You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome back. I'm That Hormone Girl, Tracy Willingham. And today's rule is one that I'm actually living in real time.
Tracey:So I'm not looking back from like the healed side, the safe side. And today's topic is one that I think many of us, especially if you're in this midlife range right now are living. And that is ladies don't grieve the body they had, they just stop getting in the pictures. Yeah, that that rule hurts a little bit, right? So there's no announcement.
Tracey:You don't sit your family down and say, Hey, everybody, I've decided to remove myself from the visual record of our life. You just become the one kind of holding the camera. You start saying, Oh, I'll get one of you three. No, let me take it. You get in it.
Tracey:You review every picture before it goes anywhere. And then of course, we're still cropping, filtering and deleting. But then one day you realize there's a whole season of your life that happened and you're not in a single frame of it. So today we're talking about what you are actually doing when you take yourself out of the picture. And guess what?
Tracey:I am going to try to listen to my own strategies. So let's see if we can all do this together, friends. So let's jump into story time. Gather around, pull up your chair, top off your coffee, tea, or another drink, and let's get into this story. And as I said, I'm going to be honest with you today because I'm in this season right now.
Tracey:So I have gained weight in perimenopause. And it's right in that abdominal cursed zone where like some shirts don't want to cover it up. It's really awesome. And I've become a woman who reviews every photo before it's allowed to exist on social media. Definitely put filters on it.
Tracey:I crop it if I can. I make like 20 be taken. So maybe somewhere in there, there's one where I'm at a decent angle. And then eventually, what I started noticing is I'm taking fewer pictures all together. Because what I've realized is, is that picture never gets taken.
Tracey:I never have to decide what to do with it. Hence, putting it on social media, opening myself to comments and critiques. So we went to the movie theater not too long ago. They've been doing these awesome Broadway shows and so you can go and like you get to get up real close and it's just, it's been a blast. And so as we've been going to those, everybody in the group, someone was always like, hey, let's get a picture.
Tracey:And so you're in those recliner chairs, which are awesome for watching the movie, not awesome for photo taking when you're in your mid age. So, and no one stands up. It's just a phone held at a weird angle. So we all twist in our seats. So that's not even a flattering pose to begin with, no matter what size you are.
Tracey:And then it always comes out with my boobs looking huge and like they're way down below where they should be. And then it looks like I've smuggled my dog in around my abdominal area. It is the most unflattering pose. Yet we keep going back to the movie theater and nobody I think next time what I'm just gonna have to do is be like, if we want a photo, I'm it's before we sit down and I'm standing up so I can control the contortion of my body. It just isn't great.
Tracey:And so those keep happening. And of course, I can't deny people the right to put it on their social media. So it goes, it lives. And then I have to acknowledge that it exists out there outside of my control. But it didn't stop there.
Tracey:If it stopped there, I could even live with that. But then the shitty committee came out and was like, let's talk about the truth of this, Tracy. Let's talk about the truth behind this picture. And what's behind that is not anything pretty. So I start having thoughts, thanks to just, you know, being a woman, being hard on ourselves, also just some perimenopause mixed in.
Tracey:But I started thinking, I would understand if my husband might pick a younger, thinner woman. I get it. I don't know how he could be remotely attracted to me. After, and we just celebrated this, after twenty six years of marriage, and this man still showing up every year, definitely this is why he has to go. Like why?
Tracey:I wouldn't even make him stay with me. And then it moved in from there into, Tracy, you're a hormone educator, right? You are teaching this for a living. Women are looking to you for answers. But does your picture look like you're doing anything during this perimenopause?
Tracey:You are a fraud. And so there the shitty committee goes. I'm deleting the evidence so you can't see it. And then I started deciding that I'm replaceable, not only in my career, because I could just do what I'm doing today. Be honest with y'all, this is a journey.
Tracey:It's not a fix overnight. But two, I am preparing myself for someone to leave me over my looks, which, you know, that's probably another 20 podcasts. So here's what I have to sit with right now. I am missing my own life. Because not only is it about the pictures, it's about the shitty committee taking up space while I'm with friends in a movie theater.
Tracey:When I'm supposed to be enjoying Broadway, when I'm supposed to be thankful that I have the ability to go to these things, my body has the ability to show up, I'm not stuck at home, I'm not, you know, terminally ill. There's a stretch of memories that when I'm 60, 70, and I look back on, that's going to be an open gap. And there's just not going to be anything there to remind me that I lived. And I think we have to acknowledge in that though what I've had to acknowledge is grief is real. Grief is about loss.
Tracey:And a lot of times we always put grief around death, which hello, makes sense. But we don't really take the time to acknowledge grief as just loss, loss of jobs, loss of friends, loss of who you used to be, loss of feeling good and confident in who you are. And so some of this podcast today is, I miss the body I had. I miss getting dressed without wondering, is this comfortable? Does it fit?
Tracey:Do I look weird? I miss just throwing clothes on. And that grief is legitimate. We're not going to make fun of it or make light of it today. And we are allowed to have it.
Tracey:However, what is not legitimate, what is not okay is the sentence and the shitty committee that lives underneath it, which is until this body is fixed in a way that I think society finds pleasing and that I find pleasing myself, it does not get to exist or be on record or show that I was here. So let's look at the cost because there guys, there's a big cost, but it's not going to be what you think it is, I bet. I'm hoping I can surprise a few of you. So the first cost is the archive. So if you have kids, especially your kids are going to grow up with pictures of their dad and pictures of their friends, probably more pictures of the dog than you, and a series of photographs taken by a person who apparently was never there.
