The Body

Demi Moore and I are about the same age, which is where the similarities might cease, except we both have a connection to the great state of Iowa: Ashton and I were both born there. Alas, poor Demi is being hounded because, now, after the break up, she is deemed “too thin” for tabloids. Really? Really? This was the woman who posed nude on the cover of Vanity Fair while pregnant.

Most of the adult women I know have trouble with their body image. Not that their bodies aren’t perfectly or nearly perfectly functional, they are for the most part, but somewhere along the way, the American women I know were taught to really dislike their bodies in a way we loathe mosquitoes or the smell of sour milk. Demi, it appears, is no exception.

The church surprisingly does little to heal this rift for women. I’ve rarely heard a sermon, nor have I actually fully preached one, on the lies women have swallowed whole about their bodies.* I have led retreats on the mind/body/spirit connection, but that gulf, inspired by St. Paul and others, worked to separate women from their bodies, then airbrushing and advertising finished the job. Paul writes to the Romans, “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if you live by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live,” (Romans 8:12-13) We, as the church, can do more to bridge this divide.

At the 2008 Festival of Faith and Writing, a group of my clergywomen friends and I listened to the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor speak/preach. Most of us were weeping silently during her speech, and when she finished, one clergywoman looked at me and said, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done.” BBT speaks, preaches, and writes well, and she was talking about the need for preachers to ground sermons in the body, in the human body. BBT reminded the audience that none are quivering brains sitting there, that our spirits are housed in bodies that delight in the world.

I’m reminded of this on Thursday evenings when I sit in a balcony in a big box of a building and watch my daughter’s gymnastics class. It’s almost all girls in there, and they are flying through the air on beams, uneven bars, mats, trampolines, pommel horses, and into the foam pit. I try to do a handful of pull ups in a boot camp class I take, and I am watching these young girls doing them repeatedly, and smiling as they do them. These girls are strong, mighty, moving through time and space with a mastery, energy, and grace that’s impressive, while the two mothers behind me are talking about how they are trying to lose weight, and one laments, “I have tried everything!”

When I was in gymnastics as a tween, I had that fearlessness, I loved it, until about age thirteen, when I began to despise the strong arms and legs I possessed. Another friend of mine hated her strong arms and we both longed for the spindly version we saw on models, rather than our muscular ones. I hate to think, as I look at these strong girls, that they’ll soon be hating the very bodies propelling them off the floor and into the front flip or the very legs on which they spin on the beam.

It’s a perfect marketing ploy for women’s products: have girls hate their bodies so they always feel they aren’t enough, they need to consume more—more make-up, more hair product, more plastic surgery, more white strips for their teeth, whatever.

It’s funny, then, that as my friends and I age, we are making peace with our bodies. We delight in them. Maybe Demi is learning that now too, that once you circle the loop, and run past the 40 marker, we women hopefully learn that we can embrace what remains. Sure, some women I know have loved their bodies from the get-go, but not without critique. I can’t think of any woman I know who doesn’t regularly size up their bodies, head to toe, with harsh criticism.

As I sit watching the power of these mighty gymnasts, I’m mindful I’m the mother of a tween. Like many of my friends, we are aware that how we speak of our own bodies in front of our teens and tweens sends messages to our daughters about their own bodies.

So? We emphasize health, and sunscreen, and not the fact our bottoms are moving south, and my God, how much exercise is needed to defeat gravity’s downward pull? And breasts? Past 40, we give thanks for them and pray for safe mammograms for ourselves and for every woman. We give thanks for those women who look like real women in the media, women with skin and muscle on their bones, women who come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. We talk about food as fuel, to fuel our lives, our brains. We emphasize dignity, that a body is a gift we’ve been given, we need to care for our bodies well, they are the homes we move around in for a lifetime. This is a bodily life, and as much as we say, “…we are spiritual beings living a bodily life…” still, we are grounded in a miraculous temple that fires messages across synapses, that can react before our brains know what’s going on.

“Weight watchers, I’m going back,” says the woman behind me, “I have to do something.”

As I watch these lithe and stocky girls, short ones and tall ones jumping and stretching, I pray they can love their bodies, pray they can embrace the bodies they’ve been given all the days of their lives. From my vantage point, both in terms of years older than they, and from this vantage point looking down on them from the balcony above, it’s clear to see they are, like the Psalmist says,  “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

*My dear friend, the Rev. Ruth Huizinga Everhart, has preached sermons about bodies, in particular, women’s bodies. She’s an exception. She blogs at www.rutheverhart.com/blog and has a book coming out too.