The hidden operating costs of having a body

I sat down to write a blog post about body gratitude. After stumbling into what felt like a genuine sense of appreciation for my body recently, I thought I had a new, edgy idea that might help other disabled folks access the elusive concept sans the toxic positivity usually used to lead us to the conclusion that our bodies aren't actually as bad as we thought they were. Since I didn't have to repeat a bunch of affirmations in the mirror or work particularly hard to find this specific, new-to-me brand of comfort in my body, I thought, "I have to share this."

In the process of writing, though, I think I inadvertently discovered something missing from the way body image is talked about both colloquially and clinically. For years, both as someone recovering from an eating disorder and as a therapist, I heard body image described in ways that felt frustratingly incomplete:

• Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions about our bodies

• Whether we like how we look

• How well we tolerate our reflections

• The ability to challenge distorted beliefs about the body

• Capacity to notice beauty outside conventional standards

• Appreciation for what our bodies can do for us instead of how they look

Helpful for some people? Absolutely. Superficial and ableist in some contexts? Yeah. None of these definitions of "body image" ever answered this one question I've been getting stuck on since day one in recovery, though: What even is a "good" relationship with your body?

Does it mean liking what you see in the mirror? Not thinking about your appearance at all? Feeling beautiful, neutral, grateful? If I wasn't supposed to define my worth by my appearance, why did improving body image still seem to revolve around changing how I felt about it? The body gratitude exercises never landed for me, either.

I was encouraged to find things I liked about how I looked or to appreciate my body because it allowed me to breathe, hug people, or experience the world. I understand why those exercises resonate for many people, but they left me feeling disconnected, and I figured I could not be the only one.

I remember the shame that overtook me the first and last time I used a scripted body gratitude meditation as facilitator of a therapy group. A handful of clients far more versed in disability politics than I was at the time were in attendance, and I watched them make eye contact as I instructed them to put their hands on their heart, imagine themselves relaxing at the beach, sinking their feet into the sand, and thanking their legs for carrying them there. The discussion afterwards shifted my lens 180 degrees: "What about wheelchair users? Do they just have to find some alternative compensatory good-enough thing to be grateful for?" The same goes utilizing any specific feature of one's body as a springboard for positive emotions toward it; it makes the feelings conditional upon that feature. It makes us beholden to our privilege, and it eliminates wiggle room for our bodies to change without losing value. And they will change. Fearing them changing, as I imagine the majority of people reading this can attest to, is a major barrier to moving forward in eating disorder recovery. So if I'm grateful for my body only as it is right now, I am losing more than just hair or height or clear skin as I inevitably age or become otherwise disabled. I am losing self-worth. The stakes go up, and the pain of loss becomes unimaginable, something to fight off. Sounds kind of counterproductive to recovery, doesn't it?

Sometimes there genuinely wasn't anything about my appearance that felt accessible to appreciate, anyway. Eventually I stopped trying to force gratitude. Then one morning while brushing my hair, it occurred to me that I almost never have to think about my hair. Its texture allows it to look its best when air dried. I rarely feel a need or desire to style it. I don't have to buy any products. It takes care of itself, for the most part, and I get to put the executive functioning energy that might otherwise go into my hair into something that does require more from me.

The capacity to engage in mundane tasks like brushing one's hair is infamously finite for many neurodivergent folks. So are other energetic resources, like tolerating sensory input and communicating well enough to maintain friendships. Every recurring task competes for what remains of limited capacity. My hair, in asking very little of me, leaves more of those resources available for the parts of my life and of my body that don't give me the luxury of choice.

At first, I thought this was the story. I started noticing other places where my body happened to require relatively little maintenance. My skin doesn't demand an elaborate routine, and I don't sweat very much. Even if I did, my sense of smell is hyposensitive, so I am unbothered by my own odor for longer periods than average, and therefore the burdensome task of showering isn't very urgent for me. My visual hyposensitivity means I rarely notice others' makeup or manicures, and thus I've never felt a sense of pressure to engage in those grooming routines as part of my mask. None of these qualities make my body better than anyone else's. They simply mean there are a handful of recurring tasks my body doesn't ask me to spend energy on. Where do I put the energy instead? Remembering medications. Feeding myself consistently. Accommodating chronic stress. Doing all the invisible work that comes with living in this particular body.

