Swimsuit modeling at 60: 'My unlikely contribution to reviving body positivity'
A guest post by Sari Botton.
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Sari Botton is the author of the memoir “And You May Find Yourself.” She edited two bestselling anthologies: “Goodbye to All That” and “Never Can Say Goodbye.” She publishes Oldster Magazine (see the New York Times feature on Oldster here!) and Memoir Land. I’m delighted to have her write a guest post for Body Type this week. — Mikala
A few months ago my editor at New York Magazine’s The Strategist asked me if there were any apparel items I was on the hunt for that I might like to write about for that section. I sent her a list, and from that she chose “swimsuits that support and flatter my aging body,” then offered me an out: “Just checking that you’d be comfortable taking photos as you hunt?” (She hadn’t asked me that question with regard to my prior assignment, on comfortable clogs.)
I panicked. Was I really prepared to expose my short, curvy form — now also lumpy and wrinkly at 60 — in the service of, well, service journalism? A body I’d been inclined to hide behind oversized clothes as a teen, even after I’d starved and over-exercised it down to 85 pounds? One that is now the softest and fullest it’s ever been?
What the hell was I thinking?
***
A year or two ago the prospect of displaying myself in that way might have felt slightly less daunting. We were in the midst of a blessed, all-too-brief cultural moment of body acceptance. (Well, a portion of the culture was, and I was part of it.) In my late 50s I was so on board with that movement and the ideas behind it: that bodies naturally come in all shapes and sizes, they’re all valid and acceptable, and we shouldn’t fight ours; that dieting doesn’t work, not in the long-run, and because it doesn’t work, it is a multi-billion dollar industry that traps people in a never-ending, unhealthy cycle of futility.
My eye had finally adjusted to the point that fuller figures on others appealed to me. I had mostly made peace with my own soft curviness, although I’ve never fully gotten past the body dysmorphia and self-criticism that began for me in childhood. I don’t know that I ever will, and I’ve come to accept that. But I had also largely come to accept my body, and that it is programmed with certain cellular, genetic inclinations that will always override whatever I try to do to it.
Not only that — I had finally arrived at a place where I could enjoy and indulge in food more than ever before. Not over-indulge; in recent years I’ve devised a kind of intuitive eating protocol that involves noticing when I feel full, then putting my fork down. Truth be told, there’s always a bit of almost involuntary calorie/carb counting happening in the background, but that had gotten quieter.
It was a relief to no longer beat myself up when I couldn’t exercise because of injury, or even because I was tired, or bored by it. We’d entered a beautiful new world marked by body diversity, and I was all in. Naively I believed this progress wasn’t reversible, but as has been the case lately with many other kinds of social progress, it absolutely was. It’s been whiplash-inducing to witness a sudden return to celebrities and influencers achieving — and in doing so, valorizing — extreme thinness. Along with that we’ve seen the return of the moralization of weight, food choices, and levels of exercise.
I blame GLP-1 drugs — not the legitimate uses for them, of which there are many, but what I see as the abuses of them, by people strictly interested in super thinness. People who don’t suffer from any of the admittedly long list of conditions and ailments that the drugs can help manage, but who just want to be skinny in a way that reminds me of the heroin-chic waifishness that was popular on the runways in the ’90s.
I feel so betrayed by this backlash. It came just as I had finally managed to feel good in my own imperfect skin. And it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened for me.
***
In the early 1980s, when I was struggling with anorexia and body dysmorphia, the adults around me did everything they could to encourage me to stop hurting myself with starvation and over-exercising. They sent me to a therapist specializing in eating disorders, insisted that being super thin wasn’t attractive, and assured me I had been beautiful just as I’d been, back before I stopped eating.
Then, just as I was learning how to feed myself and know my appetites, a funny thing happened: many of those adults went on SlimFast and The Cambridge Diet1, trading two of their three daily meals for shakes with the nutritional value of a TicTac. The remaining meal of the day tended to be salad with a small amount of protein.
Suddenly just about every grownup I knew dropped several sizes, and became preoccupied with maintaining their new low weights; this was of course impossible, since dieting doesn’t work long-term. I mean, they’d been dieting around me for most of my life, but now they were crash-dieting, newly normalized by the purveyors of low-calorie shakes. It was so confusing for me to witness. In time, though, it would strike me as ridiculous. This awareness didn’t immediately cure me, but it came to serve as an interesting mirror to hold up to myself, which helped me to question my own preoccupation with thinness. In the end, what I witnessed might have ironically helped me move in a healthier direction.
Now some of those same people have jumped on the GLP-1 bandwagon in what appears to me an unhealthy, unnecessary bid for ultra thinness. For one older woman I know with life-long body image issues, it has triggered full-blown anorexia. She is now dangerously thin. When I see her, I can’t help but notice her moving their food around the plate without actually eating it. It’s painful to watch not only because I’m witnessing what I used to do, but also because I feel deeply concerned about her and her wellbeing.
While I worry about the implications of these people’s choices, the good news is that at least so far, what I’m seeing registers as a turn-off for me. I’m happily surprised by this, because not long ago, under similar circumstances, I might have been tempted to resume restricting food again.
But something has shifted for me at 60. I’m not sure how I got here, but somehow I’m no longer open to hurting myself in any of the ways I once did. Maybe the body acceptance movement of a few years ago really made a positive impression on me, one that’s irreversible. I hope so.
What I’m seeing is not making me want to go on one of those drugs myself, nor return to my old, dysfunctional ways. When I’ve searched my soul, asking myself, “Would I want to try and get skinny again?” the answer that’s come back every single time has been a resounding, “Hell, no.”
I do worry, though, that we’re moving back to a place where people with “regular” bodies like mine will be treated differently, less favorably. Still, you couldn’t pay me to give up my body acceptance.
***
In the end I decided to go forward with The Strategist swimsuit piece, and I’m glad I did. I was incredibly anxious about it before it was published, and even when my editor sent me the link after it went live. I looked at those photos of myself — right next to the catalog photos featuring willowy models — and thought, “What made me think it was a good idea to pose half-naked in New York Magazine?” especially when I am not a willowy model?
But then the comments started rolling in, and almost all 50 or so were encouraging. Women thanked me for being willing to show myself — to show how the suits looked on a real body, as opposed to the models. Some called me “brave,” and others responded, “It shouldn’t be considered brave to show your real body!” And honestly, they were all right. The same thing happened on social media.
The response was so overwhelmingly positive, that I’ve come around to feeling really proud of the piece, and my choice to expose myself in that way. While on the surface it might seem like a shallow endeavor — a shopping story — for me it’s much more than that. I see it as doing my part to make sure the body positivity movement hasn’t fully sailed. Body positivity forever, as far as I’m concerned.
Mikala note: I’d never heard of this diet. Turns out it starts you at 440 calories per day. Doooooooommmm!
Loved reading this. A big yes to accepting our bodies in all their splendour. It’s a work in progress for me but at almost 60 I might finally be getting there.
Great writing, thanks for sharing it with us. I think swimsuit shopping issues have plagued most of us from our early days when we first become more “body aware” and through our teens, and then through the many stages of adulthood. The fear of how we would look to others has plagued many of us, while we struggled to try on the variety of swimsuit choices in tiny dressing rooms at the local department store. When you think you’re too thin, too fat, too tall, too short, or not pretty enough , there is no perfect suit .
I wish I had spent more time swimming and doing things, and not spent so much time considering what others would think of my body or my swimsuit choices. At 72, I agree with the author, I just wish I had just done it so many years sooner! 😃