Like most women, I have a lot of feelings about my body. Big, conflicted ones that go all the way back to my mom telling me, at 8 or 9, that I should work out because my ass was looking saggy, or all of the media I consumed about young women with anorexia, which I found both frightening and vaguely glamorous.

Let’s address the elephant in the room - I’m thin. I’m super fit. I have the kind of body that many people envy, and most of the time when I look in the mirror I’m happy with what I see. Conforming to an ideal doesn’t free you from the pressures of it, though. I have a streak of perfectionism that can be destructive when left unchecked, and sometimes the desire to be the best version of myself makes it hard to appreciate what I have.

It’s so strange to think that how I feel about my body is determined, at least in part, by trends and the culture at large, but it is. I remember being in 3rd grade and wishing that my legs were thinner, hating my meaty thighs and rounded calves; as recently as 2 years ago, I was still Googling “how to lose muscle mass,” despite being at the lowest weight I’d been in my entire adult life. Alternately restricting my diet and rebelling against those restrictions was another near constant in my life, reaching its apex in my early 20s when I would diet intensely for a few weeks, then binge eat and take laxatives to purge. The desire for that “Victoria’s Secret model” body - long limbed and ethereal as spun sugar (not that you can eat sugar if you want to look like that and you’re NOT a genetically blessed 19 year old with the best personal trainers that money can buy) - felt like an itch that I could never scratch, a round hole that I could never whittle myself down small enough to fit my ungainly shape into.

Now, I turn that same energy to growing my muscles. I’ve gone from feeling too big to feeling too small, which I suppose is better. At least growing is sort of attainable!

I like myself more now. I wish I could say that it’s because I have fewer fucks to give, and that in my mid-30s I’ve finally embraced body positivity, or at least body neutrality, and that I’m less concerned about minor fluctuations in my size. That would be a lie! I mean, I am less concerned about minor fluctuations, but it’s because going to the gym has given me a sense of control over my body that I’ve historically lacked, not because I attach less of my self worth to my appearance.

So many things come down to control, don’t they? It’s the point of that prayer they do in AA, about changing what you can, accepting what you can’t, and knowing the difference between the two. In some ways I’ve set my life up so that I can exercise (no pun intended) the kind of control over my time that you need to have to work out as often as I do. No kids, no pets, no standing appointments. Walking to the gym right after work is an ingrained part of my daily routine at this point, and I have to fight back a little anxiety if I need to miss a day or two.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m complaining or something - having the time and inclination to go to the gym is emphatically not a problem. What I struggle with, what I feel conflicted about, is the degree to which I’ve bought into the beauty game. It’s nice to be complimented and have other people enthuse over my muscles and call me mommy, but I don’t know what to do when another woman compares herself to me. I don’t mind sharing my workout routines or talking about what I eat if someone asks, but it can feel fraught because… Well, I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because I feel, on some level, that despite the progress that I’ve made, I still don’t have the healthiest relationship with food and my body, and it’s a bit weird to dispense advice from there. I’ve been thinking about entering a bodybuilding competition - a real one, not just a cosplay with few serious female competitors - but I worry that the stress of prepping for it would trigger my disordered eating again.

So, in the interest of not complaining, I want to let go of some of the anxious monkey brain stuff always churning under the surface and acknowledge the positive. I was never going to be able to shrink myself to fit that particular ideal of thinness, and it hurt me to try. I can, however, lift a lot of heavy things, and if I do it regularly it doesn’t matter if I clean my cupboards out with my mouth once a week. I go to the gym for aesthetics, but the side effect is that I’m stronger, more flexible, and generally more comfortable in my body because I know how to do things with it that I didn’t before. It’s also nice to feel really hot, to be honest. The feeling of “but what if I lose it?” may never go away, but… what if I keep it? I never expected to be in such good shape at 35, so why can’t I keep going to the gym until I’m 45? 55? Maybe the way to be happy in my skin is to see it as a perpetual work in progress, and to be ok with that.

Cosplay: Kars, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures
Photos: @clockworksteve on Instagram