Something's rotten in the state of fitness...

...and I feel obligated to put my two cents in.

If you follow fitness news and trends, or read any of the popular blogs hosted by females in the industry (particularly Neghar and Jen), you've likely heard or read the terms "thigh gap" and "bikini bridge" in reference to women's bodies. Thigh gap" is the term coined to describe the space between your upper thighs when you stand with your feet together. "Bikini bridge" is basically the space created by the protrusion of a female's hip bones when they meet her pants (or bikini bottoms, as the case may be). You can Google this ridiculousness if you need a proper visual.

In a nutshell, these terms conjure up an unrealistic ideal of the female body. To idealize these images is to demonstrate to women that they are somehow less desirable if their thighs touch or their stomach doesn't cave in when they lie down. What kind of message is that to send to women when what makes us all so beautiful are our differences, our uniqueness? Images like this have the tendency to make us focus on what we don't like about our bodies as opposed to what we do. And doing so can set us up for a whole lotta disappointment when we realize that, because of non variables like genetics and physiology, we physically cannot achieve that "enviable" look anyway!

We are all beautiful, in all our shapes and sizes..."thigh gap" or not

I am not saying that we should not strive for improvement and make and crush goals with regards to our physiques--I support that wholeheartedly. What I am saying, and what I think the gals who've blogged about it are saying is that our energies are better spent investing in making goals that we can achieve; in fact, our self-esteem depends on it. Pining after "thigh gap" when your genetics simply didn't make you that way is not going to increase your self-esteem. However, setting a goal to complete a triathlon or hit a PR in your deadlift damn sure will!

Love yourself and all your perfect imperfections!

Now, this whole controversy got me thinking about the times in my life when I wanted nothing more than to change a particular aspect of my physical appearance. As it turns out, this particular genetic "mutation" (as I thought of it then) was just that--genetics--and therefore something that 1) I had to either learn to deal with, or 2) spend A LOT of money and time and frustration and agony getting rid of. What was it, you ask? Oh, just a little HAIR...

Who knew shaving could be so glamorous!

Let's start at the beginning: I started shaving my legs at a very young age. As genetic luck would have it, I am a hairy girl. I have hair in all the places that society tells women they should be bare. I have hairy arms, hairy legs, hairy underarms, and (I can't believe I'm admitting this) even a hairy bum! When I was in fourth grade, a boy in my class called me a gorilla during gym class and pointed, laughing, at my hairy legs. I was mortified. When I got home, I grabbed my mother's razor and went to town...but I only shaved to my knee because that was all my mother would allow. I managed to conceal the hairy parts pretty well until the following year when the same boy asked me, bluntly, why I didn't shave above my knees! JEEZ!

Needless to say, I was traumatized. And the insecurity about my hairy body only exacerbated in my teens and into my early twenties. I tried every product out there: I shaved, tweezed, waxed, depilated, stripped, and even lasered in a futile effort to achieve some feminine physical ideal that I now realize DOES NOT EXIST. I realized, many years and many dollars later, that hair--on your head, your arms, or your toes--can be beautiful. Just like meaty thighs that don't touch and non-protruding hip bones can be beautiful, too.

Of course there are things that I want to change about my body. But having goals for myself in terms of my physique and being happy with how I look right now are not mutually exclusive. The difference now is that I recognize the difference between things that I have the power to change and things that I don't, and I accept the things that I cannot change. In fact, I embrace them because they make me who I am. They make me unique, mustache and all :-) This is a pretty powerful sentiment, and if we all buy in, there's no limit to where our positive message of self love can reach! Body acceptance, in all its forms and permutations, is something in which to rejoice. #embracethehairy