How parenthood radicalized me towards body liberation
I don't need to get my body back. It's already here.
Welcome to Chief Complaint! For those of you who are new, this newsletter features intermittent musings about medicine, gender, parenting, and body liberation — all from your friendly neighborhood primary care doc. I’m so happy you’re here.
This summer, my family and I have been going to the city pool almost every day after work. It’s such a lovely palate cleanser after a day of seeing patients and staring at a computer.
To get there after we get home but before the pool closes, there’s a mad dash to struggle my 3-year-old into his swimsuit and swim diaper. (Although he’s mostly potty-trained, this is a crucial wardrobe item. I will not be that mom at the pool.)
The dog is barking, we’re throwing granola bars and towels into the stroller, and we’re speedwalking the 6 blocks to the pool to make it there in time. But once we’re there, it’s bliss.
It’s a pretty bare-bones Philadelphia pool. There are no umbrellas or chairs, just a few feet of concrete between the pool and the chain-link fence that surrounds it. That means we have to leave the stroller and our clothes outside the gate, and walk through the entrance, to the shower and pool, in just suits and flip-flops.
For most of my life, walking any substantial distance in just a bathing suit would have felt like a gauntlet of body shame. For years, I had devised tricks to shield my body from view at the pool or beach: staying wrapped in a towel until the last possible minute, wearing a shirt into the water and then slipping it off right as I dove under.
But at this pool, those (mostly ineffective) shenanigans are impossible. Our Philly lifeguards mean business, and they’ll kick you out immediately if you so much as contemplate bringing too much of your stuff inside.
The other day, I was there, wrangling my son at his parked stroller outside of the pool gates, and we ran into a couple of families from his school. One of the many things I love about going to the pool is how it really feels like a third space — a community spot where we bump into friends and neighbors without making any formal plans.
I was standing there wearing only my bathing suit; the clothes I had walked there wearing were already stored in the stroller. The parents and I chatted and re-introduced ourselves. My kid was pumped to see his friends. We all walked in to the pool together, jumped in, and had a blast. And as I walked home, refreshed from our dip, I realized something.
A few years ago, I would have been mortified, talking to daycare dads I kinda knew in only a bathing suit.
But this summer, I’ve felt something shift. I just didn’t care.
The body liberation queen
asked a question on her Substack a few months ago: What was your moment of body radicalization?I have been thinking about that question ever since. For me, the answer is easy. Motherhood radicalized me. Becoming a parent has shifted so much of my thinking about my body.
The summer I gave birth to my son, it was hot. He was born in a heat wave. I remember the weeks before, gritting my teeth against what I found to be the most psychologically challenging part of pregnancy: the uncertainty of waiting. I was lucky enough to start my parental leave a few weeks before my due date, and to quiet the doctor voice in my head who recited all the things that could go wrong, I walked for miles every day.
On a whim, I bought a pair of bike shorts. They were suddenly popular that summer, a Princess Diana look that I love. I was going nuts with anticipation and anxiety, and suddenly, there just wasn’t room in my brain any longer for self-consciousness about how my legs looked in shorts. The bike shorts would work with my pregnant belly, and they let me walk all over the neighborhood in comfort. I was sold.
Since then, I’ve noticed many times how parenting pushes out my thoughts of body shame to make room for all the physical experiences I want to have with my kid. Swimming. Hiking. Playing in the sand. Carrying him up the stairs when he’s throwing a tantrum. Sitting on the floor and playing with dolls. Chasing after him to prevent him from running into traffic. Lifting him up so he can have the satisfaction of dunking a basketball.
A few weeks ago, my family went swimming with some friends in a lagoon on the beaches of Massachusetts. We explored in a magical little rivulet, through reeds and shallow, brackish water. My son loved it.
We sang “We’re going on a bear hunt” (N.B.: Probably no bears there, but ya know…) and half swam, half trudged through the otherworldly body of water. We stumbled upon an old wooden bridge, and swimming under it was thrilling for my son. I felt so grateful for a body that allowed me to do that. Thank God I wasn’t worrying about how I looked in a bathing suit.
Maybe part of it, too, is being around a child who is so physical, so embodied — and yet so beautifully unselfconscious. My son is obsessed with putting on temporary tattoos and band-aids, curious about how they change his experience of his body. He climbs up every stoop when we’re walking around the city, because he wants to see what it feels like to jump off. This is the magic of kids. They are so aware of their bodies, so joyful in their physicality.
Yet they haven’t yet learned how adults view bodies through the lens of culture. They’re free from the gaze of agism, fatphobia, racism, and sexism. They don’t understand the way we create hierarchies of bodies. They don’t care that we categorize bodies as more or less desirable, more or less powerful.
Parenthood helped radicalize me. But being a parent is by no means necessary to reconsider body liberation. There are so many other ways we can start to shift our relationships to our bodies. So, I’m curious to ask Virginia’s question again: what radicalized you? What has helped you rethink the way you experience your body?
P.S.: Are you registered to vote? I love this organization and just ordered a free badge to wear at work, and I’m trying to talk to all of my patients about voting this fall. Let’s do this.
I'm not there yet. But I'm getting there. For me, the (slow! sloooow!) radicalization is coming from:
1) Putting so much effort into 'being/staying/worrying about being thinner,' and realizing that effort does nothing at all. Nothing. At. All. (This is a long story; that's the crux.)
2. Realizing I'm 'invisible' (in a certain sense) in middle age, in a way I wasn't as a young woman. I can lament this— or let it take the pressure off.
3. Gaining (slowly!) an intellectual understanding of why point #1 is true. By itself, the cognitive component isn't enough, but it helps with the whole baseline.
Hi Mara - excited to make your acquaintance as I too am a family doc, living in the city, and passionate about writing our way out of professional burnout ennroute to preserving our humanism in medicine!
We used to go to the public pool in Fitler square (O’Connor) and then in Hawthorne (Ridgway) as we lived in those respective neighborhoods… but finally got through the 10 year waiting list for Lombard Swim Club. Though it’s not fancy, the opportunity to swim in the humid summer oven of Philly is a life saving, morale improving gift!
I’m too thin, so I fall back on the fact that I’m closing in on 50 and should just be grateful that I can still swim and exercise as many struggle with medical ailments etc. a good friend with long Covid my age cannot bc of PEM.
Anyway, if you subscribe to my primary care letter I’m happy to comp you for life! Family docs stick together 💪 And congratulations on your wide ranging publications. I’ll catch up on some of these soon.