I Don't Want to Win at Having a Body

But from reality TV to Botox, the system is still very much alive. Some thoughts on hierarchy, comparison, and the quiet exhaustion of trying to measure up.

I don’t want to win at having a body.

This is a decision I’ve made many times over. When I chose to recover from a disordered relationship with food and exercise. When I stopped blaming my body every time I ended up in the hospital with another autoimmune condition. And now, in the quieter, daily ways I try to stay aligned with that decision. Because not fighting my body isn’t just a value—it’s an orientation. It shapes how I move through my life, how I make choices, how I want to exist in the world.

But it didn’t always feel that way. Looking back, disordered eating and exercise dependence essentially functioned as a daily competition with myself. Even when they felt “healthy.” Even when they gave me a sense of control or safety, however temporary that may have been.

The shift—the kind that feels more like an “AHHH” than an “aha”—came when I realized something deeply uncomfortable that I couldn’t unsee:

In fighting my own body, I was also participating in a system that requires everyone else’s bodies to be judged, ranked, and compared. So in fighting my own body, I was fighting bodies everywhere.

That realization was shaped, in many ways, by reading Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body Is Not an Apology, where she describes a body hierarchy—a cultural ladder we are taught to climb. At the top are the bodies most rewarded and protected. As you move down, bodies are increasingly scrutinized and marginalized.

It’s important to say that this hierarchy isn’t experienced evenly. The way our bodies are seen, treated, and valued is shaped by systems of privilege—race, size, ability, gender identity, and access all matter here. I’m aware that the ways I’ve moved through this system, and the choices available to me, are influenced by that. For many people, the consequences of this hierarchy are far more immediate and far more severe.

Most of us, consciously or not, have been trained to locate ourselves on that ladder. To ask: Where do I fall? Am I moving up? Am I falling behind?

Nature doesn’t compete, does it?

I believe with my whole being that we were never meant to spend our days trying to outrun, outperform, or out-restrict the people around us. And yet, so much of what we’re taught about bodies insists that this is exactly what we should be doing—that there is something to catch up to, something to get right, some version of ourselves that will finally earn a sense of arrival.

And you can see this everywhere.

In the early 2000s, shows like America’s Next Top Model and The Biggest Loser turned bodies into literal competitions—ranked, critiqued, and eliminated. They weren’t subtle about it. Today, the language has softened (maybe), but the structure is still there. Wellness culture reframes restriction as “balance.” Social media shows us filtered faces and shrinking bodies, all framed as personal choice, but moving in eerily similar directions.

You can see it during events like the Academy Awards, where conversations about art quickly become conversations about bodies—who “won” the red carpet, who looks “different,” who is “aging well.” And, as I’ve written about before, we see it in celebrity culture, too. Bodies that are getting smaller, sharper, and more controlled—plus, of course, the praise that follows. Sometimes it feels like we’re watching a kind of starvation competition unfold in real time.

But you’ve probably felt this much closer to home, too. Maybe it’s in the way your brain walks into a room before you do, quietly assessing where you stand. Or how you feel amongst friends discussing their weight loss, their latest food restriction, or strategies for fixing their wrinkles.

I was reminded of this recently when I posted a reel on Instagram and received a DM from a stranger informing me that my forehead was in dire need of Botox. (I’m a big eyebrow talker, always have been.) And listen, according to the beauty industry, they’re probably correct (alas, I will not be getting Botox).

But Botox isn’t even the point.

The point is the system that manufactures a “flaw,” sells us a solution, and makes us feel alone if we don’t comply. The system that says: this is something you should fix, because this is how you keep up.

Which is why I wrote this poem. Because I’m so tired of it all.

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Bodies are not contests.

not for who can shrink the fastest,
or who resists the cookie tray the longest.
not for who has the flattest stomach in the group photo,
or the smallest number on the tag inside their jeans.

not for who can “bounce back” the quickest,
or who earns the most praise for “discipline.”
not for who can walk farther without resting,
or who burns the most calories on their watch.

not for who ages the “slowest,”
or who hides their softness best.
not for who erases their wrinkles,
or stays the same size as they were on their wedding day.

not for who suffers more quietly,
or pretends hunger doesn’t ache.

you deserve to live in your body without shame or comparison.
because you were never meant to prove your worth against someone else’s.
because joy will never be something you compete for—it is something you create.
because your body is not a contest, scorecard, or performance.
it is your home.

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I want to be very clear that I’m not somehow healed from all of this. I have my moments. Plenty of them. But I don’t want my life shaped by an internal scoreboard. I don’t want my body—or my face—to become another project I’m managing in order to feel okay.

And that’s where something like Botox becomes more than just a neutral choice, at least for me. It’s not that I think Botox is inherently bad, or that anyone who gets it is doing something wrong (a large percentage of my friends get it, and I love them dearly). But for me, personally, it would feel like buying back into a competition I am not interested in. It would feel like agreeing, again, that my body is something to be evaluated and corrected in order to keep up. And I don’t want that.

So I keep returning to this:

I don’t want to win at having a body. And, honestly, is there any winning here? I think it’s just perpetual participation, which is…the point.

Most importantly, I want to be around people who aren’t trying to win either. People who are practicing—imperfectly—what it looks like to live in their bodies instead of constantly managing them. They make me feel safe, seen, held.

Because this system works best when we think we’re alone in it. When we assume everyone else is doing it “better,” and keeping up in ways we’re not. So rejecting this isn’t just an individual decision—it’s something we make more possible for each other. In the conversations we have, the things we choose not to comment on, the ways we let bodies—our own and other people’s—just exist without turning them into projects.

I don’t think there’s a clean, final moment where you step off the ladder and never look back. But it gets quieter when you’re not surrounded by people who are still trying to climb it—people who are more interested in living their lives than winning at having a body.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this.
Where do you notice it showing up in your own life?

And before you go, if this piece meant something to you, sharing it or tapping the like button is a small way to support this work. I’m really grateful you’re here.