The more I reflected on that moment with my hairbrush, the more I realized my gratitude had almost nothing to do with my hair itself. It had to do with maintenance. More specifically, with the fact that every body has its own unique operating costs.

Some operating costs are measured in time; some in money; some in physical energy; some in executive functioning; some in planning; some in grief. Some bodies require very little maintenance in one area and enormous amounts in another. Some require constant medical attention. Some require sensory accommodations. Some require mobility aids, insurance appeals, hormone management, physical therapy, specialized diets, incontinence products, menstruation management, caregiving, inaccessible buildings, symptom tracking, recovery time, or endless appointments. More marginalized bodies pay a premium in the form of discomfort or hyper-vigilance in the experience of being perceived. Others carry the operating costs of beauty standards, racism, gendered expectations, poverty, aging, or simply trying to exist in a largely incompatible world. The social operating cost of fatness in a sea of weight stigma racks up a big energy bill, while those with thin privilege get a discount: navigating weight stigma, strategizing to mitigate discrimination in healthcare, shopping in limited clothing sections, figuring out how to respond to strangers' comments on your food, deciding whether it's worth it to fight back against blame for medical symptoms. With that in mind, it's likely that many people who want a smaller body actually want to lower their operating costs, and when people say they hate their body, they may actually hate the workload attached to existing in it.

None of this reflects the body's worth. If I own a business that brings in the same revenue as my friend's business, but I pay higher office rent than they do, I have to make up the difference by cutting costs somewhere else, or my business will be less valuable than theirs. Bodies don't have objective metrics of worth like money, and chasing culturally imposed metrics (e.g. the 1-10 aesthetic attractiveness rating scale, whether or not you have a preventable illness as a marker of your morality, a "are you MAGA presenting?" internet quiz on what your fashion and makeup choices say about your political ideology) is not only a waste of your time but a great way to develop an eating disorder if you haven't already.

Rather than worth, your body's operating costs merely reflect the price you pay to live in it and how much capacity you have left over to put toward anything "extra" or nonessential. Some cost inequities from body to body are rooted in social injustice and require large-scale activism to challenge; some are an arbitrary luck of the draw.

The more I sat with this idea, the more I wondered whether we sometimes misunderstand what we're calling "body image." I wonder how often what feels like body dissatisfaction isn't primarily about appearance at all. I wonder how often it's about the relentless labor of having a body in a culture that teaches us bodies should be efficient, that bodies...

• shouldn't interrupt work

• shouldn't need too much sleep

• shouldn't require accommodations

• shouldn't need expensive healthcare

• shouldn't weigh more than the BMI chart says

• shouldn't show signs of aging

• shouldn't ask for help

• shouldn't slow us down

The ideal body we're sold is more than just attractive; it's frictionless. It's superhuman. Of course many of us end up frustrated with bodies that refuse to behave in this impossible way. A belief that needing care is a problem to solve rather than a reality to work with is a setup to develop either debilitating hyper-independence or equally debilitating shame about the perceived failure to "achieve" that independence. It's a no-win situation, even for those with more able-bodied privilege.

This realization also prompted me to rethink the body gratitude story I thought I was writing. If someone reads about my low-maintenance hair while living with chronic pain, severe fatigue, paralysis, in the midst of cancer treatment, a body whose operating costs are extraordinarily high, I don't want the takeaway to be, "Well, I guess my body has nothing to offer me." What I learned was not that every body contains hidden efficiencies waiting to be discovered. It was that I had been evaluating my body through the lens of efficiency without even realizing it.

Whether your body's operating costs are low, high, or constantly changing, they don't determine its value. They don't determine whether you've succeeded at living in your body well enough. They don't determine whether your relationship with your body is a healthy one. Body image has never been about appearance alone. The stories we tell ourselves about what our bodies are allowed to ask of us seem like much more useful things to reflect on and work toward shifting than whether we like what we see in the mirror.