My Body Contains a $300,000 Instrument and These Standards are Bullshit.
Unpacking the tendency to loathe my physical being.
Every time I try a new workout class, I black out.
I realized early in life the futility of trying to be the best at sports. I did not enjoy running, and I learned pretty early on that I was “big,” i.e., not one of the small cute girls with long brown hair. The things you pick up at age seven and eight set the tone for a lot, and I was very aware, from that age, that I was not the soccer type. (This helps explain the scene for the entirety of my recess experience from 4th Grade to 7th Grade: reading a book on the curb.)
I played basketball and volleyball in middle school, for which my size was a boon. There is an epic story I told often in my younger years of my triumphant game in the 8th Grade, playing for Mackintosh Academy (I’d been bullied out of the local Catholic school), in which I hip-checked a girl for a rebound and she nearly hit me. Like, arm raised, about to smack me, spectators gasping, when the ref blew the whistle. She got thrown out. These hips don’t lie.
I made JV volleyball freshman year of high school, and quit on picture day to do Godspell. I made the freshman basketball team and quit to do A Midsummer Night's Dream. Coach Kos, at this point, prudently suggested I stop trying out for sports.
During my fourth year teaching, when I was thrown into running a drama program, Bikram yoga was my emotion regulator. I was really struggling in the classroom. I had no idea how to help kids deal with stage fright, because I’d never had it. In retrospect, this is really funny, but at the time, I appeared to callus, and, as any teacher does, when I wasn’t sure of something, my frustration inevitably ended up with the students. I had a number of disciplinary problems that were more my fault than the kids’, and there was no greater authority on the subject material available for me to turn to. To temper my overall mood, I did Bikram four times a week. That was the first time in my life when I actively pursued physical exhaustion on a schedule, what one might call “working out.”
When I moved to Los Angeles, I shelled out for the personal training package at LA Fitness. (It’s a racket. I paid $80/hour and my trainer made $8/hr. This is not a lie. It is a tragedy. When she told me what she got paid, I was furious.)
What those sessions did do, other than reveal that an economically exploitative system like that is apparently allowed to exist, was give me the tools to safely move my body. Lena was patient and funny. We were both fresh off the boat in LA, sharing tips on acting classes and agents.
When I got to grad school, I had a classmate/now-ex-flame who day-jobbed as a personal trainer, and he helped me make a public gym my own space. I became the strongest and slimmest I’ve ever been, and I can now walk into any gym in the US or Europe totally confident that I know my way around the weights and machines.
Throughout the last decade of my life, I have done the free first class for dozens of different workout styles. Yoga (15+), yin (2), spin (2), HIIT (4), CrossFit (1), and boxing (2) are all in my repertoire.
And every single one that wasn’t yoga caused me to blackout. Why, you may ask? Because deep inside of me is a nine year old soccer player who thinks she’s fat and needs to prove to the other girls that she can keep up.
I’m 5’10” and fluctuate between size 10-16. I am “well built” for conventional standards. I had boobs in middle school, which, of course, led me to hate my boobs and body for most of my life. I still fantasize about one day wearing those dresses that aren’t meant for a bra to be worn with them. What a treat. What a delight. To not have to wear that which my brother mockingly calls an over shoulder boulder holder!
So when I walk into a first-time class, I want to prove, desperately, with the fire of a pre-teen who was told she was fat burning in my bones, that I can keep up. What this means is that I will inevitably push myself too hard within the first fifteen minutes and end up sitting on the floor, breathing deep, losing vision. I cannot go zero to full speed, no matter how many times I convince myself my body is so strong. Have I learned this lesson? Of course not.
This weekend I bought a Groupon for a new boutique class-brand combo called SPENGA. Spin, strength, yoga, with 20 min spent on each in a group session. Why? Because I’m a 32 year old woman living in Highlands Ranch, and though I’ve fought the suburban mom vibes pretty well so far, at some point, I just had to admit that those frosted blonde lulu mamas were my peers.
