Even as I’ve spent my entire adult life wanting to look different, I’ve found and cultivated other parts of myself that have nothing to do with appearance
I have a memory that I frequently find myself returning to these days.
I’m in high school and we’re in the change room at the local pool for the dreaded stint of swimming. Like most of my peers, I am embarrassed by my body and am therefore changing into my swimmers under a towel.
The changing room is filled with older women – in my memory, they’re elderly, which means in reality they were likely all somewhere between 40 and 60 – and they’re naked. I am horrified by this, but not because I am awkward about witnessing their nudity. Instead (and I acutely remember this being my thought at the time), I feel sad and disgusted by the complete lack of care these women have at the impression their bodies will make on the rest of us.
They walk calmly between the showers and the mirrors, bodies on display, jiggling, sagging, flopping. Didn’t they realise they were meant to be ashamed to look like that?
