How A 6-Year-Old Taught Me to Love My "Cottage Cheese Thighs"

I work as a gymnastics coach for children ages three to thirteen. I love my job for many reasons, but one of the most rewarding perks is the talks I get to have with my girls about body image. These girls come to class every day in leotards and surround themselves with other girls of all shapes and sizes, without diminishing their self-esteem. However, every now and then, an issue presents itself, and I get to have a come to Jesus talk with them.

Most recently, a 6-year-old was discussing buying her first bikini, when her older and larger classmate said she wanted one, too. The 6-year-old, with a catty raised eyebrow, retorted, “No, only skinny people can wear bikinis.” That didn’t go over so well with me. We halted all stretches as I explained to the girls that every body is a bikini body, and people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and even genders can wear bikinis if it makes them happy. I like to think I sparked at least a tiny bit of body confidence that day.

I have also dealt with girls who openly compare themselves to the others; girls who are older, taller, with bigger hips. These are the girls I identify with. I started gymnastics way too late in the game as a preteen. With no previous experience, I was a level one, learning how to do somersaults with a class of 5-year-olds. Being the biggest girl in the class is hard, especially when the instructor can flip everyone around except you.

Thankfully, having that background taught me how to relate to those girls in my class. I know what it’s like to be the biggest girl in the class. I know how it feels to look at all the girls in tiny leotards while I pull soffee shorts up over mine. Being able to wipe tears from their faces and hearing them laugh as I explain how goofy I must have looked compared to my classmates is one of the best parts of my job.

 As much as I see these girls tackle body confidence every day, I still struggle. I love my body, and I’m comfortable in my own skin, but there will always be parts of me that I wish I could change. And that’s fine! I was given a skinny body with a high metabolism and I took it for granted. I’ve always eaten whatever I wanted, and one day that metabolism caught up with me. I like being a little thicker than I used to be, as frustrating as swimsuit or jean shopping is.

But one part of me that I have never, ever been comfortable with is my thighs. As soon as I put on my first pair of shorts for the summer, I’m immediately ready for snow to start falling. I have cellulite, and it's probably one of the most embarrassing features to have in today’s society. Celebrities have their beach vacation pictures blown up to emphasize the dimples on their thighs. College girls rush to Target to buy skin-firming creams and cellulite-reducing scrubs. It’s a sickness.

To help fight this hatred of my legs, and to instill a new sense of confidence, I collaborated with a local photographer to do a lingerie photo-shoot. And while it was great, and did exactly what it was designed to do in terms of confidence, I can’t take nearly naked pictures every day, and after a while my self-love battery needs a recharge.

Because I’m a gymnastics instructor, I work in a large gym with an entire wall of mirrors, and I’m surrounded by other instructors my age. Our uniforms are simple, just a staff t-shirt and athletic bottoms. It gets hot, and the desire to wear shorts is constant, but when I’m surrounded by my athletic-trainer, dance-major, and level-7-gymnast peers in shorts, and their perfectly sculpted legs, I decide that leggings are my best option.

But then one day in class, I noticed something strange. As I helped one of my younger girls fold into a backbend, I notice her legs dimpled up. I looked over and saw another girl sitting criss-cross applesauce; her legs had cellulite too. It was on every girl. These were 6-year-olds who have been in gymnastics for years. They were athletic, skinny, and growing more muscles every day—and they had the same cellulite that I had been killing myself over.

That’s when I realized how stupid it is to be embarrassed by it. Cellulite is a natural thing. From that point on, I noticed that every single person around me had it. Girls sitting in class, other gymnastics instructors, the girl next to me at the barre in ballet. It was so freeing to no longer worry about how I sit, or what angle to stand at while talking to someone. We’ve realized that fat is beautiful, we understand that stretch marks are stripes to be earned—why are we still treating cellulite like a deformity?  

I’m 21 and Having an Identity Crisis

Growing up, I was never really in one clique. I had friends who were athletes, mathletes, League of Legends champions, homebodies, and theater kids. It was nice being someone who got along with everyone. But then I realized that they all belonged to a group, and I never have. And at the age of 21, I found myself having an identity crisis.

