This is another unusual post--I think unemployment is making me throw caution to the wind

In the last six months, I've lost a bit of weight, and suddenly everyone is commenting on my figure, and it's all meant to be kind and complimentary, but it doesn't feel that way. In truth, it only makes me more self-conscious and so I just sort-of dodge the comment, or quickly avert it by changing subjects. Even just  recently, my grandfather tried to compliment me by telling me it look "like [I've] lost weight." But it really just made me bitter and angry. Who is he to discuss my body and make judgments about it?! And afterward, it made me look back and realize that he's only one of many that have made me furious with such remarks: my mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, grandmother--even my grandfather. And I haven't even ventured to mention my friends from various periods of my life--and at one point, even a teacher. It seems like since about the fifth grade, everyone else has been judging my body but me. I was barely even beginning to look in the mirror, and already everyone around me was telling  me what I should see there.

I don't know when I became unhealthy. I don't know at what point I will be healthy again. The truth is that I never learned to judge my body because everyone else has always just done it for me. In my mind, I looked the same when I was twelve as I did at twenty. I don't honestly think I've ever been able to accurately evaluate my appearance in a mirror because I've always just been told what I see. So I think for a long time, I just quit looking. I wanted everyone to stop judging me by my face and body, and I wanted to force them to evaluate my heart and mind instead.

When my grandfather said those words recently, it finally hit me. I was furious, because in a sick sort-of way, it wasn't a compliment--it was a declaration of possession. Commenting on my body has an underlying implication that the one doing the commenting has a dominance and a right to judgment of my body. For my whole life, regardless  of what good or compliment or constructive criticism everyone thought they were paying me--or still are--what they've really been doing is asserting their authority and ownership over my body. For the last decade, my body has belonged to nearly everyone but me.

Here's a little note to the world:

I want it back.

I want it back, because it shouldn't be theirs! It shouldn't even be MINE. If my body is indeed a temple for the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), then everyone else DEFINITELY shouldn't have any kind of right to declare indirect ownership over it, because my faith in Christ has already consecrated it to my heavenly Father. I should be freed to be nothing but a caretaker.

Girls need to have responsibility and ownership of their own bodies, and that means stopping the social commentary about figures. That means we need to quit complimenting each other's bodies, and calling out our mother's, daughter's, and sister's figures. We need to encourage each other to be healthy, but we need to stop proliferating the psychological warfare we're waging with our bodies. When we pet or punch each other's egos about our weight, no one is really winning. We're only reinforcing a male-dominated society in which female worth is bound to body image. We're reinforcing the idea that our bodies belong to others--and not to the God that they were designed by.