Our wish to be thinner…

For many of us, the wish to be smaller starts early on in our lives as we internalize diet culture’s messages that link thinness to worthiness. It is not the only wish we have of course. We wish to be rich. We wish to be curvy or sexy or muscular, all depending on our gender and perceived lack in appearance. Some of us wish to be taller, some of us wish to be shorter. Countless wishes!

The main problem as I see it with all these wishes is that many of them can be temporarily achieved. Therefore, we strive towards the ideal state we believe we must meet to become worthy. If you wish you were blonde, you simply colour your hair and keep using the strong chemicals to keep this unnatural (for you) look to last. If you wish to look younger, you invest in a set of creams and procedures to make your skin and body parts look younger.

If you wish to be thinner, you are told that you get to achieve this thinner state and keep it, if only you follow this or that diet and exercise regime. Of course, at first it probably works for a while, and you do get thinner. If you are in the 5% of the dieting population, you even get to maintain your thinner status, often at the expense of continuous vigilance and restriction. If you are like the majority of dieters, your body’s natural protective mechanisms against weight loss will kick in. Eventually you regain the weight despite your efforts and end up in the cycle of restriction, bingeing and shame.

Are we doomed to pursue these unattainable (in the long term) goals forever? I don’t think so! We can look deeper than on the surface and ask ourselves, where all these wishes come from. Why do we want to be thinner, whiter, muscular, taller, younger, smarter, prettier…? If we are doing it to attain a status in the society, why is that status so important to us? What lies beneath all this striving for worthiness and belonging?

Perhaps if we do some soul-searching and digging in our basic human needs, we will discover that we are longing to be loved and accepted. That’s all. We all have the same basic connection and belonging needs even if we are trying to meet these needs in a different way. Some of us, therefore, will continuously strive for some type of status to ensure the love and acceptance continue. There is nothing wrong with it – until we harm our own wellbeing in the process!

I like to share my own personal story, rather than write in general terms. I used to think that love and acceptance could only be achieved when I was meeting certain cultural norms. I strongly believed that I could never find love if I were fat. Then, I met my current husband and discovered that belief was bogus. I strongly believed that I could never find friendships if I were an introvert. Then, I started organizing book clubs for other introverts like me and found many wonderful friends that way. I found that love and acceptance is not dependent on the appearance or even personality. I realized that love and acceptance is abundant and available to everyone.

This is why I want to ask you now: what do you wish for? If it is some kind of love and acceptance you seek, rather than striving for status through attaining ever changing social norms, would it make more sense to simply look for people who would love and accept you regardless of your status?

In our striving towards attaining certain goals, we sometimes forget about the real reasons behind them. We maybe wish to be thinner, because we wish to accept ourselves – that is, we believe if we don’t accept ourselves, we are also unacceptable to others. This logic does not actually hold, but without examining our beliefs, we may end up hurting ourselves in this futile process of becoming more acceptable. The media is sadly full of terrible stories of plastic surgeries gone wrong as one of many examples of how striving for status can harm us.

What if we could simply accept ourselves before we even start our journey towards our wishes? What if we could become our best friends during the process of becoming whatever we wish to become? What if we could be kind and compassionate on the way?

We may still wish to be thinner, younger, or richer, but we can also recognize that we will not sacrifice our lives to achieve these goals. Whichever way we choose, it will eventually lead us all to the same ending. We will get older and weaker. But hopefully, as we walk our turbulent paths, we will learn to accept and even deeply care for ourselves regardless of what status we manage to achieve.

I hope for all of us, that when we reach the end of our lives, we will recount the blessing, the loves, and the adventures we had instead of focusing on the kilograms on our bodies or wrinkles on our faces. These kilograms and wrinkles, I assure you, will not even be mentioned or remembered by those who truly loved and accepted us.