Definition for Ladies Spring 2014 Issue 001 April 2014 | Page 71

L ter f
et rom
My Bod
y
by Erin Fergus

Well hello there body. We meet again

say I’m invincible to mirrors and too

decisions. I’ve pinched, poked, lifted,

in the mirror today. Who am I kidding?

self-assured to judge myself, but I

squeezed and flexed more times than I

We meet many times a day. Sometimes

know that I’m not perfect, physically

can count.

I call you “good,” and other times I

nor emotionally. If only I could have

call you “bad.” Sometimes I loathe the

realized earlier that physical perfection

surrounding lighting, and sometimes I

shouldn’t be the goal, then maybe I

bask in it. Sometimes I obsess over the

would have never entered the love/hate

reflection, sometimes I try to rush past

relationship with the mirror that many

without making eye contact, and others

other women share.

have been my favorite—when I pause
and give a satisfactory nod and smile.

After all that time of my mind saying
things to my body that it didn’t deserve,
now it’s time for me to let it talk back…

»

Never once have I looked in the mirror
and seen the hourglass

I’ve said all sorts of things to my

shape we are told is

body in the mirror during the last

perfect. I’ve seen a chest

15 years or so. There was even a time

that wasn’t big enough

seven years ago when the only thing I

until it suddenly grew

could see in the mirror was my face.

when I was 21. I noticed

I tortured myself so much obsessing

the fat accumulated in my

over my appearance that I decided

inner thighs and around

to experiment. I covered most of the

my belly button, yet I had

mirror with a bright poster board

a [