I had a friend once tell me: “I believe that if you change your posture, you will change your life.” This statement felt huge and bold and terrifying, and quite possibly true. I guess I didn’t feel like changing my life at the time though, because at that time I didn’t change my posture. Slouching had become a coping mechanism. Slouching made me shorter, and gave an illusion of squareness, which made me less uncomfortable with my body and made the world an easier place to live in. Slouching was how I dealt with negative body image for ten years. I could stand tall some days, if I’d spent a lot of time on my appearance and felt it was good enough to deserve the kind of attention I felt I received standing at my actual height. But, the majority of the time, slouching was my safe space. Over the past six months, I’ve been trying to fix my slouching for musical reasons– for career reasons. Yet still, it has been a struggle. Still some days I wake up and I don’t want to be tall, and I don’t want to be the shape I am, and I don’t want to be seen. But, I am a performer. I’m not a dancer or an actor, but my body is still part of the performance. I still have to use my body to make art. When I finally realized that, I realized that I would have to make peace with my body to become a better musician. How could I use my body in all the ways I needed to, if I was curling into a little turtle shell everyday? Turtles can’t play viola. I’m not even sure turtles could hold one. I discovered, after years and years of avoiding the truth, that I would have to leave my little slouching shell, in order to make beautiful music.

After making this life-changing realization that body image issues had been holding my music making back, I became quite interested in how body image affects career efficacy for women. I read a bunch of articles and studies, and what I began to realize is that body image/perception, for both men and women, has a major impact on social functioning and therefore career effectiveness. If someone feels more uncomfortable with their body, they’ll be less assertive and less competitive, and miss out on opportunities and lose competitive edge. It hit me intellectually and emotionally after about ten of these articles/studies, that the confidence many of my female friends and I are lacking in our bodies is impacting not only our self-confidence, but also our ability to play our instruments well, to perform well in concerts, to audition well, and to win jobs. This could be depressing, except for the fact that we can take this information to make the necessary changes we need to learn to love our bodies so that we can succeed.

When I was 18 years old, I was in love with one of my best friends. I told him, and he was gentle with that fact, and gentle with me, and even though it broke my heart that he couldn’t love me back– he took good care of me as a friend through one of the hardest times of my entire life. I once told him that I only felt beautiful when he told me I was. He said: “Why would you ever give me that power?” It only just occurred to me that what he really meant was: “Why would you give anyone else the power to decide whether you are beautiful or not?” The power to discover and appreciate our own beauty is within us, and only us. You can tell someone else they’re beautiful a thousand times and they still might not believe it. If we women are to step into our power and claim the success that we have the potential to achieve, we must learn to love and appreciate our own beauty, without dependence on others for validation.

Note:

Athleticism and appreciation of athletic skill has been linked to positive body image. However, overexercise has also been linked to negative body image. Positive nutrition can lead to positive body image, but it does not guarantee it. Also there are differing conclusions on what exactly constitutes positive nutrition. I didn’t give any specific instructions for how to love your body, because it is different for each person, and requires listening to yourself and your needs and your doctors. 🙂

Best article/study I found on Body Image and Career Efficacy (Sources cited list also includes excellent resources):

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.581.9478&rep=rep1&type=pdf