Learning to Be Seen

The difference between changing your body and changing the way you see yourself

For a long time, I thought my body was something I needed to fix.

From a young age, I learned that my body was something people noticed. I grew up being teased about the shape of my body. I had a birthmark that drew attention to me too, another thing that made me feel exposed when I already wanted to disappear. I remember not wanting to go to physical education (PE) class, not because I didn’t want to move, but because I didn’t want to be looked at. I didn’t want people noticing my body. I didn’t want the comments. I didn’t want to feel ashamed of taking up space.

At the time, I didn’t have the language for what was happening. I just knew that being seen felt uncomfortable. So I learned to hide.

And when you spend enough time feeling watched, judged or commented on, something happens. Eventually, you don’t need anyone else to do it anymore. You learn to do it yourself. The voice that once came from other people becomes your own. Too big here. Too soft there. Fix this. Change that. Hide this. Make yourself more acceptable.

You look at yourself before anyone else can. You notice the part of your body you think someone might notice. You wonder how you look from the side. You think about what you should wear to make yourself look smaller. You see a photograph and immediately scan it for everything that’s wrong. You begin experiencing your own body through an imagined audience.

I spent years trying to make my body less noticeable, less confronting, less vulnerable to criticism and more acceptable. Eventually, trying to change my body became more than simply not liking what I saw in the mirror. I tried to control it. I tried to make it smaller. I tried to make it different. My relationship with food became part of that too, and there were periods where that relationship became destructive.

Looking back now, I can see what I was really trying to achieve. I wasn’t simply trying to look different. I was trying to escape the feeling of being seen. I had somehow come to believe that if I could just get my body right, I could finally feel safe in it. Maybe if I looked different, I wouldn’t feel so exposed. Maybe if I was smaller, I wouldn’t be judged. Maybe if I could just fix this one thing, I could finally relax.

But underneath that was something deeper. I didn’t just want to change how I looked. I wanted to change what being seen meant. I wanted to feel desirable instead of exposed, wanted instead of judged, acceptable instead of ashamed. Somewhere along the way, I began believing that if I could become attractive enough, I could turn other people’s attention into proof that I was enough.

But something happened that I hadn’t expected.

As I got older, the relationship I had with my body became more complicated. The shame didn't disappear; it followed me into adulthood, but it began to show up differently. I wasn't just trying to hide anymore. I was trying to change. I became increasingly aware that my body was something I could control, shape and alter, and I started believing that if I could make it look different, I might finally feel different in it.

The less of me there was, the more certain parts of me seemed to stand out. As the weight came off, my waist became smaller, my curves became more pronounced and my bum became more noticeable. Even my face changed. My eyes seemed to shine in a way I hadn’t noticed before. And suddenly, the attention changed.

I started noticing the looks. The lingering glances. The way eyes would follow me. The attention I had spent years believing I wanted because, surely, being seen as attractive would mean I had finally become acceptable. But I hadn’t anticipated what it would feel like to actually receive that attention. I had spent so long wanting people not to look at my body that I hadn’t learned what to do when people started looking at it differently.

I had gone from please don’t look at me to why are you looking at me?

And there was something confusing about that. Part of me had spent years believing that becoming thinner, curvier in the “right” places and more attractive would finally solve the problem. But it didn’t. It just changed the question.

I had thought the goal was to become a body that people would want to look at. Then I had to learn what it meant to actually be looked at. And that brought up something much deeper:

What happens when you’ve spent your life believing that other people’s attention tells you something about your worth?

What happens when being desired feels like validation, but being looked at also makes you feel exposed?

What happens when you’ve spent so long trying to control how your body is perceived that you don’t know how to simply inhabit it?

Looking back, I can see that I was trying to solve an emotional problem through my body. I thought if I changed the outside, I would finally feel different on the inside.

But there was always another thing to fix. Another part to criticise. Another photograph. Another comparison. Another calculation. Another reason I wasn’t quite acceptable yet.

The body could never win when the rules were built around shame.

Because the problem wasn’t really my body. It was what I had learned to believe about being seen. I had learned that being visible could mean being judged. That taking up space could make me vulnerable. That my body was something other people were entitled to have an opinion about. And eventually, I absorbed all of that so deeply that I started doing it to myself. I became my own observer, my own critic, my own judge.

For years, I thought that voice was me. I thought the shame was me. I thought wanting to hide was simply who I was. But it wasn’t.

It was a pattern. Something I had learned. Something I had repeated for so long that it felt like an identity. And that’s one of the hardest things about the patterns we develop: they can become so familiar that we stop questioning them. We mistake something automatic for something true.

But a pattern is not an identity.

