#9: I Feel Unworthy of Love. How Do I Find Beauty in My Body?

It's time to kill your motherfucking Monster.

This will make sense once you read my letter.

Hello Hayes, 

I’m not sure if this is something you would like to give advice on, but I’ve been struggling badly the past few months with feeling ugly, mostly because I am overweight. 

I’m an 18-year-old freshman in college. I’ve never loved how I look, but lately it has escalated to the point where it affects almost every area of my life. I’ve struggled with binge eating and eating too little, and am currently trying to lose weight in a healthier way. 

I feel like I’m not worthy of love in the body that I have. I obsess over how I’m not what is considered “attractive.” I wish I felt comfortable in my own skin, that I could go swimming (an activity I otherwise love so much) without feeling gross with my shirt off, and that I could be social with new people without a voice in the back of my mind telling me they think I am fat or ugly. That I could feel worthy of love and see the same beauty in myself that I see in everyone else in my life.

I consider myself to be someone who doesn’t let his emotions get to him too much, but this is breaking me down. It’s also been very hard to think rationally while dealing with this. I’m not even sure what I am asking for specifically. I apologize if this is too much or not the kind of thing you’re looking to give advice on. I’ve just read your column and figured why not write to you.

Thank you,

Songbird Trying to Migrate Home

---

Hello Songbird Trying to Migrate Home,  

It’s not too much. You are not too much. Everything about you is just the right size. If anything, you have room to expand. 

You don’t feel ugly because you’re overweight. You feel ugly because of the Monster that found shelter in your brain. It’s poisoning you. The size or shape of your body is not to blame for your self-loathing. No, we blame your Monster and the Underworld that feeds it. 

The Underworld and our real world look similar. That’s part of what makes it so frightening and such an ideal spot for your Monster to hide. Monsters love to scare (we know this from James P. Sullivan and Mike Wazowski) and what better place to scare than where the victim thinks they're safe. One minute you’re cutting up an apple to have with peanut butter, a great afternoon snack. Everything’s fine. But then the snack blurs in front of you: Should I have this apple and peanut butter? Is almond butter better than peanut? You stick with PB because you’re in the mood for it, case closed, crisis averted. But then on the walk back to your desk to enjoy your snack you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Is that what I look like? When did this become a fun house? You clap in front of your face, snap back to reality. Fuck you, Underworld. You almost had me there. Jokes on you motherfucker. 

Do you know those moments I’m talking about? When the mirror tries to mess with you? Now you know what to call those moments: They’re signs of the Underworld. 

It’s not your fault, my love. You feel ugly because your Monster wants you to feel that way. It’s built in a very sophisticated Underworld and it doesn’t want you to feel better because as soon as you do, it will need to find a new place to live. And it’s very lazy and doesn’t want to go searching. But the Underworld it lives in is slowly crumbling. The unfurling began when you wrote me your letter. 

Losing weight will not make you feel beautiful. I say this from experience: You could “look your best,” have people of all genders and sexual orientations lining up to hold your face, and I suspect you’d still feel the way you do — because the way you feel is not related to what you look like. It’s really important to untangle the two, okay? That’s why I keep repeating it. Your body is not responsible for your sadness. 

In order to feel better, you don’t need to change anything about how you look. We need to kill your Monster. 

***

I had a Monster too, an eating disorder in college. Bulimia. I never say that word out loud, only when I’m speaking with a new doctor and have to go through the rig-ma-roll about why I don’t want to be weighed. Even then I try to be vague and only use the B-word when asked directly. It gives me heebie jeebies, which is possibly a synonym for shame. 

I killed my Monster nine years ago, but sometimes it whispers from the grave. Just last week, before a friend’s wedding in New York, it paid me a visit. 

Oh hello, Monster, ye old friend! 

I wish it was that friendly of a reunion. 

Instead it went something like this.

On Friday morning, the day before the wedding, I woke up at my friend’s Jess and Brian’s apartment. Jess and I were spending the morning together. When I walked past the mirror in her entryway after getting dressed, I caught a glimpse of myself and shuddered. Underworld status. I took a deep breath. Not today, you beast. I diverted my eyes and directed my attention toward my friend who I love. We went and had a great morning. (Let this be a reminder that there’s nothing like spending time with a dear friend to stop you from feeling bad about yourself.) 

Later that afternoon, we stood in her bathroom while she blew my hair smooth and bouncy, one of the kindest things a long-haired person can do for a member of her tribe. I was wearing my towel and it was hard for me to look at myself. 

So I told her. I said, “I feel kind of weird in my body right now. My arms are bothering me. And I’m dreading the dress I have to wear tonight.” 

The dress in question used to be my mom’s, a silk, body-skimming Roberto Cavalli number with tiny straps and built in boob pads (okkkkk mom). She wore it to my bat mitzvah sixteen years ago. 

Jess nodded and continued smoothing my hair. “I understand,” she said. “You have beautiful arms. They’re just arms.” 

They’re just arms. I took a breath. It’s just my body, my body is the thing that carries me. 

