Summer Is Here: Is Your Beach Body Ready?

Guest Opinion

By Emma Smith | June 17, 2023

There’s a meme I came across a few years ago, perhaps my favorite meme, that depicts a woman pointing angrily while shouting, “The beach gonna get whatever body I give it!”

I whole-heartedly embrace and appreciate this sentiment. For too long, my body has prevented me from doing things I’ve wanted to do. No, let me rephrase that—my insecurities about my body have prevented me from doing the things I’ve wanted to do.

When I was 16, I was invited to a friend’s birthday party. I was excited, until I looked more closely at the invitation and realized, with dread, that it was a pool party. In preparation, I went to the mall and tried on at least 10 different swimsuits. It was an exhausting day, in more ways than one, and I ultimately decided to just make up an excuse for why I couldn’t attend after all.

I let my fear of what others would think of me stop me from joining the fun. Because I was not Paris Hilton thin, I was completely and irrevocably convinced my body type wasn’t the right one. It was made clear to me by Seventeen magazine, MTV, and virtually all forms of media I rabidly consumed in the early aughts that the only acceptable body to have was one that was nothing like mine.

This was not the first time I let my fear of humiliation prevent me from engaging in social activities, and it wouldn’t be the last. I spent much of my teen years and even my twenties worrying about whether or not my body was acceptable to others.

I wanted to do adventurous things like go parasailing, zip-lining, or tubing down the river. I wanted to do unadventurous things too, like attend a yoga class or go to the climbing gym with my friends. But each time I thought about doing something like that, a little voice inside my head would pipe up, unbidden, and say, “But what if you can’t? You’ll just embarrass yourself. You need to lose weight first.”

As a woman, I am constantly being reminded by online advertisements, TV, and even friends and colleagues that in order to be able to do something, even something as fun and simple as going to the beach, my body must first be made “ready.”

From what I’ve gathered this means that, first and foremost, there should be no visible jiggly bits. Women must also make sure that they are completely devoid of body hair (the men cannot find out we are mammals), and we can’t be too pale, either. We should have some muscle definition, but not too much, and if we want to swim, we better make sure we’ve removed our eye makeup (see land-based gender requirements) so that we don’t come out with raccoon eyes. Better yet, don’t even bother going underwater—it’s best not to take any chances when it comes to our hair drying in anything less than a Jessica Alba-esque style of beach chic.

I wish I could say that I no longer internalize any of these harmful body messages that I grew up with, but I do. Not nearly as often as I used to, but I don’t think I would be human if my little voice didn’t still make an appearance from time to time. The difference now is in how I handle the voice. I acknowledge its existence, examine its reasons for showing up uninvited, and determine whether or not I’m going to allow it to influence my decisions. Nine times out of 10, I don’t.

I am now twice the age I was when I declined that birthday pool party and am happy to report that I rarely, if ever, turn down a social gathering that I want to attend due to my body insecurities. Part of that comes with age, I know, but a bigger part of it is the result of a lot of hard work. And I don’t mean the “getting my beach body ready” kind of work. No, at 32, I am jigglier and squishier than ever and also more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever been before.

It took a long, long time to get here. And I still struggle with accepting that the way I look, or the way others look at me, does not define my value.

One day, the little voice inside my head may win. But until then, the beach is just gonna have to take whatever body I give it.

Emma Smith is a Leelanau County native who now lives in Traverse City. She works on the development team at Child and Family Services and is also a clinical mental health therapist.