The Beauty Behind Aging Into Womanhood
You find yourself scrolling through your camera roll, reminiscing on high school memories and what used to be. As a 20-something college student, it feels so close, yet so distant. You fall upon a photo capturing your big goofy smile, past friend circle, and favorite pair of jeans that used to hug you in just the right way. You can’t help but critique how you look now and wonder what happened. Why can’t you fit into those jeans anymore? Why don’t you look the same as you did then? What could you have done differently?
If you have experienced this thought process, you are not alone. This harmful mindset is integrated into the female thought pattern from an extremely young age. Media channels and societal expectations—charged primarily by men—place the sad yet very apparent expectation among women to keep their prepubescent bodies. You are expected to remain petite, skinny, hipless, hairless, and pimple-less, all while precisely growing your chest, buttocks, and legs to the appropriate size.
This presumption can be found in media like Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and tween magazines, all marketing toward preadolescents still developing their cognitive agency. As a firsthand consumer of content like ICarly, Victorious, Tiger Beat, and J14—growing up in the early 2000s—I have found this to be true for they all heavily promote this narrative. Unaware of the implications integrated into this media, I found myself to be well aware of the way my body looked starting from a young age. Unfortunately, the level of comparison among the young impressionable has rapidly excelled in correlation with media development over the years.
What an impossible expectation to keep up with!
It is not only nearly unfeasible to healthily maintain, but it is also biologically impractical. I decided to chat with my anthropology professor, Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, about the scientific reasons behind this reckoning. During puberty, two important changes occur in human female bodies that, over the course of our species' evolution, helped support successful reproduction. Women's bodies experience a skeletal change where their hips widen to facilitate childbirth. Concurrently, the body prepares for the high caloric costs of pregnancy and lactation by storing a deposition of fat on the hips, buttocks, and thighs. Therefore, women are not only physically growing into their adult form at the start of puberty, but they are also programmed to prepare for the necessary energy that comes with growing and feeding another human. By taking a step back and viewing body changes from an evolutionary perspective, it is easy to see clearer through the haze of toxic standards.
While understandably, these issues will not entirely disappear in society overnight, there are steps we can all take to move past them. The first one is forgiving ourselves for any past and/or present feelings of self-inadequacy. Furthermore, call attention to the narrative. The media exaggerates body shapes, erases blemishes, and emphasizes youth. This unsustainable representation depicts the paragons pushed by media and preconceived notions, instead of what is perfectly natural and normal. While this may take some mental rewiring, aging is part of life and there is beauty in accepting each stage we are blessed enough to experience. Next time you find yourself reminiscing old photos, celebrate your growth and honor the phases of development that have made you who you are every step of the way.
Cover image courtesy of Chris Schoonover