Issue # 15

The body-confidence stat that says more about culture than about you

Hi Reader,

A woman in my paid community sent me a statistic recently: only nine percent of women between sixty-one and eighty describe themselves as very confident in their bodies. Among women in their twenties, that number is more than double.

Underneath it, she'd written: "So it was never going to end, was it."

She'd already done the harder work of this journey. Relearned her hunger. Grieved what food used to do for her. Rebuilt trust with a body that kept shifting. She'd assumed that once she got somewhere close to the body she was working toward, something would finally settle. Instead she read a study and felt the floor move again.

Here's what I want you to know. That statistic isn't measuring how bodies change with age. Bodies have always changed with age. It's measuring a culture that ties a woman's value to how well she resists that change, regardless of her weight, regardless of what she's built or accomplished. You can do everything right and still run into a set of standards that were never designed to let you feel at peace once you get there.

If you've felt this, you're not imagining it. You're accurately reading a message that's been aimed at you your whole life.

A Path Forward

This week, when you catch yourself evaluating an aging face or a changing body against some earlier version of yourself, practice holding two things at once instead of picking one:

I accept myself and my body as I am right now. I want to feel more at ease in this body as it continues to change.

Say both. Neither one cancels the other out. That's not resignation and it isn't denial, it's the actual work.

I go much deeper into the psychology behind holding both of those truths at once in this week's article, including a framework from clinical psychology I think you'll find genuinely useful. You can read the full piece in the link below.

With you in this,

Dr. Jen

Want to go deeper?

This newsletter gives you something to do. My Substack gives you the why behind it — the psychology, the research, the reason what you're experiencing makes complete sense even when it doesn't feel that way.

If you want the fuller picture, you can find me at After the Noise on Substack.

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This newsletter is for educational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes medical or psychological advice, and reading it does not establish a professional relationship between us. If you're finding that you'd benefit from more personalized support, I encourage you to reach out to a licensed mental health professional. You deserve personalized care from someone who can truly know your situation.