Recreating the Vase

Last semester, I thoroughly enjoyed inter­viewing my neighbor on a queer perspective on body image. This semester, I was inspired to interview my friend and sister-in-faith, Erica Owen, a Scripps senior, on a Christian perspective on body image.

What is your spiritual background?

I was raised in a non-religious, fairly anti-Christian home. My whole extended family was very outspoken about how Christians behaved in the political scene and how much corruption and hypocrisy there was in the church, so I decided not to look into the faith at all. But growing up, my closest friend and I would stay at each other’s houses and her mom would take all the kids to church. I was very disconnected and was confused about everything that was going on. I sat in the back like the kid that was way too cool.

In junior high, I began to realize that I had made a lot of assumptions about Christianity without ever read­ing the Bible and actually looking at the words of Jesus. This friend of mine was influenced by the Bible, and her life really showed it, so I became interested. I went to a Christian camp, and the only reason I went was because there was a blob thing that you could jump onto and then bounce off of into the lake—but while I was there, I fell in love with the Bible. I began to see Jesus as someone radically different from the person I had perceived him to be. I realized my own soul-thirst for what he was offering. At that moment, at the end of my junior high experience, I decided that I wanted to follow Jesus and model my life after his. My life has never been the same.

How did the Bible begin to transform your life?

What was really appealing to me, and shocking, was that the Bible said things that were in such stark contrast to what I based my life on. I had really wanted to imitate my dad, who developed a very successful career and a financially well-off family. What was different with the Bible was that it wasn’t primarily emphasizing suc­cess. It was about taking Jesus’ words and letting them guide and transform me. I realized I had been living in a mindset that was all about me striving to succeed in the eyes of my parents, teachers, and coaches. This model of following Jesus wasn’t just about me, but about living for and in relationship with Jesus. This brought me great joy because when I focused on myself, I always let myself down. I was my own biggest critic and the approval of others was never good enough. I realized that I needed something outside of myself to bring definition to my life.

Has this feeling of never being good enough pertained to how you have viewed your body?

Yeah, definitely. We are saturated with lies about our body and what it should look like, not just in maga­zines and on television, but in the privacy of our own rooms. I grew up in a very athletic home, dancing and playing on sports teams. I began to think that I needed to be a perfect size and a perfect weight. Especially all those years that I danced—I was in the mirror the whole time. I would fixate on different parts of my body and memorize what parts I liked and didn’t like and compare myself to all the girls in the studio. I didn’t realize this was self-destructive. I would also put on different outfits in the mirror and critique what made me look better and my mood was always affected by what I saw.

When I came to Scripps, I began to see that many people were hyper-aware of what they ate and were even dieting. Before coming to college, the whole idea of controlling food intake on a daily basis was foreign to me. When I saw people close to me doing this, it made myself-conscious about the fact that I wasn’t. I loved food too much to diet, but if I ate a lot of junk food, I felt like I had to work out to work it all off. I worked out a ton to overcompensate. A lot of people may not think it is a big deal and say, “Well, you weren’t anorexic or bulimic,” but I lump it all in the same category: dealing with self-criticism and control. There are differences between the conditions, but I see the inner wound as being the same.

Did you make any lifestyle changes after you had a change in mindset?

I knew a girl who told me that she had decided to go for a season of covering up her mirrors as a way to show that she could be a confident and joyful person be­cause of her faith in God and that she didn’t need to look at herself in the mirror to make her ready for the day. That was interesting to me because I realized I looked in the mirror a lot. If I didn’t know how my hair looked or how a shirt fit me, would I be able to be content? It was a powerful idea, so I decided to try it the summer after my sophomore year. It was really hard at first. I became almost panicked because I didn’t even know if I had toothpaste on my mouth or something. I had writ­ten some of Jesus’ words on the mirror coverings and as I started to read those, they became my “getting ready for the day.” The time that I had spent making my hair part perfect became a time of spiritually getting ready. I loved the freedom that came with believing that it didn’t really matter what I looked like.

The drawback was that at points I made it some­thing legalistic. I’m going to live and function in a society that has mirrors everywhere. A true picture of healing and growth is to be able to look in mirrors and see something beautiful, and not beautiful in the way society determines beautiful, but to see the heart. While I really grew from this season of not looking in the mirror, it wasn’t an all-around answer. The biggest times of growth actually were when I had my mirror uncovered and had to look at myself and learn to appreciate what I saw and be able to inter­act with God in those moments. Covering up the mirror wasn’t the answer—it was God.

How do you feel your faith has interacted with your body image since that summer?

A big shift in this whole process was my ankle injury junior year that I’ve been battling for a year and a half. I’ve had two surgeries, a motorized wheelchair, physical therapy…I hit rock bottom and was put in a place of really having to apply everything that I had learned in the last year. It was hard because I wasn’t able to exer­cise for that whole period. That was huge for me because during my sophomore year, as I was working through body image issues, I still had a steady pattern of exercising. When this injury happened, I was faced with the question: can I still be joyful something that will bring me long-last­ing joy. It can be taken from me at any moment and will

be, eventually. God is the most constant and unchanging thing in my life. I learned how to appreciate God as the creator of my body, whether it’s injured or not. I definite­ly went through seasons of being confused and frustrated with God, but the course of this injury has been one of the most important and transformational times of my entire life. Physically, I appear to be injured and broken, but emotionally and spiritually, the brokenness has made me whole in a lot of ways.

Do you feel like your struggles with body image are over?

I’m still in the process. I‘m not perfect—I am still affected by other women’s bodies and compare mine to theirs. I am aware that it affects me in deeper ways when I’ve had a hard day or am really stressed, which makes me want to vent by eating or exercising. My response is dif­ferent now: going to specific parts of the Bible that bring me comfort and praying, “Lord, I surrender this illusion that having a perfect body will bring me satisfaction. Your spirit lives inside of me and this body you have crafted is a beautiful caretaker of that.” Also, about the scrip­ture “Love your neighbor as yourself”—you can’t really love your neighbor truly and wholeheartedly if you don’t love yourself. I see that in my relationship with Ben, my fiancé. When I’m not able to love myself and I’m focused on me, me, me, I’m not able to love him.

What activity makes you feel the best about your body?

Definitely dancing…dancing outside, in places that are uninhibited and open, to music that is carefree. It’s one of the ways I feel closest to God. It makes me feel so great about my body because I love that it can express emotion without words. It’s different for me now because I can’t physically dance the way I used to. I appreciate walking in a different way. I go on a lot of walks around the Pitzer garden.

Do you have a favorite body part?

To be honest, I really like my ankle with the scar from my surgery, which may sound really weird. My life is radically different because of my injury. I’m in a relation­ship with Ben because of it. There are things I didn’t do my junior year—I didn’t go abroad and didn’t do a summer project in L.A. because of this injury. It was sad, but it turned out to be really amazing. The restrictions I’ve had have actually changed the course of my life in really huge ways.