The Butt That No One Would Claim

I had to call my husband today and ask him if I should write a blog about my butt. I suppose that is not the question most men get or want from their wives, but that is how I roll. So here is a blog that is close to my heart, in fact it is just about 20 inches south of it.

I was eight years old when I looked in the mirror and saw more than just my face for the first time. I saw a skinny pale girl with stringy blonde hair. I wanted to be like my big sister. She was well into her teens and had wavy brown hair, wore makeup and had a body that, was, well let’s jut say it wasn’t skinny and pale like mine.

That was the beginning of my wishing for a different body. Eight years old and I had begun the toxic  habit of comparing myself to others. By the time I was fourteen I had started gaining weight in my hips and butt and rather than seeing that as the passage to becoming like my sister I saw it as unattractive. Hips and curves were not the trend during the 90’s. During that era fashion runways were littered with shriveled barely there humans whose bones would snap under a stiff breeze. This was labeled “sexy” and the gullible masses began assimilating as they always do. Teenage girls and young women alike found themselves standing in front of mirrors hating everything that made them women and individuals.

During this time period an unwitting relative told me more than a few times that I was both fat and not very pretty. He told me that there were more women than men out there and so if you want to catch a decent man you need to be thin and beautiful. I won’t break down just how damaging those comments were to me, or how awful a person you have to be to say things like that. However, I will say that if who I am now could travel back to those moments, I would step in front of the fragile little girl I was then and protect her like a she-bear with a cub. Then, I was a non- threatening 5′ 6″ 120 pound baby with a grown man cruelly towering over me. I wonder how he would feel looking at me now. Big butt, full of fight, two pregnancy’s later, 5’7″ 165 pounds and empowered by confidence and sapience. Oh and of course married for sixteen years to one of those “men that only want skinny and beautiful girls”. I imagine it would go down like a Pay per View event; Ignorant and Miserable vs. Fat and Happy!! ‘Watch as this heavy weight woman brings the rage of experience and knowledge into the ring to crush the smallness of callowness and hate! Who will win? Just pay $89.99 to find out, tonight on Pay per View!

The stronger version of me that I am today was not there however. Since there was no one to protect me from the disparage of his words, as a young teenager I began starving myself. Eating became a game. I would try to see how long I could live on a single apple or set twisted goals for myself, like go 24 hours on nothing but water and then reward yourself with a dry no salt rice cake. Good times.

Soon I was sick, weak and of course skinny. At 5’7″ I reached 98 pounds. People kept telling me how thin I was with a concerned look and I reveled in their notice of my hard work. It never occurred to me that they might mean that I was too skinny or looked unwell. Skinny equaled beautiful, smart and attractive in my book.  When my Mom started threatening to take me to a doctor I gained a little weight to keep her appeased. Really, the problem was not my weight, it was my view of myself. I had begun measuring my value on a bathroom scale. I was miserable, and truly believed that if I could just lose another five or ten pounds I would be happy and desirable to men. To my poor Mom’s frustration, this went on for years.

It is no wonder that my world was shaken when a man I was pining for told me I needed to eat more. Having a man encourage me to gain weight was so foreign to the belief system that I had built that he might as well have told me I should shave less and quit showering. What are you? A weirdo? Just before I married that same ‘weirdo’ I overheard him telling my Mom one day “don’t worry, I am going to fatten her up.” And he did, both with food and plain old happiness.

I spent many years basking in my husband’s reassurance that I was not fat and that I was pretty. But, far from well, I still walked through life looking at every human being and comparing them to myself. Everyone I met was put into one of two criteria’s. One) skinnier than me and two) fatter than me. This was a rather defeating process since I grew up in the mountains of Colorado where everyone rides their bike 26 hours a day followed by a sparse meal of bird seed to refuel their lean bodies for a modest 28 mile hike over a ‘twelver’ (12,000 foot elevation mountain, they call them twelvers because it sounds more casual, like oh no biggie, it’s just another ‘twelver’). Since my exercise consists of sauntering through the woods talking to the trees and squirrels, and I think cake should be it’s own food group, I was usually the fattest person everywhere I went. I let my constant comparing beat down my self image.

By the time I was thirty years old, I had carried two ten pound babies to full term and any hope of having the Kate Moss body of the 90’s had permanently vanished. I felt myself turning to my husband for more reassurance than ever. I felt frantic to be told that I was not fat. I needed to hear it every day and it was driving me crazy. Probably driving him crazy too, but he did not complain, at least not to me. I wanted to change myself, and not on the outside anymore. I wanted to fix this at the source, from within.  It took time to shut down the voices of the past and build new healthier beliefs about myself. It was a daily battle.

Then one day, I looked in the mirror and I saw something I had never noticed before. I usually saw fat, the start of wrinkles, my first gray hair, stretch marks, my sun aged hands, big thighs, and just ugliness. This time something was different. I saw a body that had carried two beautiful children and brought them into the world healthy and strong. I saw lines around my eyes that traced the laughter of a joyful marriage. I saw strong legs that had taken me down paths, trails, sandy strands and through icy spring creeks. I looked at my well used hands and remembered how they helped build our family’s cabin, held my Daddy’s hand when he died, how my husband slid a ring on them when he promised me his future, and I remembered how they held my sons and protected them when they were so small. I saw scars from child bearing and scars from adventures. Every mark, every wrinkle, every added pound had a story. Stories of sadness and loss, and stories of triumph and beauty. My stories. My body has been with me since the beginning. Even when I hated it and treated it terribly it was still mine. Uniquely mine.

I was suddenly grateful for every inch of my skin, even my big butt. I had spent most of thirty years hating that I did not look like someone else. It seemed that in a single instant all the nonsense and lies vanished and I really saw myself for the first time. I loved me. Not because I had a smokin’ body or enviable features. It was an epiphany. I no longer felt frustrated that I could not be someone else, but grateful that no one else could be me.

This understanding of oneself is a gift I wish I could share with everyone I meet. As is so often the case, it is a gift you can only give yourself. Love yourself as you are. It does not mean you stop improving, or getting healthier or ignore your flaws. It means you take ownership of all that makes you you. It does not mean you think more of yourself than someone else, because once you value individuality, you see that comparison isn’t just toxic it is stupid and a waste of time.

I have said for many years that I would never try rock climbing. I have believed that it would be physically impossible for me to try this particular sport because of my body shape. I have especially thin weak arms and of course the a fore mentioned large booty. I have illustrated the idea of me climbing a vertical rock wall as trying to lift a large boulder with two pieces of dental floss. The boulder will win.

However, the opportunity to rock climb came to me recently and I decided to go ahead and try it since I am all high on life ever since I didn’t die last month at the hospital. I did not get very far and I did not think it was a lot of fun. I asked my Mom to take some pictures of me climbing. Well, she tried her best but mostly she got pictures of me dangling helplessly after I had given up. I don’t know if you have ever seen what the harness system for rock climbing looks like, but it is not flattering to the gluteus maximus region of the body. It is this less than ideal view of me that Mom caught on camera.

When a group of us were looking through the photos we found these pics of me and we busted out laughing. Thanks to the rock climbing harness, what once was simply big was made comically ginormous. In the midst of our giggles someone said lightly “That is a butt no one would claim”. I paused for a moment waiting for the sting of those words to hit. I waited to feel shame and embarrassment, but it did not come. There is no debate that the photos are funny, I laugh every time I look at them. But, that is my big butt, and I do claim it! I claim all of me, the chubby parts and the thin parts, the things I need to work on and the things I love that I would not trade for the world.

G.R.