I showed up to the class and found my bike. Fifteen minutes in, I was beginning to black out. My limbs became tingly and my eyes started to telescope. I cannot bear to appear anything less than The Most Strong and Fit and Ready. I slowed down, took deep breaths (professional breather, here), and began the usual litany of insults I quietly hurl at myself about my body. These stupid boobs are too big for a normal sports bra. These arms aren’t toned anymore. This ass stretches out my legging so much that you can see my underwear line. My gut makes me look pregnant when I slouch. I hate it. I hate myself. I hate my body. I hate it.
I began consciously pulling myself out of this mode by thanking my lungs for breathing, and my legs for being strong, and my spine for making me so tall. I tried to drag my body-despair away from comparison and catastrophizing (if I have cellulite under my arms… will I ever get married?) and into the present moment. Grief is hard, no amount of running kept the weight off this year, and, by the way, pandemic. I tried to bless my body while trying desperately not to black out.
Then it occurred to me that this body houses a $300,000 instrument.
As I lightly peddled and focused my breathing, I ran the math: four years of undergrad at Notre Dame, two years of in-state graduate tuition at UCLA, $9,000 worth of pay-to-sings (summer opera programs for pre-professionals), about $8,000 a year for the past six years for lessons and coachings. I didn’t pay sticker price for these things, but if I were to look at the billable value of all of the training opportunities I’ve had to develop my instrument, to make my voice do what it does, it is easily hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is money from scholarships or loans or gifts or income from every parallel career I have had that has been invested in the instrument housed within this body. It is my body. It is my voice.
How the fuck can I dump on my body for not looking and moving the way I want it to in a fucking bicycle class in HIGHLANDS RANCH when it is simultaneously houses the biggest investment of my life?
How did I become so ungrateful?! How did the way I view my body become so warped?
Everywhere I go, I bring this gift. I walk around with a superpower inside of me. Somebody needs a high Bb? Look no further. You need some overtones to shoot over that tuba? This is what I trained for.
The nature of my profession means that I feel two ways about my body: I judge it relentlessly for appearance, as any woman may, while spending my life honing a deeply physical Olympic-level skill, of which I am immensely proud. What an awful dichotomy it is, to simultaneously despise and adore the flesh with which I move through the world.
Of course I can pace myself. Of course I can slow down and rest easy and breathe. Of course I can forgo looking at the “are you in the zone” number next to my name being broadcast to the entire room. Because my body is the most magical, powerful thing in that room.
When you get to your thirties, you’ve had time to gain an “adult” perspective. Most of my peers have spent a lot of time doing work to understand how to move comfortably through the world. This was through therapy, solidarity with new groups, deconstruction of how they were raised, or finding previously “othered” communities in which they flourish. It’s the work of learning to live in this body, in this world. It’s hard. It’s scary. It means making space for entirely new ways of seeing.
When it comes to my body, it means spending a lot of time undoing the assumption that it’s worth is tied to whether or not it is sexually appealing to men in the 21st century. It means naming this obsession, realizing the self-loathing and despair it induces, and choosing to walk away from it. This is hard. Beauty is power in so many ways, especially in a profession in which I’m literally on stage, in a spotlight, playing archetypal roles that were crafted from the western tropes of the past few centuries. Which is fine! I have no problem with looking smoking hot, a femme fatal in peak gender-roles. But I cannot let a desire to maintain that version of myself dictate how I feel when I wake up in the morning, when I go on a run, when I sit at the piano, when I’m on Zoom, when I’m in a rehearsal and need to focus on my sound, or when I’m just existing in my body. To quote my favorite podcast host Kate Kennedy, women are allowed to just exist.
This journey never ends. The call to delight in my own body and relish the physical spaces I inhabit is something I will spend my life working on. The deconstruction of western-trope-attractiveness is the work of a lifetime, and the burden of every American woman, regardless of size, race, or age. I seek health and joy in moving my body, dancing, running, singing, hugging, and one day bearing children. I want strength. I want clothing that I like to wear, regardless of the number on the tag inside of it. I want to smile at myself in the mirror and feel comfortable. I want to do a workout class and go at my own pace from the beginning.
I want to love my body with the honor and wonder it deserves, as the unique mediator through which I experience this world, and the carrier of a magnificent gift.
I want to look at myself before getting into the shower and feel gratitude and pride.
This is my home on earth.
This is the body that came from my mother’s body.
It is powerful, and it is mine.