Inner Thighs, Indiscriminate

Until yesterday, I was a woman who rarely had issues with my body or self-image. Unlike many of my friends, as a teenager and 20-something I did not spend much time fretting over the size or shape of my behind, legs, breasts, arms and belly. For decades, I've accepted and even liked my body, pleased with its proportions and grateful that all of it worked pretty well nearly all of the time. My metabolism had been able to keep up with my intake of chocolate and no one was the wiser after my occasional binges of Toblerone bars or Ben & Jerry's pints.

For a brief moment, all that seemed to have changed.

Yesterday I was at REI, the outdoor clothing store I've patronized for years. I had ordered a dress online and went to the store to pick it up and try it on. Removing my pants and top in the fitting room, I was confronted with an unfamiliar and unwelcome sight: a roll of flesh around my belly and lumpy thighs that, in the mirror, looked a lot larger than I recalled. I don't have a full length mirror in my apartment and although I've felt that my body has been gradually changing - even though my weight has remained constant - I wasn't quite sure what I looked like.

It probably hadn't helped that, the night before, I had broken down and indulged in a longstanding craving for Popeye's Fried Chicken and biscuits (and cajun fries), washing it all down with a beer. It was as if this soul food had bypassed my digestive tract and plastered itself directly onto my thighs and derriere, as if to mock me for consuming it.

I quickly slipped the dress over my head. It fit beautifully and concealed the bumps and lumps - definitely a keeper! Briefly, I considered getting another one in a different color, imagining that I'd have to cover myself from waist to mid-calf for as long as I walked about the earth. No more shorts, and forget about bathing suits. And then I began to think about how I'd have to subsist on a diet of kale and tofu to recover my former figure. At that point, I began to sink into a funk, a perfect example of how attachment - to a thinner body - leads to suffering.

Were my days of indiscriminate eating really over? Would I have to finally face some fundamental facts about aging and further limit my intake of cheeses, cookies and chocolates? Would I need to intensify my exercise if I were to continue to entertain my tastebuds and fill my belly in the manner to which they had grown accustomed? As I pondered these questions, I realized that bumming out over the diameter of my butt was unnecessary, that my happiness was not contingent upon the circumference of my thighs. I know many large women and men who are much more content and successful than I am. And while I'm not going to allow my size to expand exponentially, I'm also not going to fixate on, or try to eradicate, every surplus centimeter of flesh. That would be ridiculous as well as an affront to the person I've always been - someone who refuses to confuse her self-esteem with her body.

Intimidating

Someone I know, an Ivy-league educated and published scholar, was recently denied tenure at a prestigious liberal arts college because it was reported that the students found this person to be "intimidating". This word conjures a person of large physical stature whose manner of speaking or behavior frightens people, an intellectual bully who shames students, grandstands and routinely flunks a good portion of the class. And I can imagine that an exclusive college, which prides itself on a low student: teacher ratio, would not want to have such intimidating bullies scaring the pants off many students in, say, a large survey class that is required for graduation.

But this person teaches relatively small classes in rather esoteric subjects and stands just over five feet tall. And for years this person has looked young enough to frequently be confused for a student.

Intimidating?

No.

Intellectually rigorous, expecting a great deal from students, unwilling to lower academic standards?

Yes.

So, why have these characteristics, usually lauded in elite academic institutions, been conflated with intimidating? Possibly because this person is female and students expected or wanted her to nurture their emotions as well as their scholarly ambitions. It is difficult to imagine an equally qualified male tenure candidate being turned down because he was strict yet fair about assignments and deadlines and held students to high standards.

While I don't and can't know the whole story, apparently enough people on this campus were stunned by the tenure denial and the foul odor of gender bias to protest the decision. The whole episode is yet another sad reminder that in our world being a woman of substance is not always enough. Softness is required, too.