Member-only story
Why at 40+ We Find It Hard to Accept the Passage of Time in Our Bodies
How ’90s bullying taught us to hate our bodies (and how to heal).
Unfortunately, I was a chubby kid with thick, bottle-bottom glasses and an eye patch to treat my lazy eye.
Because of that, I went through a level of bullying I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
But the worst part was how they conditioned us, like Pavlov’s dog.
We were taught to reject ourselves and others.
In the ’90s, if they saw you with a chubby girl, they’d say, “There go the two little piggies.”
If they saw you with a girl who wore glasses, they’d call you “the moles.”
If the girl had braces, they’d straight-up say, “Ugh, gross! Bet all her food gets stuck in those wires.”
If they saw you with a girl with short hair, they’d say, “You’re a girl, that’s why you’re dating lesbians.”
And it went the other way too, from girls to guys. Same deal.
Horrible.
That’s why I think the metrosexual trend popped off in the ‘90s.
They were the guys (I was one of them) who waxed, wore wrinkled, unbuttoned shirts down to…
