Dressing Your Best Week: Legs for Miles!

Draft:

Composition:
eyeglasses (Kate Spade)
white and brown button down (NY&Co)
brown belt (Kohl's)
dark dark skinnies (American Eagle)
brown wedge sandals (Old Navy)

Earlier Drafts:
I suggested these jeans as a stand-in for leggings.

Usage:
It's Academichic's Dress Your Best Week!  I'm excited to chime in with my first contribution to the discussion.

Last month, I asked you to help me think through why we, as women in academia, often find it easier to handle criticism than praise.  I was happy to that in S.'s first DYBW post, she addressed a similar question in regard to this week's project: why do we speak freely about our insecurities but feel like we have to justify our confidence?  I'm thrilled to follow S.'s lead and deconstruct this gendered norm by participating in DYBW without feeling bad about celebrating my assets!

This exercise, for me, has to begin with my legs.  My legs are the gatekeepers to my positive body image.  Why, you ask?  Growing up, I was stick thin, which came along with body issues of its own.  When I went to college, I gained the Freshman 15(x2).  An endless supply of Cherry Coke, Miller Lite, Ben & Jerry's, and fried food did not do this body good.  Before my senior year, I spent four months training for the Chicago Marathon.  I'll admit this was inspired equally by a desire to lose the extra weight and an aspiration to run 26.2 miles consecutively.  I didn't lose any weight, but I gained a new relationship to my body.

Marathon training helped me think about my body as a living, functioning organism that I was living inside rather than just an object to dress up in a way that would please others.  I became conscious of eating as something that provided energy rather than merely a social activity. When you're running long distances, you can measure hunger in minutes.  If you haven't eaten enough the night before, you're acutely aware of the fatigue and it translates to the time you see on your stopwatch.  My physical body's distinguishable reactions to my nutritional decisions helped me to understand that good nutrition must facilitate brainwork similarly.

At some point, I just had to acknowledge that the weight was not going to come off.  I couldn't cut calories and still hope to complete my training runs.  I was able to accept my body because, despite the extra lbs I was carrying around, my legs looked fantastic, and that reminded me that those legs were taking me a long way.  In one of my favorite short stories, Mary Austin's "The Walking Woman," (available here), Austin writes that the title character "had walked off all sense of society-made values," and I think running allowed me to do something similar.  I thought I'd have to lose weight to develop a healthy body image, but for me, the opposite turned out to be true.  Once I'd developed a healthy body image, I started making lifestyle changes that led to the weight coming off fairly naturally over time.

Still with me?  That's why it always comes back to the legs.  My legs are long, they're lean, they're toned, they're powerful, and they carried me over 500 miles last year.  (They also help me negotiate the Snickers and Hershey's addictions I haven't been able to kick!)

To celebrate my legs, I put on my skinnies with my tallest heels.  I didn't have any good ideas about what to wear on top to draw attention to my legs, so I put on this button-down top to keep the top half of the look simple. I belted it to draw attention to my small waist.

Prompts:

• Any suggestions for what else I could have worn on top?
• Why IS it so much harder to talk about our strengths than to acknowledge our weaknesses?
• What habits or attitudes have you found that help you think of your body more positively?
• What are some of your favorite posts from DYBW so far?  Post some links!  And since we're not being shy about celebrating confidence, feel free to include your own!