Body image is a burnout issue part one

Y’all this week I wanna talk about bodies. Womxn’s bodies.

This is a topic I can get pretty heated about. But first, some of you are wondering, what does this have to do with professional burnout?

EVERYTHING.

Here’s why: as womxn (and anyone socialized as a woman/girl), we’ve absorbed tons and tons and f*cking tons of cultural messaging about our bodies.

About what our bodies should or shouldn’t look like. About what they should or shouldn’t be able to do. About how much we should or shouldn’t eat. About how much we should or shouldn’t weigh. About how we should or shouldn’t dress. About what is ok and appropriate for us to say and think and feel about our own bodies. 

About who gets to have an opinion about them. About how other people feel when they look at them. And so, we have these brains full of all these shoulds about our bodies. And doubts about our bodies. And concerns. And judgments. And the list goes on and on. 

And guess what - 

Sometimes this litany of judgments and shoulds comes up in the workplace. Sometimes it comes up explicitly - someone says some sh*t to us about our bodies. And sometimes it comes up implicitly - someone makes a comment that seems innocuous and 20 minutes or two weeks or a year later, we’re like, wait, that was some BS. 

And, of course, sometimes the call is coming from inside the house, as my own coach says. Sometimes it’s our own brain judging us. Saying mean things to us about our appearance, our outfit, our face. 

And because we have years and years of shoulds and judgments stacked up inside our heads about this sh*t, it can be hard to just “let it go.” 

We feel uncomfortable. We just want to do our job and do it well. We want to be able to focus 100% on our work. 

And unresolved body image BS gets in the way of us doing that. 

It undermines us during big presentations by making unnecessary and unhelpful commentaries about how we look in these pants. It interrupts us during critical work to ask if we look cute enough when we’re concentrating or if someone saw us doing a weird face while we were thinking so hard. It sidetracks us and disrupts our confidence in our professional abilities when we worry that we’ll be overlooked as either too pretty or not pretty enough when neither of those is in any way relevant to our work. 

Womxn are, in many ways, raised to be at war with our bodies. To try to control them and shrink them and make them socially acceptable. 

 I’ve been pissed off about this for years. 

A very good friend of mine taught me about health at every size and beauty at every size years ago. I love these concepts and yet I also know that many womxn struggle to truly let go of their old social programming around their bodies.

Sometimes they're afraid to let go. 

I also just finished a great book about burnout that talks about the very real impacts of what the authors call "the bikini industrial complex," which is to say, all the social pressure we have to look a certain way and to associate thinness with health. 

But let's be honest, y'all, our culture's obsession with thinness is not about health, and it actually f*cks our health up all the time.

Here's what I dream of: a world where womxn love their bodies. All womxn. All bodies. Not because their body fits a shape and size that culture says is ok, but instead because our bodies -- all of them -- are f*cking miracles, y'all. 

They literally heal themselves while we sleep. 

This is what I want for you, dear reader. Not an ok relationship with your body. Not an I should love my body relationship. But a full-on love affair. 

Loving our bodies the way they are, "imperfections" and all, is a revolutionary act. I want you to do it because it's fun and it feels good. 

But real talk, y'all. It will also revolutionize your work life. 

You will get so much time and energy and attention back when you stop judging and shaming and criticizing your glorious, human body.

You'll feel better. You'll enjoy your life more. You will sleep better. 

You don't have to wait. Your body doesn't have to change. You can change everything by choosing to tell the patriarchy to f*ck off and celebrating the body you have NOW. 

Yes, the body you already have, just the way it is, is worth celebrating. 

If that feels hard, stay tuned. This is a big topic, so I am going to devote a whole newsletter to the how of shifting your body image. 

But for today, just try considering the idea that your whole relationship with your body could change, without your body having to change at all.