It is March already, how did that happen? Did you make New Year’s Resolutions this year? How are they going for you?
New year, new me is a motto I subscribed too for as long as I can remember. Next year I will: eat less, drink less, save more, work more, make fewer mistakes. Reading between the lines of previous resolutions now I see: next year I will fix all the parts I hate about myself. I will hate myself into submission and conformity. I will physically become smaller so that the world likes me more and therefore I will have permission to like myself.
Resolutions are often put to us subtly as ways to “get better” at being a human. In Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, she expands “figuring out how to “get better” at being a woman [or man] is a ridiculous and often amoral project—a subset of the larger, equally ridiculous, equally amoral project of learning to get better at life under accelerated capitalism. In these pursuits, most pleasures end up being traps, and every public-facing demand escalates in perpetuity. Satisfaction remains, under the terms of the system, necessarily out of reach. But the worse things get, the more a person is compelled to optimize.”
This reminds me of the beginning of my “Laurie 2.0” project at the beginning of 2015. In the wake of a break up and the beginnings of crippling anxiety, I threw myself into clean eating, training for half marathons, going to every new fitness class I could, working overtime at work and buying new clothes – all to try and get better at being a human. I have since had to unlearn 95% of the information I consumed then. It was not productive to me being kind to myself, and instead spiralled me into an eating disorder and (more) binge drinking.
I am not implying that saving a bit of money so we have a semblance of financial security is a bad thing, or that taking better care of your health and moving a little bit more will not help you feel better in your body and mind. These things are great. They have helped me feel more at ease in myself and my life. I acknowledge here the privileged position I am writing from, in which I earn enough money to cover my bills and am in good physical health so these things do not need to be my primary focus.
In place of resolutions, I am learning to fight against placing the value of me outside of myself. If we prioritise money, weight loss, career or even sobriety, we are reaching for things outside of ourselves to make us feel valuable. We lose sight that it is our self that is innately valuable. If the other stuff comes, well then it is a bonus.
If you asked your friends or family what they love about you, what do you think they would say?
I’d hazard a guess they might say:
I love how warm and friendly you are
I love how you always remember my important meetings
I know I can count on you and I love that
I love how we can have deep conversations
I love how you make me laugh
If they answered: I love that you are a size eight, have a six pack, run marathons, or own a house I’d be surprised. Maybe they’d say, I love your commitment and positive attitude; yet that commitment and attitude exists regardless of how it is displayed externally in the world.
Resolutions so often focus on the external, on the physical or material things we don’t like about ourselves and want to change. It is a story we have been sold. It is a multibillion-dollar industry. Why would we buy anything if we were happy with ourselves as we are?
Miller explores the concept of optimising further. Within her chapter titled Always be optimising, she expands: ‘the ideal woman, in other words, is always optimizing. She takes advantage of technology, both in the way she broadcasts her image and in the meticulous improvement of that image itself. Her hair looks expensive. She spends lots of money taking care of her skin, a process that has taken on the holy aspect of a spiritual ritual and the mundane regularity of setting a morning alarm’.
The reality of this concept has confronted me in Cambodia. Here, the beauty aesthetic is light skin. Whitening creams are sold in pharmacies, advertised on billboards and sometimes (more often) women dress as if it is winter, with no skin on show, in 35-degree heat. Last week when I went to fill my moto up with petrol, the woman who topped up my bike stroked my arm and said “sa-ort” (sexy, beautiful, nice in khmer) and told me she wished she had skin like me. Conversely, I was sat next to an olive-skinned Italian friend at dinner the day before wishing I had her darker tan. I have been socialised to desire a tan, in Cambodia pale skin is the object of desire. There are more nuances to this cultural difference than marketing, and yet the beauty industry has run with it for their financial gain. Whilst in the UK we are marketed fake tan (and sun beds), in Cambodia whitening creams are everywhere. In 2018, the global self-tanning products market size was valued at $1.47 billion, whilst the global skin lightening products market size was valued at $8.3 billion. Over $10 billion spent on changing the colour of our skin, believing that the colour of our skin is sub-optimal.
All of this is to say, I want the changes I make in my life to be nourishing and to come from a place of love for myself. I do not want to make resolutions driven by an expectation to “optimise” myself, my body and my life. I know now, although I often forget, that my value as a human doesn’t come from my size, my looks, whether or not I drink alcohol, my ability to read or how many bloody followers I have on Instagram. (Although, for me, my sobriety has helped me be a nicer, kinder person to myself and others around me.) I do not want to feel if I do not make a change on the 1st of January, or if I do not achieve 100% compliance I have somehow failed and should feel “bad”. I want the same for you, if you want it.
My therapist once asked me how it would feel to accept myself as I am? No need to be a bit thinner, a bit richer, wake up earlier or be a nicer person (for after all, this is another way we judge ourselves). At the time, I had no idea. I could not conceive accepting myself wholly as I was with no judgement and no need to change a thing. Today I strive to remind myself: I accept myself as I am. When I catch myself scolding myself for eating a biscuit, or thinking I should start running again to lose weight, or get up at 6am (for these are my current two self-acceptance challenges) I remind myself again: I accept myself as I am.
And build any changes from the place of acceptance, with no judgement for where you are in your journey. I hope that we can all accept each other, and support one another in living our most easeful and accepting lives.
“We are all just walking each other home.” – Ram Dass
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