I was nine years old when I started wearing a bra. A girl at church gave me her hand-me-downs, and I was so excited to wear them, because I thought they were mysterious and pretty with their soft satin cups and sweet little bows.
However, breasts came with a responsibility I did not expect. Babies you’re innocently holding want to nurse on them. Neighborhood boys want to touch them. Siblings make fun of them. Men like to look at them. You have to watch how you bend over, and can’t play like you used to, or throw your arms over the back of the couch, because for some reason it’s not “modest.”
In time the sweet little bows got traded in for underwires and back-country-road honks, waves and whistles. The itinerant workers in my small southern town followed me around the grocery store, stared at me in the laundromat, and sometimes followed us home. Years later, men joked about my breasts and a busboy I worked with at a restaurant begged to pay me $100 to see them.
Aghast, I declined.
My breasts brought loads of discomfort, but they were not the only part of me that drew attention. “Did you know you have a big butt?” I heard from a boy of seventeen. I should have called him out for his wandering eyes, but at sixteen, I wanted to melt into the floor.
When you aren’t equipped to process that sort of thing, embarrassment, humiliation and shame get stuffed into the body and write their stories in the tender, secret places. This is how we are shaped. On the inside, but also on the outside. We all have stories of body parts and pain, many going back to our first memories. (This is true even without voluptuous curves. Cruelty can happen on either end of the scale, and unhealed comments can sting for a lifetime.) This is why you and I must return to the heat.
First, to truth. Then, to love.
But what happens when you don’t—can’t—love what is true?
One of my favorite childhood stories is The Velveteen Rabbit. Margery Williams knew a secret or two about the body, as you’ll see...
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
—The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams
When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.
A few years ago I wrote a tender confession: “Today I ugly-cried over my new driver’s license photo.”
I sat in my car that day holding a temporary license with my face on it, and cried in despair. Then I felt stupid for crying; it’s just a driver’s license and nobody likes their driver’s license picture. So I cried some more. I said unkind things. I made harsh comparisons. With tears pouring out of my eyes, I swore off any future events where a photo ID is required.
Later, I walked down the street with cars swooping past and felt an old, familiar desire to hide. I wanted to apologize to strangers everywhere. I wanted to say, “I’m sorry you have to see me. I’m sorry you have to look at me. I’m sorry to be visible in your world right now.” When I lumbered into a sweet little gift shop, I wondered what the saleswoman thought as my hips brushed past her fragile wares. Would I knock them off? Crash into glass vases?
The photo is hideous and feels like photographic evidence that I am a fraud. It sits in my wallet saying, see this, oh people of the earth! This is what she looks like without control over angles or lighting, filters, retakes or hiding her double chin. This is who she REALLY is.
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.”
That picture is my truth and I do not love it. What do you do with truth you do not love? As tears fell, I thought about my work. I’m devoted to helping women like you make peace with your body and your life, especially when you don’t [yet] love the body or life you have. I care deeply about the language you use, the words you say about yourself, and what you believe. I’m praying for your healing and transformation.
Yet here I am, not loving what is true.
So even though it’s complicated and messy, I just want to say this: your tears are quiet petals falling. Your feelings are messengers. No matter how you feel about your body right now, or your driver’s license photo, or how the arms of your chair dig into the sides of your waist, or how your body jiggles where you don’t want her to, these moments don’t need to own you. But let them be whispering invitations to love. Let the tears spill over. Let the feelings rise. Let the energy move through, or it will get stuck and surface another day.
Right now, I can’t love my driver’s license picture. But I can accept the invitation, even if it’s awkward and achey, to stay in my body. I will give her what she needs: a warm meal, a luxurious sip of water, an early bedtime. I will be gentle. I won’t quietly punish my body for being unflattering in a photo; instead, I’ll be soft with compassion. My body needs love now. I won’t wait for her to lose the double (triple?) chin, or to stop huffing as she comes up the stairs before I give her what she needs. I won’t withhold kindness until she meets unrealistic standards of beauty.
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
It’s a commitment to love what is real and true. And it starts with this moment. And then it will spill into the next moment. And you’ll cry sometimes, and pray, and find courage to show up and keep showing up and learn how to love, anyway.
On my arm, a swirly tattoo reads, “Grace always embraces.” Grace. It is grace that loves, anyway. It is the healing oil of grace that saturates tangled roots to loosen and set free. It is grace that sees what is really-real, grace that finds loveliness in the frayed seams of life, grace that flows like rivers of honey and laughter. It is velveteen grace, rooted in power, love, and truth. And I hope that soon, long before most of my hair is loved off, or coarse white whiskers adorn my chin, and my bare breasts clang together like church bells, grace will be all I see.
*This article was written in 2018 and is a selection from my book, “The Secret Life of a Curvy Girl,” which is currently unavailable.
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