The One Where Exercise Doesn't Mean Skinny

When I was growing up, I was the skinny kid.

Now, girls may not understand this, but skinny isn’t always good, and any guy can testify that the only thing worse growing up as the 'fat', is growing up the 'weak' kid.  You get passed up for a lot, looked down upon for your lack of masculine strength, and it puts you in a dangerous position.

So when I entered High School, I started exercising with the intent to grow.  I wanted to be stronger, and with that, I wanted to look different.  I wanted to be bigger, and to be the guy people ask to move tables and carry boxes.

I never did anything in public, or even in my living room, and I never did anything that used more than my body weight.  Using actual weights would mean telling someone I was trying to change, which would only open the door for critique and suggestion, and I knew I couldn't handle that.  Especially not from my parents.

I started with pushups, then sit-ups.  When things got too easy, I threw textbooks on my back to increase resistance.  I kept at it for a couple years, and one day, like magic, I was walking past the mirror after a shower and I realized how different I looked.  Most of me hadn’t changed, but the things that had changed did so before I even realized it.  Suddenly I realized I looked fuller and stronger.  And the parts of me that were the same suddenly looked better, because I was happier.

And that a the end of the story, right? Now is the point where you throw your popcorn on the ground, sharpen your pitchforks, gas your torches, and demand refunds for things you never paid for.  This is a body image blog, dammit.  You can't get happier through EXERCISE!!!!

But I did.  Exercise made me happier.  It gave me the smug satisfaction of knowing I can probably do more push-ups than half of my grade, and the first time someone actually asked me to move something heavy I had to bite my tongue to hide my squeal of joy.

But the lesson isn't “exercise and you'll feel better”.  The lesson isn't “change yourself to fit society”.  Because that’s not what I learned.

You see, to motivate myself through my training, I used pictures.  Pictures of body builders and male models I clipped from magazines or found online.  I would keep those pictures on a special folder on my computer and at the bottom of my sock drawer, reminding myself of the people I thought I wanted to look like, and I ended up using ahead of the curve “thinspiration”, for the thin boy who wished he wasn't.

I got so caught up in those pictures I didn't get to enjoy how good I looked before that faithful day in the mirror when I just happened to catch myself smiling.  I was so caught up with looking like the models, who have literally all day to work out and are PAID to look a certain way, that I forgot to realize how ridiculously awful I would look with that giant ‘v’ shaped torso or the body builder arms.

It wasn't until I broke free from that goal for a minute that I realized I had already achieved my dream.  I was who I wanted to be, parts of which I was all along.

                            
And that's where the real moral is.  

You are not a model.  I'm sorry, but it’s true, unless you actually are a model reading this blog in which case "Hello" and "Welcome to our community.  Please help yourself to the buffet, sit down, and stop posing.”

You are not getting paid to look a certain way.  You are not required to look a certain way, and if I may rock your world for a moment, models don’t have the monopoly on beauty.  Models are expected to be thin and blank faced so that photographers and fashion designers and makeup artists can work them like a canvas.  They like the way clothes fit on a certain body type or the way makeup fits on a certain face and they force everyone to fit into that category.  And then you get into the issue of Photoshop and the fact that even models can’t look that thin, and you end with a giant explosion ball of assumptions and lies that no one wants to deal with.  

I would never have realized how good I looked if I didn't stop looking for ways to look the way I was told.  And I am eternally grateful that I woke up.

     

So, in summary:

No one can tell you how to look beautiful.

You can look your best the way you want to look best, and get there the any way you want, although I prefer the safest method at all possible.

         

Be happy.  Be healthy.  And never forget that there is a way for you to be beautiful in your own way.

                    

(The image comes from a video titled “Losers”)