moments where I was at my most frustrated and let the internal monologue that I’ve been trying to grow out of shine through. In contrast, photos seemed to be a more honest telling of the time — specific moments that I wanted to remember, screenshots of conversations that I wanted to share, fragments of my life that were more than my lowest moments. When I wasn’t so in my own head judging myself, I took the photos.
As I looked at pictures of myself, including the ones I remembered hating because of how overweight I thought I looked, I couldn’t see a single thing wrong with myself. I felt immense tenderness for younger self, something that I never experienced for myself at the time. I wondered why he needed to be so hard on himself, why he didn’t feel like enough, why he couldn’t let himself enjoy the times that he was experiencing, the people he was with. More than anything else, I wondered why I’m only able to accept myself looking backwards.
But maybe time travel has always been the answer. Regardless of how our bodies look now, won’t we look back at ourselves and remember our youth? When our limbs begin to ache and our skin thins, won’t we envy the strength of our forearms and the softness of our hands? Won’t the ease of walking and dancing be the gift that we wish we could have back? And, when the darkness begins to cloud our eyes, and our organs begin to fail, won’t we wish that we could’ve been more loving to ourselves the entire time? That we could have focused on what was front of us, instead of everything we wanted to change?
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!
—“I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
PLAYLIST - highballs and manhattans - chill vibes playlist I made
POEM - “And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So” by Wendy Xu - With more sparkle and pop / is the only way to live.
If you liked this piece, consider subscribing to get emailed when I have a new post (every Thursday).
“But maybe time travel has always been the answer” ❗️
i, too, am trying to learn grace for my present self -- for how i look physically, feel emotionally, or when i'm just mentally tired. when will we ever learn :')