The Words - An Autobiography

Body Image

I was surprised and saddened to hear my wife regularly make disparaging comments about her body and her appearance. Especially considering that she turned nearly every head that she passed. There were waves of whiplash that trailed her everywhere she went.

So, one morning, not one to leave well enough alone, I pulled her naked in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the inside of our bedroom closet door and asked her to point out what exactly she thought was wrong with her body. She immediately attempted to pull away, complaining that she didn't like looking at herself in the mirror.

It was a challenge, but I held tight and asked, "Please. Tell me. I want to know."

"Why?"

"So I can tell you how wrong you are."

She whipped angrily about to face her reflection in the mirror and began spewing out her list:

"I'm too tall, obviously."

"Too skinny."

"I can see every one of my ribs."

"I'm not pretty."

"Seriously, now," I interjected.

She held up her hand to silence me. "You wanted to know. I'm telling you."

"I don't like my ears or nose, too big, or my neck, which is too long."

"My breasts are too small."

I was about to interrupt her again to disagree, but she wasn't pausing for a breath.

"I don't like my belly button."

"I don't like how my waist flows down to my hips, or the way my hip bones stick out."

"I have no ass."

"My legs are too long and too thin."

"My knees are too big, and my feet are huge."

"I hate wearing tight jeans because I have a huge gap between my thighs."

"And, if you insisted on knowing, I don't like my hoo-hah – that's what my grandmother called it. That is one of the things I hate about porn. Most of the women in them have these neat little bald, peach-like mounds with perfect splits and hardly any lips. I have these ugly mud flaps hanging down, which embarrass me every time you are down there. That's what a girl in my dorm at college had called them: mud flaps. This girl spotted mine when I stepped from the shower because I hung my towel outside. She told me she'd had a labiaplasty to fix that because her boyfriend didn't like her mud flaps. She'd also had implants because her breasts were too small.

"I don't want to have surgery," my wife cried, "I want implants because my breasts are too small. I don't want a labiaplasty unless... do you hate my mud flaps? You must! I hate them. I can hardly stand to look at myself down there."

"Wow!" I told her, "We are clearly viewing your body through different eyes. I love just about everything about you. And I don't think any woman should ever feel she needs surgery because a man doesn't like something about her body. If they felt that much pressure to change something, they should get a different man."

But, instead of expressing appreciation for my effort to be supportive, she appeared hurt and wanted to know what parts I didn't like. Then she burst into tears.

I was dumbfounded. "What did I say?"

"You told me; 'Just about everything.'"

I apologized. "That is only a figure of speech. It wasn't an assessment. I love absolutely everything about you."