Picture This
An open letter to my body.
Story by Courtney Scott
Dear Courtney,
It will be the summer before eighth grade when you start hating your body.
It will be the first time you weigh yourself. You find yourself in a daze as the numbers on the scale glare back at you. The cold surface of the scale on your bare feet will startle you. Before that summer, you never thought twice about the food you ate. Playing sports all year round since you were seven allowed you to eat whatever you wanted.
Mint chocolate chip ice cream every night just because it was your favorite. Mom fixed mac and cheese for dinner — you will have two servings because you can. Dinosaur nuggets are on the menu for the next night.
These dinners are the result of having a mother who chases five children around all day and a father who works two jobs. The meals are easy.
No one will teach you about nutrition or what it means to have a balanced diet. You are athletic, and no one worries about your weight becoming a health issue, so no one teaches you.
That summer, you will tell Mom and Dad you don’t want to play basketball until the school year. You tell them you’re so exhausted and just want a break. A summer that is yours to do whatever you want. They reluctantly say yes, but there is some relief in Mom’s eyes as she realizes that it is one less kid she has to drive around for practices and games.
You spend your days reading dozens of fantasy books and watching reruns of “Zoey101” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender” with your siblings.
You will first start to feel uncomfortable laying on your bed. You try switching positions to find the perfect spot, but it doesn’t work. Then you glance at yourself in the mirror and notice your body looks different. Your hips are wider followed by thicker legs tight in your denim shorts, and your arms jiggle when you raise them. Looking at the pink tank you’re wearing, you notice how it stretches more over your chest and shoulders.
Then you glance at yourself in the mirror and notice your body looks different.
You confide in Mom and you tell her you don’t even know how it happened. She lays a warm, comforting hand on your shoulder and says she of all people understands. She agrees to help you lose weight.
You’re thrown into a new world full of quick-fix diets, pink drinks to increase your metabolism and workouts that will almost make you pass out. All things that you can control. But nothing works, not even getting back into sports for the school year. The new weight clings to you and refuses to let go.
Instagram starts getting popular when you’re in eighth grade. People post pictures of golden retriever puppies and homemade chicken alfredo pasta. Enjoy it because soon the world will learn what selfies are.
You will be 16 when you consider not posting a picture of you and your sister from Thanksgiving. Kailey looks perfect in the picture and you hate how you look. You despise how you are the uglier sister. The post gets deleted — you don’t want people to see you like that.
You begin to feel more depressed. And you’re not alone. “Depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide deaths became more prevalent among American adolescents between 2010 and 2015, especially among females,” said a Clinical Psychological Science study. “iGen adolescents reported experiencing more mental health issues than Millennial and GenX adolescents at the same age.”
This hatred for yourself was taught to you. Unconsciously.
Several months go between posts, but you stay active on Instagram, liking other people’s posts. Your Instagram page is a few photos of you with other people. There are no posts of you by yourself.
Even when you do post, those days are full of anxiety as you watch the number of likes slowly climb. Your post is a picture of Kailey and you in pink and white floral dresses from Easter. You look at other girls’ Easter posts and notice they get 300 likes per post, while you only get 100.
If you post nothing, then there will be no likes. Nothing to compare. So you stop posting because, clearly, no one cares about what you post.
This hatred for yourself was taught to you. Unconsciously. All the family vacations and holidays where you huddled together to capture the moment — Mom is missing in the pictures because she always wanted to be the photographer. She wouldn’t let anyone else in the family take them and wouldn’t even ask a stranger to take one.
Because in her eyes, the picture would be ruined if she was in it. She didn’t share this insecurity often, but when she did, she made it abundantly clear that she hated the way she looked in photographs.
A study of 581 parents found that 76% of parents who reported engaging in different forms of fat talk were especially associated with problematic child eating behaviors. 43.6% of parents reported saying at least one fat talk comment about their child in front of their child.
Children are observant and latch onto what their parents say. You and Kailey inherited this insecurity from Mom and can’t bear to look at yourself in pictures. Social media magnified this insecurity.
In 2017, almost 1,500 people from ages 14–24 from around the U.K. were asked how they would score each social media platform and their impact on health and wellbeing related issues. Instagram and Snapchat were found to be the most detrimental to young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
You will notice how much social media is taking from you and your mental health. You’ll take back the reins and control what you want to get from social media. Unfollowing all the models and fitness gurus will allow you to breathe better when you look in the mirror. Now you follow people of all shapes and sizes who share about their lives authentically.
Instagram will take away the number of likes visible on a post. People were noticing how harmful it can be. You are happier now and learning to love yourself. But most of all you make sure the inherited self-hatred ends with you.
Your daughter will love taking pictures.
Courtney