As a young adult, every piece of media directed for you is divided into categories: fashion magazine articles want to label you as “glam”, “sweet”, or “tomboy”; TV shows like Glee want you to identify as the bitch cheerleader, the sweet church girl, or the stand-alone diva; movies want you to either root for the princess or the basket case to end up with Emilio Estevez. It’s inescapable. If you don’t have a category to fall into, you start to question yourself—what makes me special? Is it my athletic talent, my voice, my fashion sense, my intelligence—what am I?

I always fell somewhere in the middle of everyone else. I was smart enough to get good grades, but not smart enough to be in the honors program. I was head of my high school dance team, but couldn’t make it into the highly competitive company in college. I enjoyed show choir, but I was not nearly at the same level of talent as the others. I started to realize that just because I could make friends with many cliques, didn’t necessarily mean I belonged to any of them.

A few weeks ago, I watched an indie movie on Netflix focusing on the lives of a family of writers. This was it—this was going to be the movie that made me feel like a part of something. I was eager to find a character to connect to. Until there wasn’t one. The dad was a lonely, stalker divorcee—that certainly wasn’t me. The daughter was a soulless, all-black-everything, “I only hook up so don’t ask me out because I eat nice boys like you alive” kind of girl—that definitely wasn’t me. My only hope was the son, a horror fiction short story writer like myself. Until a sub plot of the movie revolved around him being a virgin with no life experience. Not quite me either.

I broke down. As embarrassing as it is, this movie made me sob uncontrollably for at least an hour, cursing myself for not having stuck to a sport, or not taking voice lessons, or not choosing a certain lifestyle that would have given me a “thing”. Singing is my best friend’s “thing”, comic books are my boyfriend’s “thing”, baseball is my guy friend’s “thing”. I wanted a thing to identify me from everyone else, while also giving me a sense of identity and belonging. I debated changing my look.

Maybe I could start the next school year with a closet full of to-the-knee sundresses and cardigans, playing the sweet, innocent girl. Except my sailor’s vocabulary and inability to sit with my legs crossed ruled that out. Maybe I’d be better off being the girl who wears black cherry colored lipstick daily and carries a copy of The Catcher in the Rye around and only speaks in witty jokes. Except I never understood the literary importance of that book and that much lipstick would probably chap my lips for eternity.

I even considered attempting to get back into ballet, and once again strive to end up en pointe. Even though I couldn’t be a team athlete kind of jock (no hand-eye coordination and a fear of things being thrown at me), I could still be a dancer and belong to a group of girls with tight topknots and footless pink tights. But then I painfully remembered how it felt to be a curvy girl with thick thighs and a butt eating the back of my leotard in a room full of tall, lean girls who weighed maybe a collective 150 pounds. I was already having an identity crisis; I didn’t need to ruin my self-esteem again too.

Probably the hardest part about going through this is the inability to verbalize it. It took me at least two weeks to find the right words to explain to my boyfriend why a charming movie made me cry for hours. But once I did, I found I wasn’t alone. Having a “thing” doesn’t make you belong, nor does it make you special. The thing itself isn’t your identity and neither is the group it categorizes you into. My friend may be an incredible singer, but she isn’t identified by just her voice. She is identified by her unmatchable humor, her rapid-fire sarcasm, and her big, bright blue eyes. My boyfriend’s “thing” may be comic books, but he was also an athlete, volunteers for victims of sexual violence, and is the number one person people go to when they need advice, support, or help.

I may not have one defined “thing”, but I have an identity. I’m the girl whose laugh is heard from a mile away. I’m the girl with a Spongebob or Family Guy reference for any situation. I’m the girl who reads Ralph Waldo Emerson and wears dark lipstick on some days and wears sundresses to a picnic in the park on others. I’m the girl who writes poetry and fiction and magazine articles and just because I’m a writer doesn’t mean I’m only a writer.