I wish I could give all you gals a hug, especially you, mermaid. Like many of us, I too-often hold my naked body up to the ideal of the airbrushed photos in the mags, and find myself sadly lacking.
What is there to do? well, option A is to take a second job, save, and have plastic surgery after plastic surgery. But somehow, I don't think that will go to the heart of the matter. I don't think it's a cure, and I don't think I'd ever feel satisfied.
So I go with my option B, which is really hard, and which I have to work on constantly. This involves a lot of re-thinking, re-teaching in opposition to what I'm otherwise told. I remind myself that it's not important how I look, but who I am and how I behave. I remind myself that good people will also judge me on the real stuff and that anyone who didn't like me because I had sagging breasts is not worth me fretting over. I remind myself that this demand that women both be attractive to attract men with whom we then have babies and then have babies and the inevitable physical changes pregnancies cause is illogical, half-insane, and at its heart, misogynistic and anti-nature.
I really look at the women in the locker room in the gym--you know what? They all have cellulite. Their breasts all sag. Most of them have stretch marks. And these are the women who work out!--I can only assume women who don't sag more. I collect pictures of real women--not airbrushed--in their beautiful variety.
I remind myself that in, say, ice hockey, men's scars are considered sexy, a sign of the battles they've endured. Well, my lifelong fight with obesity is a battle that makes the biggest Domi-Ray fight look like pansy stuff.
When I'm in yoga, in "downward dog" and really notice all that excess skin bunched up on my thighs, I think: these are my battle scars, and by gum, I'm going to be proud of them!
I wouldn't accept from a lover words like, "god, your body is so awful. Look at those stretch marks! I'm disgusted!" Why then should I accept them from myself?
Yes sometimes it feels like I'm losing this fight against bad body image...but more and more it feels that I am winning it.