Like most adolescents these days, my daughter and her friends have their own social media language.  There are acronyms for almost everything.  Some are easy to figure out like “LOL”, “JK”, “BTW”, BRB” and some are not.  It took me forever to figure out that “FOMO” meant “fear of missing out” instead of “fuck off ms. overachiever” and “IRL” meant “in real life” instead of “it’s rotting lettuce”.   And who actually says “IMHO” – “in my humble opinion”?  I guess a 14-year-old does.  I was so mad at my daughter while I still thought it meant “I’ma ho”.   🙄

I have also noticed that there is a lot of hashtagging in the social media world.  You know like #myskinnypantssuck or #nevereattingagain.  These, of course, are my hashtags.  My daughter’s new favorite seems to be #goals.  Not only do I see her use this in texting but she actually says it out loud.  “Ohmigod they are so good together!  #relationshipgoals.”  Or today in the grocery store we were looking at various mac and cheese boxes and for some reason, she blurted out “#goals!”  Go figure.

This got me thinking about goals and what my hashtag would be these days.  Like so many other women my age, I have struggled with body image most of my adult life.  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t worry about how many calories were in my chicken caesar salad and whether or not, since I was eating lettuce, I could afford to have the fries too.   Or if I could actually eat a steak for dinner since I had run 6 miles that day.  This kind of thinking can really be exhausting.  It is also not the example I want to set for my daughter.  There is enough pressure to be perfect without her thinking that you are only cool if your thighs don’t rub together.

The other day I was panting and sweating my way through my cycling class, www.cyclefierce.com 👊 ✊, when I looked around the room.  I mean I really looked at everyone.  I’ve been going to this class for a few years now and love it.  It is one of the best workouts I’ve ever had.  It ranks right up there with running and, for me, that’s saying something.   Now, for sure, there are always a few skinny young things spinning those flywheels on any given day.  But as I looked around the room this day I did not see 30 skinny bitches and one spark plug – me like usual.  Instead, I saw 31 strong and fit, determined athletes.  And guess what?  One of them was me.   I had to blink a few times to make sure the sweat running through my eyes wasn’t clouding my vision.  After all, it is hard for someone who has struggled with body image their whole life to see that they are not the largest person in the room.  Most days that’s all I do see.  But on this day I realized that I looked like everyone else in the room.  We were all busting our asses to climb the mountain or sprint to the finish line or meet whatever other impossible challenge was thrown at us by our instructor.   In fact, we were all pretty much in sync with the music and looked like one awesome group of badasses.  A group of strong badasses, I might add.

When we finished the ride I looked around again to see if my vision had stuck.  It had and I walked out of that class feeling great.  I won’t lie and say that my body dysmorphia is completely gone.  A lifetime of watching my mother count calories because she will never be skinny enough is a tough thing to reverse.  But I am hanging on to my new mantra “strong, not skinny”.  Even though I am not quite ready to give my old skinny pants away yet, I would rather be a strong, fit badass than a skinny starving person any day.  At least this is what I am saying to myself every morning.  And most importantly, this is the image I want my daughter to grow up with.  So, from here on out “#strong, not skinny” are my “#goals”.