Ah, the infamous “turkey neck” – the charming little souvenir that time bestows upon us as we gracefully age. It’s as if one day, I was confidently wearing a favorite necklace, and the next, contemplating turtlenecks in the peak of summer.
This experiment is still in its early days – now in my 9th week, I’m fully immersed in what’s surfacing for me! My assignment is a full year – 52 weeks of paying attention, week by week, to the constant stream of self-judgment about my body and my face. And let me tell you, it’s eye-opening.
To this day I have a tinge of self consciousness when I wear my glasses – after all these decades of “shame work” I’ve done on myself. And that’s even after proving over and over again that, indeed, boys do make passes at girls who wear glasses! (But, of course, in this day and age, “boys making passes” is likely an outdated concept.)
I grew up in the era (or maybe it’s always the era?), where it was common to hear men say, “I’m a butt man” or “I’m a leg man” or whatever female body part was being singled out. But it seems the butt was a particular favorite … and according to this study, it apparently still is.
Yes, let’s talk brown spots – those little patches of pigment that pop up uninvited. They go by many names: age spots, sun spots, liver spots (which is both misleading and mildly alarming), and my personal favorite –“wisdom freckles.” …because if we’re going to have them, we might as well make them sound poetic 😂
This body shaming thing is so insidious. Now, with my awareness in full gear, I see just how deep the self-shaming goes. The latest example was just last week when my executive assistant, Carsey, sent me a picture of myself and said, “Wow! I love this picture! Can we use it?” My response was immediate and visceral: “Old lady hand!” …shouting over our back-and-forth text messaging.
Sometimes it seems I live in a hall of mirrors where brilliant white light flashes back at me whenever someone opens their mouth and smiles. White, white, white teeth are everywhere!
And this observation is yet another one of my little (not so little?) comparing and contrasting to others. This is only my 3rd week installment to uncover the countless ways I catch myself judging my appearance – and much of it is sizing myself up to others.
This is the 2nd week installment of my mission over 52 weeks (all of 2025) to uncover the countless ways I catch myself judging my appearance – or how I imagine others might judge me. This week: Thigh gap phobia. In earlier years, it use to be a morning ritual. I’d get out of bed, stand up, put my legs together and look down to see if I had “space” between my thighs – that coveted thigh gap.
Even though I just started documenting my awareness of the comparing and self-body shaming I do, I’m seeing that often my attention is focused on the figures of other women. Now that, in and of itself, is benign but it’s the cascade of thoughts associated with my observations.
My assistant Carsey has a master’s degree in public health and used to teach a sex ed class. On the first day of class she would ask her high schoolers to name the dirtiest sex word they knew (a very clever gauge to find out their knowledge level). The most common answer, she laughs, was always “69.”