32. What Travel Taught Me About Body Image

I'm your host , jess Heiss , dropping episodes every Friday with my co-host , megan , as we help you make the most of your Sturdy Girl summer . That is , reclaiming body confidence , wearing the swimsuit and doing the kinds of activities you want without letting your body or appearance hold you back . Welcome back to a solo episode of Sturdy Girl . It's me , jess .

Hi , friends , it feels very weird to be recording solo after having Megan sitting next to me , being the person that I get to look at and talk to this whole time . So , hi , I will see how well I do through this . I guess Finn , my Aussie , is hanging out in here with me . I can talk to him . I don't know how effective that will be , but let's chat .

I want to talk about travel , and in talking about traveling there's a lot of lessons learned , and I don't say any of this to be trite . I recognize how freaking privileged I am to be able to travel every year like I do .

I enjoy it so much for so many reasons , but one of the things I kept coming back to , especially our travel this year , was on body image and some of the lessons that traveling has taught me about body image , about self-confidence , about how we treat our bodies and ourselves .

Earlier this year , so May , blake and I took my grandparents to France and Greece for three weeks , with a long stopover in London .

My grandparents are from a town of maybe a thousand people , I would say their worldview is vastly different from my own , and I noticed my grandma on this trip paying a lot of attention to the way people dressed , to different body sizes , to the way people carried themselves , to the foods they chose in restaurants , right , and it was just really interesting where

they haven't traveled a whole lot in their lives , and Blake and I have traveled to more than a couple dozen countries at this point I have lost count and so to see the world through their eyes and my grandma is one of those people like I'm just totally going to talk her up on this episode she and I lived across the street from each other until I was

almost through elementary school We've always had such a great close relationship .

But even then , seeing the difference in worldviews for myself and the traveling that I have done versus someone who lives in a small town and their world is very small on the day to day , and so paying attention to those things and listening to her comments that she made about what she's noticing on this trip , it made me start thinking about body image , because ,

honestly , sturdy Girl lives rent free in my mind . With body image in mind , let's talk about my favorite takeaways . I can make a whole list of random things here about what I've learned traveling about bodies and body image . Wear what you want , because style and fashion are absolutely subjective . I think that's one really big one here .

That sure it's not one of my big main points , but one of the little ones is really truly , every place you go , the is so much different what people wear , and especially when you're in cities , like we were in paris , and there are so many tourists , which is great , but it also goes to show you all these people from all over the world wearing different

clothes , wearing different styles , and it's truly like wear what you want , wear what you like , express yourself through your clothes Like . It's so subjective . And another thing people watching is one of my favorite pastimes when traveling , but it can be really insightful when you pay attention to how people carry themselves .

I noticed too , how much older women in Europe tend to give less fucks . They really just carry themselves differently . I don't know how to explain and there's no like scientific backing on this entire episode . This is literally just an observation , but I mean I think about too , not on this trip , but in previous trips .

Right , there are a number of nude beaches in Europe when I've been in Spain , when I've been in France , and you see all shapes and sizes present , and it really challenges our narrow view of the societal norm of what a body quote unquote should look like , right ?

So those are all little things , my two main takeaways of what travel has taught me about body image . Number one body image ideals are made up Full stop , 100% . The idea that there is one single body type that is ideal comes from the media , comes from this fabricated idea that smaller is supposedly better .

And you know , depending on the period of time that we look at , those ideals change . If we lived during the Renaissance , curvy was better . The more curves you had , the more voluptuous you were , the more celebrated you were . Look at the art from that period of time that was in .

And then you fast forward and I just I'm trying to think off the top of my head because the first thing I think of is just growing up as a 90s kid , the heroin chic , thinner , tinier . The thinner you are , the less body fat you have , the better .

And then seeing that shift away into big butts and tiny waist , seeing that shift into seeing defined muscle and seeing all those shifts . It is so interesting to me how much that societal , healthy body or norm or what we're striving for , changes and yet we are just taught to follow . That it makes me think of .

There is a video if you look up poodle science on YouTube . The Association for Science , diversity and Health put out this video . I don't know how long ago , but it's stuck with me when you talk about body ideals .

It's a video about a world made up of dogs and the poodles are the ones barking the loudest about how everyone needs to look and act like a poodle when their world is full of all sorts of breeds of dogs with different lifespans and health risks . You look at like a poodle versus a chihuahua , versus a Rottweiler versus a Mastiff ?

Right , a Mastiff is never going to be a poodle and realistically , we would never expect them to be , so why do we do this to ourselves ? Why do we do this when we compare ourselves ? You want to look like them , have a body shape or size like them .

Why do we assume that we all should be the same shape and size , when it's no different than this ridiculously adorable video about poodles trying to take over the world and make everyone look like poodles , when we recognize that not every dog is ever going to look like a poodle and we don't expect that ?

Smaller is not better , thin is not the ideal , and health is going to look different on every single person , and it's so interesting .

