March 2, 2024
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parashat Ki Tisa
Real Body Positivity
March 2, 2024 — 22 Adar I 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Dronme Davis tells a powerful story. She was nine. At the time, she had developed the habit of biting her nails until they were raw and sometimes even bleeding. A teacher told her, in all seriousness, “if you keep biting your nails, one day you’re doing to meet a boy and you’re going to want him to date you and he’s going to be holding your hand and will look down and see how disgusting your hands are and he’s not going to want to date you.”[1] Even as a nine-year-old, Dronme knew that there was something very wrong with this picture. How could it be that her teacher didn’t see the pain that she was holding, the pain that was pushing her to self-harm in this way? How could it be that at nine, she is getting the message that her relationship to her body should be predicated on the perception of a potential partner? That her body exists to make someone else happy?
Perhaps that is what inspired her, even at that early age, to begin her journey of activism. As a teenager, she began posting pictures of herself, with her natural curves and beauty unfiltered, with racy captions like “fat belly, saggy…Sunday” and “a flat stomach won’t change your life” and “it’s so exhausting being afraid and ashamed of parts of ur[sic] body.” She railed against fatphobia and encouraged women to take pride in their appearance, to love themselves for every curve and every roll. As Tianna James, one follower, shared with the New York Times this week, “I wanted to feel comfortable in my body, and she was like me in so many ways, so it made it easier to be myself…if I could find this person so beautiful, and she was bigger, I could find myself beautiful too.”[2]
Dronme claimed her power, and her beauty, and in doing so inspired thousands of people around the country in powerful ways. For a time, Dronme led the way in creating a corner of the internet where people celebrated natural beauty, where inner self-worth and happiness were prioritized, where people could stop working so hard to please everyone else and could instead find satisfaction in their own heart within their own being.
But then, something shifted. Dronme began losing weight. She kept posting increasingly angular and skinny pictures of her body without the captions she was known for. As she shared recently with the New York Times, “part of me was embarrassed and felt really guilty…all I ever wanted to do on the internet was make women feel OK about themselves.”
Her followers turned on her, feeling hurt and upset by her physical changes. They interpreted her weight loss as a capitulation to the patriarchy. What they didn’t know, and couldn’t guess, was that Dronme was increasingly consumed by painful emotions and had relapsed into disordered eating. Once again, Dronme’s pain was visible, but unseen.
What a tragic irony that the very community that claimed to be body positive was only one kind of body positive. As if body positivity is limited to those whose physical form defies societal ideals. As if those who are skinny or blond or have full heads of hair or are tall don’t need body positivity because they get enough positive feedback from the world.
That is ludicrous.
All of us, no matter how big or small, no matter how young or old, all of us struggle at various times and in various ways with loving and accepting our bodies as they are. So much of our world is built on capitalizing on our insecurities. Just walk down the cosmetics aisle in the grocery store and you’ll find hundreds of products designed to defy aging, designed to cover blemishes, designed to turn our hair into the perfect shade and squash our bodies into the perfect shape. Every beauty product communicates that we are not good enough as we are, that we must work to receive acceptance and that acceptance is predicated on conformity.
And then there is the feedback. All of us receive lots of feedback about our bodies. Or maybe I should just speak for myself. I am constantly surprised by the number of people who want to talk about how big or how small I am, how I look or don’t look pregnant, how I’ve “bounced back” or to sympathize with me about how hard it is to “bounce back.” Even though I know their intentions are good and they are trying to give me a compliment, any time someone comments about the shape of my body, it just makes me feel uncomfortable. Because when people speak about my body, and not about me, they unconsciously confirm that my value as a woman depends on my appearance, regardless of what I do or the quality of my character.
We desperately need a body positivity movement. I’m not talking about a movement that just says it’s ok to be fat or skinny, that it’s ok to have stretch marks and scars and pimples, that it’s ok to have too much hair or to rock a receding hairline. That’s all true. But we need more than that. We need a spiritual practice of body positivity.
Let me tell you a story. According to the Gemarra, until Abraham there was no old age, there was not even aging. People were born into the world in perfect bodies that grew to adulthood and then froze in perfect health and beauty. Imagine being 85 with the body you had at 18. Imagine a world in which bodies didn’t age, didn’t sag, didn’t swell, and didn’t break down. There were no health challenges. No moles. No defects. Everyone was beautiful and perfect. The only problem was that it was very difficult to tell people apart. Apparently, Abraham kept having this challenge where people would look for him and would find Isaac instead and they couldn’t tell one from the other. So, the midrash shares, Abraham prayed to God and asked God to perform a miracle. He begged God to give him some physical marker that would allow people to tell him apart from his son. And so, God gave Abraham the gift of aging. And, by the way, he was grateful for it. That’s why, the midrash goes on to explain, the Torah shares that “Abraham was old and well-stricken in age.” אַבְרָהָ֣ם זָקֵ֔ן בָּ֖א בַּיָּמִ֑ים וַֽיהֹוָ֛ה בֵּרַ֥ךְ אֶת־אַבְרָהָ֖ם בַּכֹּֽל
Age wasn’t just something that Abraham yearned for; it was also a marker of success in the world. There is a famous story in the Talmud about Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria, who was appointed to be the head of the rabbinic academy at the tender age of 18. He was worried that no one would take him seriously. So God performed a miracle for him too. The night of his appointment, all of his hair turned gray so that he looked like a seventy-year-old and people began to take him seriously.
For both Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria and Abraham, their physical appearance conveyed a story. Their aging bodies spoke to rich life experiences, to the power of their choices, to the content of their ideas. Abraham and Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria were not proud of their bodies despite the way their bodies appeared, they were thrilled because of the way their bodies appeared.
We need this kind of body positivity now. We need a body positivity that allows us to be grateful for every hair on our head and every evolution of our physical being. We need a body positivity that allows us to give thanks for stretch marks and scars, for the rolls and the fat, for pimples and freckles, and hair growing wherever it springs up. A body positivity that allows us to look in the mirror and say, “wow, I’m looking good,” without any make up and without any clothes. We need a body positivity that allows us to speak out against harsh critique, to speak out against sexism and age-ism and racism. We need a body positivity that models for us how to be invested in becoming the best version of ourselves, and to be most interested in what we can do and who we are recognizing that our physical appearance is the least significant part of who we are. As the poet Rupi Kaur shares, “from now on I will say things like you are resilient or you are extraordinary. Not because I don’t think you’re pretty, but because you are so much more than that.”
We can build this together. Let’s practice self-love. Let’s practice loving our bodies as they are. And, let’s practice body positivity by shifting our focus away from our beautiful bodies, and towards all the blessings the universe has in store for us.
[2] They Promoted Body Positivity. Then They Lost Weight. – The New York Times (nytimes.com)