Earlier this year, I discovered I have hips.
I'd cleaned up my diet, bought a fitbit, and started noticing positive changes with regard to my health and well-being. This, ironically, precipitated something of an identity crisis. Let me explain.
I survived my adolescence and early adulthood without having too much to say about bodies and their connection to personal identity. As an atypically tall human female with a healthy relationship with physical activity, I mostly missed the body acceptance struggles many young women experience. No popular category ever seemed to apply to me (petite, curvy, athletic, etc.) so I went about my life without thinking about body identity very much. Only once did "body type" specifically enter my consciousnesses when I happened to catch the Miss Teen USA pageant. Staring at a line of 50 young women with exactly the same body type (cut & paste 50 times with different hair and a different gown), I thought, "That's really dumb" and moved on.
At least that's what my conscious brain was doing.
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| Rey from Star Wars: The Force Awakens |
My sub-conscious adolescent brain was reading dystopian science fiction and identifying with the post-apocalyptic heroines fighting for justice. In terms of body shape, think Rey from the most recent Star Wars film. Unbeknownst to me, I was also identifying with what I will call social identity tags (I am sure there is an academic term for this). In my mind, the "Rey" type was tough, competent, resilient, asexual, and single-purpose. Also, note the general lack of hips.
This body identity worked for me for a long time, even as reality challenged the tough, competent, resilient, asexual, and single-purpose parts on a regular basis. Then I discovered my hips. This isn't as dumb as it sounds. If you plug my bust, waist, and hip measurements into all the (very scientific)
online body type calculators, I come out exactly half-way between "hourglass" and "straight/athletic." My hip and bust measurements are about the same and my waist measurement isn't hugely different either. For a long time, it was easy to interpret this more toward the straight/athletic/Rey side. After improving my heath habits however, the interpretation shifted slightly but inexorably toward hipped reality.