Saying my problem aloud to my friend, allowing her to comfort me — that was enough to reset me for the day. 

But when it came time for me to put the dress on the next evening, I found myself again in Underworld territory.

Mid meltdown. This is my game face.

I did not want to wear the dress, I did not want to wear any dress. In the span of one hour: I cried on the bathroom floor, posted a TikTok about my current predicament and then deleted it because I wasn’t in the right headspace to deal with the video’s performance, drank a lot of water, debated whether I was going to wash my hair for 20-minutes too long, did some power poses with Brob (“I am hot” and “My husband is a smokeshow” are two mantras he required me to say in an Ironman voice), put on some makeup, and finally felt good enough to go in public. 

Post meltdown. Courtesy of Brob.

And still, after my husband and I got in the car, after we had said goodbye to his parents in the kitchen, I said, “Do you think they’re saying I look like I gained weight?”

He paused and looked at me. 

“No, I don’t think that they’re talking about that.” 

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

We drove off. We had the best night. 

So allow me to tell you what Brob told me: The new people you meet are not thinking about how fat or ugly you are. They might be thinking about how fat and ugly they are — which is sad for them, but they’re not my focus right now. My focus is you. 

***

How do we kill your Monster?

We start by giving it a name. Naming your monster helps externalize it. That way, when it taunts you and says you should binge and restrict and punish yourself, you can tell it to fuck off. If a name feels weird, you can also just call it Monster. 

The second step is to get professional help. Are you seeing a therapist, my love? You don’t need to battle this alone, and I’d argue that you can’t. You are around the age where my self-sabotage peaked, and a couple years away from when I found sustained peace. My therapist did not fix my problems or kill my Monster, but he held me accountable and helped me see new possibilities for myself and my life. I also saw a doctor at my campus hospital who specializes in eating disorders. Does your college have an associated hospital? If so, see if they have an eating disorder unit — and if they do, give them a call and see if they have referrals for local therapists. (I am not diagnosing you with an eating disorder, all I’m saying is that, given the symptoms and feelings you describe, you would benefit from a therapist who has training in this area.)

Third step, we surround ourselves with people who have a relationship with food and their body that we admire. This is so important. My person, at 20-years-old, was my roommate Micaela. Micaela shared none of the issues about food that I did. She didn’t talk about her body in a critical way, she had no qualms with eating sandwiches. It’s in her company that I began to enjoy eating again. Thinking about it makes me cry. 

Spend more time with people who make you forget that you are in a body, sweet Songbird. 

Body neutrality is a big thing these days, and I understand why. It’s useful to have a neutral attitude towards the body, especially when you exist in one that has been highly scrutinized or sexualized or abused. 

Since you wrote about being worthy of love, I also want to say this: You deserve a love where your body is not a neutral thing. Where your partner adores and desires your body exactly the way it is. You’ll walk into the room with your clothes off and they’ll brighten at the sight of you. You won’t feel self-conscious when they kiss or hold your belly. You’ll laugh together when you eat a lot. I can’t move, me neither. You’re worthy of a love where they like to spoon the folds of your skin with their hands — and you like it too. You won’t stiffen at intimacy. You’ll have a love where they’ll say how sexy you look tonight and you will believe them. 

You are worthy of love in your body. But Big Love is not a selfless savior, she’s no Mother Theresa. Someone else won’t save you — you will save you. Big Love finds people who are willing to receive it, to reciprocate it — and if you are living under a Monster’s watch, it’s nearly impossible to receive and reciprocate.

***

You have no direct question for me, but I think that the heart of what you’re asking is: How do I love myself, Hayes, when it feels impossible? 

You do the things I said above — all of them — and then you just slog on. You trust that the slog will subside, that your shoes will become less heavy and suddenly you’re walking, you’re running, you’re dare I say — swimming? You deserve to swim without the company of your Monster, my love.

I don’t have some flowery answer about “the power of self-love” because I don’t know if I believe it’s a thing. I don’t feel love towards myself in the way I feel it toward my husband or my puppy or my nephew. My cherished family and friends. Love exists outside the self. I don’t yearn for my smell or my weight or my softness. 

What if self-love is not about loving yourself but about choosing yourself? Protecting yourself. What if it refers to how ferociously you try to kill your Monster? You don’t need to like yourself in order to choose yourself, I’ve realized. You definitely don’t need to feel beautiful in order to choose yourself, sweet Songbird. Choose yourself and the beauty will follow. 

You write that you are “someone who doesn’t let his emotions get to him too much.” It’s time to rewrite that narrative about yourself. Your ability to access your emotions, to pull them close and untangle them, it’s a gift that makes you an inherently worthy and lovable person. An attractive person. 

So this is where we begin. Your Underworld is melting. Your Monster quakes in fear. Look who’s doing the scaring now. You have steps to take, a slog to begin. And then, my love, it will be time to go in the ocean. Look at what your body can do. It can float. 

xo, 

Hayes

Send me your advice letters at alexandrahayesrobinson@protonmail.com.