Breaking Free from the Bondage of Body Dysmorphia

And Learning to Love my Body As Is

Sohkor Solanke

A few weeks ago, I wore a bathing suit out in public for the first time in years.

So what? I hear you ask. Well, there’s a story behind it.

I spent some time with my friend’s two daughters this summer, and that included time in the pool. They kept asking me why I always watched them from the side. “Why don’t you get in, Aunty?” They kept asking. I didn’t want to tell their impressionable nine and ten-year-old minds that the reason I didn’t get in was because I hated my body, I thought I looked disgusting, and I didn’t feel worthy enough to wear a bathing suit.

How did I get here?

When I was a girl, the idea of me walking around in a bathing suit was akin to me walking around naked in the eyes of a father. That was a major taboo and severely frowned upon. And I’m talking about a one-piece. My father would have fainted if he’d seen me in a two-piece: in his mind, bathing suits were one step away from promiscuity and prostitution. Like many girls growing up in a home with African-immigrant parents, my mom and dad were extremely conservative, and I was shamed when it came to my body and told to cover up.

As a pre-teen, I was smart and sneaky enough to somehow get hold of a one-piece bathing suit (it was probably a leotard) and hide it in my bag to go off to the school-sanctioned swimming pool trips that I did not have permission to be on (My parents were also deftly afraid of us drowning. Immigrant parents seem to have an abnormal amount of fear).

As a teenager, I continued swimming in school in a one-piece (without my parents’ knowledge),but by this time, I was so attuned to being ashamed of my body that I would never have extended this to wearing it on the beach with friends- out in public.

When I look back, I feel sad that I never wore a two-piece in my college days and early twenties. My body was slim and beautifully toned, and although I would wear sexy dresses and short skirts, the idea of wearing a bikini still felt like parading around in my underwear because of the mindset instilled in me since childhood.

Once I started to have children, my body started changing. With each child, I gained more weight, as my slender 140lbs (size 6) gradually became a fuller 180lbs by the time I reached 30. I now had another reason to be ashamed of my body: When I lose the weight, I’ll be able to wear a nice bathing suit, I would tell myself. But the weight continued to pile on. It didn’t help that I was now part of an African church that had conservative, backward mindsets about women’s attire similar to my father’s (My friend was shamed by the pastor for wearing sandals with straps that wrap around your legs all the way up to your knees!).

During this time period, I still had to take my kids to the pool for swimming lessons, so I bought one of those muumuu-type bathing suits- the ones that have a very loud pattern to hide the fat and a skirt/skort type thing attached to the bottom. It was hideous, and much better suited to a woman in her 60’s than one in her 30’s. I actually wasn’t that big- 180lbs (size 10–12), but in my mind, I might as well have been 300lbs, and I felt I didn’t deserve to wear a nice bathing suit.

The body that had carried three children now carried so much shame.

In the past 10 years, two things happened: I took on an extremely stressful teaching job in a high school, and I became pre-menopausal. With the combination of these two things, coupled with stress eating and not prioritizing my own health while taking care of everyone else around me, my 180lbs climbed steadily up to 230lbs, and now I was a size 16. The slowing metabolism of my 40’s coupled with the cortisol from my stressful job now left me with a paunchy belly that made people ask if I was expecting. In my mind, a nice bathing suit was now a reward I would only deserve if I were disciplined enough to get my act together and lose the weight. That never seemed to happen, so I just avoided the pool and dressed conservatively at the beach.

That was, until this summer.

On Mother’s day, my husband took me to the beach to distract me from my first Mother’s day since the loss of my own mom. Of course, I was wearing regular clothes, and we just walked along the beach to watch the sunset. While there, I noticed a group of black women, around my size or larger, each wearing brightly colored, sexy bathing suits. The colors looked so beautiful on their complexions, and their bathing suits were so flattering to their plus-sized bodies. I decided that day that, if they could wear bathing suits and look amazing, then I could, too- 230lbs and all! I decided that I would no longer hide my body out of some conservative, cultural shame, and I would no longer wait to lose the weight before enjoying my life.

Fast forward to this summer, and my friend’s kids continued to hound me until, eventually, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in over a decade- try on bathing suits. It was a liberating experience, and I enjoyed doing an impromptu, selfie photo shoot in the store changing room. I ended up buying two bathing suits- a one-piece and a pseudo-two-piece (high-waisted bikini bottom).

The day I got in the pool with my friend’s kids for the first time in years felt amazing! I put on goggles and we dove underwater doing handstands and flips. Each time I came up from the water, I would squeal with delight. “Aunty, it’s like you’re a kid again!” one of them said, and she was right. It was as though I were making up for all those years of sitting on the side of the pool watching everyone else have fun. That day, I felt free! Free from the prison of body dysmorphia that had so warped my mind and held me hostage for all these years. Free from the mindset that made me believe that my body was something disgusting to be ashamed of. Free from the mindset that made me believe that I deserve to be punished for gaining weight, and I couldn’t have nice things until I lost the weight.

I told my friend, a fellow believer, about my newfound freedom. She said she was glad that I had been freed from that bondage. And that’s exactly what it was- bondage.

Towards the end of summer, we went on a family vacation to a large resort. This was to be the real test of my newfound freedom. After all, swimming in my neighborhood pool with just a few people around me was one thing; walking around a resort surrounded by hundreds of people was another. But I was determined to wear my new sexy bathing suits and walk with confidence. I strutted around that pool with a boldness that masked the fact that I still felt a little exposed and self-conscious on the inside. Let’s not forget that this was all so new and contrary to what I had been accustomed to for over 40 years. I even had my husband do a photo shoot of me around the resort pool to capture this moment, in case I didn’t have the guts to do it again.

The author in a bathing suit at 230lbs/size 16

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I hope that every woman struggling with her weight and body image experiences this same freedom and renewed attitude towards her body. Life is too short to keep on setting unrealistic goals and then beating ourselves up when we can’t reach them. And that’s what we seem to do when it comes to our weight and appearance- set unattainable goals and then feel like a failure when we don’t lose 100lbs by the summer. I’m not saying we shouldn’t work on ourselves and set realistic goals- I’m currently doing that myself. Now that all of my kids are older, I’m working on healthier habits, including making my physical health and emotional well-being a priority: I created an exercise schedule that I stick to religiously, I’m eating foods that actually nourish my body, and I saw a therapist for the first time ever for grief counseling. But we should continue living and enjoying life while working on those goals because, truthfully, life is for living now, and tomorrow is promised to no one.