This is such a side tangent , and then I'll go on to my second point about what I've learned while traveling , and that's just the fact that there is there's a better term for it than skinny fat , and I'm blanking on how they explain it , but those that are thin have less body fat percentage , aren't necessarily more healthy than someone who has a higher body fat

percentage , and so when we look at measures of health like this could be an episode all on its own when we talk about metrics of health , and I've really been nerding out on this recently . I think just about every episode I've recorded this season of Sturdy Girl has been a mention of the book Outlive .

If you have not put it on your to be read list , I would add it . The front half of the book is incredibly research heavy , but the back half of the book is really it's the art and science of longevity and it talks about markers for health and we get so wrapped up .

There's so much buzzwordiness around health and wellness and what that looks like and feels like , and it just I shouldn't even go off on this right now .

Just suffice it to say right Body image ideals are made up , we are made to be all different shapes and sizes , and if you and I eat the same things and move the same way , our bodies are still going to look entirely different .

And that's my point with this is , just when you travel and when you see other cultures , that becomes even more apparent to you , and so I want to do it and share that with you . So that's point number one . Point number two life is too goddamn short . That's the point .

It's too short to be wasting our energy on whether our arms are somehow defined enough to wear the tank top , or how many rolls we have when we sit down while we're wearing the bikini at the beach , or how much our thighs are going to rub in shorts and whether we should actually put them on , which honestly like if there's too much thigh rub , we figure out

the right shorts . I'm not saying let your thighs catch on fire from chafage , but my point being my grandma is 75 . Her mobility is starting to decline . We really planned this trip this year so that they were both healthy enough to go .

So we planned the trip around some of her limited mobility as far as Ubers instead of walking too far , limited stairs , making sure the Airbnbs were elevator accessible if they weren't on the first floor , those things .

And so this idea of turning that focus of energy away from our bodies was just seeing my grandmother be so in the moment and recognizing life being short to waste our energy on the little things Wear the tank top , wear the shorts , wear the whatever you want to , with mind to that health piece right , seeing my grandma at 75 , experience Paris , experience the

Eiffel Tower , experience Montmartre , experience Athens and walk her way to the top of the Acropolis . That was such a standout moment for me , when , at the Acropolis , there's actually an elevator that can take you up to the Acropolis because it's on top of a hill .

Elevator of the day we went happened to be broken and the lady said well , you can wait until this afternoon , it might be done , or just take it slow and go to the top . My grandma said huh , I need a minute . We sat down for a few and she said I'm never going to be here again , I want to make this work , let's go .

And so my husband and I each took one of her arms and walked with her up to the top and it was slow and it was steady . And we got to the top and she sat down on a rock and she cried because she could not believe that she put that effort in to get to the top of the Acropolis . I cried too , to be honest and to recognize that .

What do they say ? We have 4,000 weeks . We have 75-ish summers , like the age of 75 . Isn't that the average lifespan ? How many summers do you want to spend worried about how something might appear , when you could just wear the thing , do the thing and enjoy it ?

Life is too short as well to not try the fun foods of the places that you're in , to be continually on a diet or restricting Eat what you want on these trips ?

Do you want to and I think about this a lot lately do you want to be 95 sitting on your front porch in your rocker talking to your great granddaughter and tell her about the amazing trip you had in Paris , but that you couldn't try the macarons or the croissants or the crepes or the world-famous caramels because you were on a diet or because you were worried

about the carb intake ? No , you want to tell about the full experience , about wandering the city while holding this crepe and getting butter and sugar running down your arm because you were enjoying it so much , not worrying about the few extra calories .

On the vacation , wearing the dress that you questioned you really liked it but weren't sure if you should wear it and you put it on and you're like this is so fun and this is so outside my comfort zone , but we're rocking it Right . That's it , friends . There's my rambling episode on travel .

Life is too short to waste your energy on obsessing about your appearance , and that's the whole mission of Sturdy Girl . To be honest , it's shifting the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big , rad , beautiful , rich life that you want to live . And then , secondly , body image . Ideals are made up . Work on your definition of health .

Don't try to be a poodle when the world is full of every kind of animal . When you are traveling this summer , this fall , whenever , whether it's local or international , right across the board , remember this .

How great is it to have this body that allows you to experience new places , people , food , body ideals are fake and this life is too short to not eat the croissant , wear the clothes you want and walk with just a little swagger for the simple joy of being present in a new place . Okay , friends , that's enough of my rambling .

Hopefully those points hit home in some little kind of ways . We are now into July , we're into summer , and I want to hear from you . If you have previously purchased Sturdy Girl apparel , I would love for you to tag us on Instagram in that apparel .

If you have previously purchased Sturdy Girl apparel , I would love for you to tag us on Instagram in that apparel . If you are not , but you are living a Sturdy Girl summer , tag us on Instagram . I had originally asked for the hashtag Sturdy Girl summer and I don't know if I just aged out of figuring out how to follow hashtags in a way that sees everyone's .

I failed on that . So tag us on Instagram at Sturdy Girl underscore , and at the end of July and the end of August we are giving away Sturdy Girl merch to someone who has tagged us . So that's it , friends . Happy Sturdy Girl summer . I will talk to you next Friday .