Summer is uncomfortable enough as it is, without additional body-shaming, dress codes, and stares to deal with. The world’s solution to this problem, is getting the perfect “summer body,” or what we call, being so toned that there isn’t a drop of fat left in your system. We’re sold this idea with arguments like, “With this summer body full of thigh gaps and no underarm fat, you will finally have the confidence to look great in those shorts you never wore otherwise, and own that halterneck you always ran from. When you finally get this perfect summer body, there will be no love handles under your cropped top to ruin your look. Nobody will stare at you wearing a miniskirt if you look thin enough to be a leggy model.” We are paraphrasing, but you get the drift.
And so it begins. The gymming, the crash diets, and the juice fasts. We do this to ourselves every year, putting our body through hell in peak summer, when we should, in fact, be ODing on carbs, water, and vitamins to keep ourselves healthy. What is worse is that we justify this in the name of fitness. There’s a problem with this justification, because the quest for the summer body is about everything but the fitness regime it masquerades as. We all know that getting fit is an ideal exercise, but the question begging to be asked here is, why are we only interested in being fit to look fit? What happens to being healthy in winter, or the rest of the year? What happens to being healthy from within? Telling yourself that your body confidence is dependent on externalities, won’t go too far in actually having body confidence, regardless of your size. Moreover, this attitude towards our own bodies is far too dependent on what other people will think when they see us, to be a healthy way of life.
In fact, many of us are so hostile towards our bodies, that we believe that it deserves no love the way it is. We believe it can’t look nice unless it looks exactly like that of an actress or model. So, we tell ourselves that we must be a certain size to wear certain clothes. If we don’t have skinny arms and toned calves, we can’t wear tank top and shorts, even if it means we’re dying of discomfort in the heat.
The irony, aside from the obvious lack of body-positivity, is that most great summer clothes, don’t even require the summer body we so desperately aspire for, if you do buy into the whole idea of having a summer body at all, that is. Oversized shirts, loose linen pants, and A-line summer dresses, the most versatile, stylish, and comfortable summer clothes out there, are all about breathable clothing that don’t cling to the body tightly, and expose what we aren’t comfortable with exposing, for whatever reason. Obsessing over a “summer body” then, is quite useless. So, if we must obsess about anything in the summer, let’s remind ourselves not to obsess over “summer bodies,” which is really the surest way to feel bad about oneself.