I know that now because I’ve done the work. I’ve gone back through those experiences. I’ve understood where the shame came from. I’ve understood why I learned to protect myself in the ways I did. I’ve separated the things I was taught to believe about myself from what is actually true about me.

And I don’t live there anymore.

That’s important to me, because this isn’t a story about me finally learning to love my body. It’s a story about no longer living in fear of it.

I don’t calculate whether my curves are acceptable anymore. I don’t walk into a room wondering who’s looking. I don’t turn every photograph into an assessment of my body. I don’t spend my days thinking about how to make myself smaller. And I don’t want to spend my life trying to fit myself into somebody else’s idea of what a woman should look like.

I’ve learned that there is a difference between caring for my body and trying to make it acceptable. I move my body because I enjoy moving it. I nourish it. I challenge it. I let it rest. I listen to it. I look after my health. Not because my body needs to earn the right to exist, and not because I need to become a particular shape before I’m allowed to feel good.

And yes, I have curves. A bum that sometimes gets me more attention than I'd like. I don't need to justify them. I don't need to hide them. And I don't need to make them into something for somebody else to admire. They are simply part of me. They belong to me.

There was a time when looking at my body automatically meant calculating: what could I change? What could I lose? What could I hide? How much space am I taking up? How am I being perceived?

Now I can look at my body and simply see it. This is my body. Not a project. Not a problem. Not something I need to apologise for. Not something I need to make smaller before I’m allowed to be seen. And that doesn’t mean I think every part of my body is perfect. I don’t. I can have an insecure day. I can notice that my body has changed. I can age. My weight can fluctuate. I can look in the mirror and not particularly love what I see. None of that has the power it once had.

Because I no longer confuse a passing thought with a truth. I no longer need to act on every critical thought that crosses my mind. I can notice it and let it pass. I can wear something because I like it, rather than because it disguises me. I can take the photograph. I can go to the gym. I can walk into a room and actually be in the room — not monitoring myself, not wondering how I look from somebody else’s perspective, not trying to disappear. Just there.

And perhaps that is what freedom looks like. Not waking up every morning thinking your body is beautiful. Not never having an insecurity. Not suddenly becoming immune to other people’s opinions. But no longer organising your life around them. No longer treating being seen as something you need to protect yourself from. No longer believing you have to earn the right to take up space.

For years, I thought freedom would come when I finally changed my body enough. Now I know it didn’t. Freedom came when I stopped believing I needed to change my body to deserve being seen.

And perhaps that’s the part I wish I had understood earlier. Sometimes we think we’re fighting our bodies when we’re actually fighting what we believe our bodies say about us. We think we need to lose weight, change our shape, fix the part we don’t like, hide the thing that draws attention. But underneath all of that can be something much older: If they see me, they’ll judge me. If they judge me, I’ll be rejected. If I can just make myself acceptable, I’ll finally be safe.

Those beliefs can become so automatic that we don’t even realise we’re living by them. I know because I did.

And I also know that they aren’t the truth about who you are.

The body I spent years trying to change was never my identity. The shame I carried was never my identity. The patterns I developed were never my identity. They were things I learned. And eventually, I learned something else.

I can be looked at without becoming an object. I can be attractive without needing to perform attractiveness. I can have curves without making them a statement. I can take up space without apologising for it. And I can live in my body without constantly asking what it looks like from somebody else’s perspective.

This body has been criticised, compared, changed, controlled and hidden. It has carried shame that was never really its own. But it has also carried me through every version of my life. It has moved, danced, rested, worked, travelled, loved and lived. It has held me through experiences I once thought would break me.

And now I don’t want to spend another minute treating it like an enemy.

Someone might look. Someone might have an opinion. Someone might find me attractive. Someone might not. None of those things needs to tell me who I am.

Their gaze belongs to them. My body belongs to me. Maybe my body was never the thing that needed fixing. Maybe it was the shame I was carrying about it. And I’m not carrying that anymore.

This is my body.

I don’t need to become less of it. I don’t need to become more of it. I don’t need to make it acceptable. I don’t need to hide it. I simply get to live in it.

And maybe you know something of this feeling too. Maybe you’ve spent years looking at yourself through other people’s eyes, wondering what needs to change before you can feel comfortable being seen. Maybe you’ve made your body a project without ever stopping to ask what you’re really trying to change.

I wonder what would happen if, for a moment, you stopped asking whether your body was acceptable and asked a different question instead: what would it feel like to simply be in it?

Not to love every part of it. Not to change it. Not to make it worthy of attention.

Just to be there. In your body. In your life.

Here's to finding our way back to ourselves,

Willow