locker-room bodies

something that has struck me since returning to the gym is how much i missed seeing the bodies of other women up close and unclothed – and i don’t mean in a voyeristic, thrill-seeking kind of way.

you see, when they aren’t in magazines, women’s bodies are lumpy and scarred, and parts of them are bigger than mine, or smaller than mine, and they sometimes are a little lopsided, or out of proportion – sometimes they are pregnant, sometimes they are missing an eye, or even a limb… but in all they are the bodies we women inhabit every day, that propel us in the water or on the forest trails, that get us to work and back, that birth children, and that just exist… mostly in a world that idealizes bodies nothing like their own (despite all the feats of these lumpy, scarred, bigger, smaller, lopsided bodies that they posess).

it’s not a matter, for me, of looking at other women in derisive comparison (oh look – she’s fatter, older, more hobbled than me!) – but of looking around to appreciate real bodies for just what they are, and recognizing mine is not worse than most, nor better – and that magazine and movie bodies really are a cruel fiction.

i know, i know…. of course everyone knows this – but it’s easy to forget, walking around in the world of the clothed. i find that the daily interaction with women in the locker room makes me, on the whole, a lot easier with my own body – which is an added side benefit to working out in the first place.

and incidentally – i swam 22 laps today, plus 8 with the kickboard (working on my leg technique) – and the laps are getting just a little easier each time (i’m doing less of the easy backstroke, more crawling).