Why do we mourn our teenage bodies?
You will never get your teenage body 'back', and that’s okay, because you are now an adult.
Have you ever looked at an old photo of yourself and pined after how you used to look? Asked yourself why you don't look like that anymore? Was that old photo of your teenage body, and are you currently an adult? Me too.
Selena Gomez posted an Instagram story this week, and it made me feel very sad. It’s not very often that I - a normal layperson - can relate to a celeb, but it happened. A broken clock is right twice a day and all that.
The post in question was a papped bikini picture of herself captioned 'Today, I realised I will never look like this again…’ The photo was taken in 2013 when Selena Gomez was just twenty years old. Selena, now 31, then shared another story of a more recent picture, saying 'I'm not perfect but I am proud to be who I am.'
Why did this make me stop in my tracks? Because I feel the same when I look back at old photos of myself.
It reminded me that society teaches women to put teenage bodies on the beauty standards pedestal, and how damaging that is for our self-esteem. Adult women are constantly compared to girls, and told that in growing older they are “letting themselves go”. And if that wasn’t enough, we also do it on a micro level to our own teenage bodies.
Hundreds of times I’ve looked back at images of me at 16, 18, and 21, and bullied myself for no longer looking like I did then. I do not give myself any grace, and do not allow logic to question these feelings; I take that shame and guilt as fact. Because society- via porn, fashion, beauty, wellness, TV, film, music- all enforce this lie as truth. The lie? That youthful bodies are better, that somehow the very natural process of our bodies changing with age is wrong, and that we should mourn our teenage bodies despite being told to hate them at the time.
Thousands of girls and women related to Selena’s IG story, with it circulating on TikTok and X. This relatability to such a toxic feeling shows how insidious diet culture and body shaming are. The truth is that women are never the right age. Our bodies are never right. Because if they were, how would capitalism make billions off our collective self-hatred?
So, next time you look at a photo of your younger self, I hope you remember that your worth is not defined by the body you exist in. That your body was perfectly fine then and it is perfectly fine now. That you will never get your teenage body ‘back’, and that’s okay, because you are now an adult.
We did not think our bodies were perfect as teenagers, and yet we pine after them now. In ten years, we will do the same to our current selves. This will continue and continue unless we break the pattern- allow yourself to be at peace with your body, and remember to love it in the moment not retrospectively, not figuratively but literally.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to It's Not That Bad to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.