It’s not a secret that I hide my body. Many a people have wondered over the years why I would do such a thing. Hide my face in a little padding of weight and carry some extra in the middle.
Not because I like it. Not at all.
And to successfully continue to trick myself into hiding, I allow myself to eat unhealthy, wear bigger clothes and continue my camouflage.
Not because I feel good about it – but quite frankly, because it’s easier than putting up with negative attention from douche bags otherwise.
It’s easier to be chubby, than to dodge cheesy come-ons. It’s more relaxing to have an extra 20-25 lbs, than to have dudes watching your chest when you’re talking. It’s easier to be fat and keep the shallow ones off your trail than it is to be svelte and fit and constantly hear about how you “might one day get fat, loose your ass, have kids and your boobs fall, or hear someone bemoan that you put on 5 pounds of weight over the holidays.”
In my memory, being shapely and fit is a fucking exhausting emotional battle of sidestepping, keeping up, outrunning and dodging. It’s a marathon of superficial commentary and constantly battling insecurities.
The only insecurities I have to deal with when I’m chubby, are not being able to keep up with my friends, or getting pitiful looks from people who don’t even know me. So really, it’s way easier to be fat.
Until now.
As Barracuda Bootcamp continues and I am noticing a shift in my muscle mass – an old, nay, ancient insecurity from my early formative years is resurfacing. A shame. A fear.
I am a woman built to carry muscle.
When I moved to Alaska at 14 I was immediately signed up for the swim team where it was easy to burn 3000 calories a workout. Then once I was near the outdoors where I naturally thrive – I hiked, kayaked, rafted, climbed, fenced, snow-journed (hiked in the snow), fished, camped and during the summers I roller bladed several hours a day as I went to three of my jobs across town.
I rarely just sat when I could be moving. Even at night when I had energy to burn, I’d do crunches while I read my books. Sometimes up to 800 or a thousand until I was tired enough to sleep.
All of this resulted in a body that for my age contained a large percentage of muscle. Though I was not small by any stretch of the truth, I was still heavy and stocky with a small percentage of body fat. Larger than the girls my age, but fairly strong.
I’m an Endo-Mesomorph. My body structure is designed not to be small and dainty or even slim. I’m not a Mini Coooper, or even a Lamborghini. I’m built like a 65’ Mustang and that’s exactly how I run; a chunky muscle-car built for strength and distance, but not visually stunning.
Guys at school would come up in groups of three or four and ask me to flex for them. They’d take turns pinching, gripping and poking at my biceps, abs and thighs. They’d show off their abs, their six packs and tell me not to get a six pack because that would be gross.
One day I was cross training for swim team my sophomore year and the basketball guy I was totally hot for came into the gym. He set up the leg press at 400lbs and struggled and struggled to get it to work. “It must be broken.” He might have said as he wandered off to another machine.
Without thinking about it much, I walked over and did a few reps on the setting where he left it. Yeah, was tough, but it was totally doable.
He looked at me with disgust, “You should be careful, Athena. Guys don’t like women who are muscular.”
Of course I was devastated. I was totally in to him and he had pretty much just told me that my natural strength was revolting to him in particular, but very probably to other men as well.
I stopped lifting weights my junior year and stuck half heartedly to cardio and some outdoorsy activities.
I was tired of the guys coming up to me and saying, “You’re so buff.” ”You should stop working out it’s making your boobs smaller.” “You’re like a man.”
Obviously when I stopped working out and began eating like hell, it took a few years for my body to re-establish a higher weight. And in those years of being still thin, but weaker, strangely, I got even more attention from boys and that was way more confusing.
I was loosing muscle, getting slower, couldn’t lift as much, or climb as well.
It wasn’t perfect to me, but in that window of time, it seemed like I suddenly had all the attention I hadn’t had before. Instead of asking to feel my biceps, guys started asking to feel my boobs. Instead of asking to flex, they asked me to bend over. My only response to the fuck-me attitudes that were coming my direction was – FUCK OFF!
And then I’d eat, and eat and hide. And 15 years later – that’s where I’m still at.
Because my weight fluctuates so much. Endo-Mesomorph can gain either muscle mass or fat mass very easily. I have been chubby off and on through my life and I’ve been skinny and muscular off and off.
I have not and will never be a tiny woman. I will never be able to be a size two without serious damage to my structure and health. I will never be able to be that ridiculous ideal of ingénue waif height to weight ratio.
And I wouldn’t ever want to be. It’s not what I am.
The other day, I was at work and I mentioned to a co-worker that I was doing this Barracuda Bootcamp and am getting back into weightlifting. I was pretty proud of myself when I said it. I know he is a weightlifter as well.
“Ohhhhh, Athena.” He said heavily. “You don’t want to be one of those women with muscle.” He gazed at me gravely. “You don’t want to be one of those gross women who are all ripped.”
He stated it as though it were a fact. That all men know this. That I should obviously know this too. He stated it as though he were warning me for my own safety that to be a “gross woman” “all ripped” meant that he was just trying to spare me the rejection that would surely follow an endeavor such as my attempts to get fit again.
If I were 16 again, this would have devastated me. Especially if he were someone I liked or thought well of.
At 31 it just pissed me off and I retorted. “I don’t? How do you know I don’t? I like having muscle!” It was all I could do not to tell him to go fuck himself at work and storm off.
And as soon as I said it aloud I realized – Crap! It’s out of the bag.
I like being muscular.
I like being able to fight the current in a kayak with just a little paddle and stay upright. I like being able to feel my muscle fiber strain and charge and then finally succeed in the challenge of climbing the wall, or hoisting the weights or pulling a solid stroke through 3 feet of snow.
I suddenly had this epiphany that everything up till now doesn’t matter. All that hiding and slouching and trying not to get hit on, trying not to get attacked, trying not to get teased for being muscular/chubby etc.
None of it matters anymore because – I said it out loud. I like my body.
Damnit.Damnit.Damnit. My secret it out.
I like my body. I like feeling myself get stronger and I just don’t’ fucking care anymore that it’s not sexy to be ripped. I don’t care.
I want to be free of all this hiding.
And when I’ve peeled off all that isn’t mine anymore and can be truly relaxed and back to myself again – I might have to relearn a bunch of things about the way I interact with men.
Obviously, I have hang-ups there that are directly related to my physical form, but I’ll worry about those later.
I’m relieved. Finally so relieved. Like I’ve been keeping some terrible secret in the closet that’s been eating away at me psychologically, a burden of disassociation. Like annexing a natural part of my total self and trying to repress it.
So here it is. I’m coming out of the closet.
I LIKE BEING MUSCULAR.
I LIKE BEING FIT FOR STRENGTH.
I LIKE ENDURANACE AND POWER.
I LIKE FEELING STRONG.
There it is folks. Maybe a part of the BlissQuest needed to have this realization that I’ve been being untruthful to myself about what I really want. That I’ve been hiding too long.
But I think it’s safe to say, that now that I can publicly and openly embrace a lifestyle and body type that is not exactly the everyday ideal that I’ve been conditioned by the media and other people to desire – now that I can embrace the now, the future of this….
Every other piece of history about my body can be let go. It’s not important anymore. It’s not who I am.
Now comes the part where I work myself back to where I am happiest, strongest and the most free. Now is where I get to focus on the process, the tiny steps, the undressing of my costume, the pulling back layers – to step back into the body I have forsaken.
What am I? What does my natural body look like when I’m not actively trying to obscure it?
You curious? I know I am. Let’s find out!
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