Tracey:And you were the most present adult in that house and in their life probably at the time, and you edited yourself out of the evidence of being there. The second cost is that avoidance feeds itself. So fewer pictures means less exposure and less exposure means that when you finally do see one, it hits you like a car accident. You're like, Woah, where did that come from? When did I sneak in there?
Tracey:So you start taking fewer and it gets worse. And then the third cost is the biggest one, and it isn't even about the photos or the memories at all. It's the withdrawal. It's withdrawing from your life. It's not getting in the pool with your kids.
Tracey:It's the beach trip where you volunteer to watch the bags. It's not dancing at your family or friend's wedding. It's stepping out of the group shot at your own birthday. It's throwing 12 people in front of you and you're now just a floating head. So the weight, the whatever is keeping you from taking pictures, It's not what's taking things from you.
Tracey:It's the hiding that's taking the things from us. And I mean, I have to say the body part plainly because I'm that hormone girl and this is my lane and I'm going to step into my truth and say this is what I'm going through as well. What happens to a woman's body in this transition has nothing to do with you're not disciplined, you didn't work out hard enough, you don't want it bad enough. As estrogen declines, where your body stores fat, it changes. So muscle mass declines with age unless you're actively working against it.
Tracey:Then when you have your sleep falling apart, disrupted sleep changes appetite regulation and stress hormones. So that makes your body change even more. So this is a documented expected occurrence, and it happens to nearly everyone with ovaries. So I want to just point out your body has entered a phase. And yes, there are so many things you can do.
Tracey:There's so many things we should be doing. Follow me over at That Hormone Girl if you want to hear about it. But also it's a journey, okay? So let's look at how deep this goes back in history because we did not invent this just starting in 2026. Okay?
Tracey:So women's bodies have always been treated as public property, something to be looked at, rated, corrected, and commented on by people who actually have no right or stake on that said body. The ideal body has been rewritten every single decade over the last hundred and hundreds of years. We were corseted and cinched. Then we went flat and boyish in the 20s. And then soft and curvy in the 50s.
Tracey:Then thin in the 60s. Then getting into aerobics in the 80s. And then the terrible 90s. Actually the 90s were great. We were wearing flannel and it kind of covered up things.
Tracey:I can't bash on the 90s. Then we went to curvy then it's back to thin again and here you are. So it's not even that society has one ideal body type. It changes. So like you could, we live several decades.
Tracey:So it's like, okay, I've got be skinny. Well, curvy's in. Like, is never just okay to be you. So if we look at why then, why does it move in all of this? Because if we choose one standard for a female, that standard, that stops selling things.
Tracey:So a standard that moves every ten years, well, that's just a fashion boom. That's an economic boom. Now go get the curvy jeans. Now go back to the skinny jeans. It's always something behind it, right, ladies?
Tracey:Like there's never, there's just never anything like, that's just like, Nope. There's no, there's no purpose behind this. It just exists. Then you add in the midlife woman, right? So now we're already being written out of what society calls glamorous and pretty.
Tracey:There is no ideal place for a 47 year old woman, let alone a body. And so then we start leaning into the word we all know, before. So who did this serve? Because it obviously is not serving us, ladies. A woman who is monitoring her own body is a woman whose attention is fully occupied, right?
Tracey:So she has less of it for her work. Her ambition might decrease. She can't really have some anger because you don't fit the mold. We don't want to listen to you or the world outside of her house even. She's spending money the entire time that we are trying to do what society will accept us for and be kind and gentle.
Tracey:So this, this is a strategy, friends, and it is a business model. And I have to be honest about who carries the worst of it because it is not distributed evenly in our society. Women in larger bodies, they get this earlier, they receive it with much more cruelty. And sometimes it even comes from medical professionals who should know better. So the rule lands on all of us.
Tracey:But please know it does not land equally. And we have to start by just acknowledging that out loud. So if this could be said, this is what it would sound like. I am allowed to miss my old body and still live in this one. I am allowed to be in the picture before I like the picture.
Tracey:I am allowed to have a body that is doing a normal thing. Let's say that one again. I am allowed to have a body that is doing a normal thing. I am allowed to call this grief instead of vanity. I am allowed to be in my family's memories at the size I actually am.
Tracey:And I am allowed to want to feel strong and well without making my presence conditional on it. So let's get into my section, ladies. This should piss you off. This should piss you off because you were handed a body doing precisely what a body does in a stage of life. And you were trained to experience that as your fault, your failure.
Tracey:It's not seen as a transition. It's not an honoring of this incredible ecosystem inside of us that is winding down from being in reproductive and other type things. It's not seen as this like second puberty where we're coming maybe into a different form of womanhood. No. And then you get to choose your own punishment, right?
Tracey:Like society doesn't even necessarily have to do anything. They plan it in our head, we take it from there. So you remove yourself from your life. You become the family photographer, and you hide it. And you might even use hard words on yourself like I'm not photogenic anymore.
Tracey:And the whole industry watching you do it is fine with it. Society is okay with it. A woman who is disappearing is a woman who's buying, right? Because she's buying to fix it. She wants the plan, the shapewear, the miracle.
Tracey:So your withdrawal, you're hiding from your life is actually somebody else's revenue. And the cherry on top is that you're doing it during the exact decade that we start stepping into being able and being comfortable and finding our voice, the most clear competence we've ever had in our life, the most beautiful range, and truly the biggest transition that should have the most life celebration behind it. So how do you know if this is you? This might be you if you always volunteer to take the picture, you have deleted a photo from a genuinely good day, you check the photo before you check the memory, you have a mental list of things you'll do when you lose weight, You've skipped the water, the dancing or the group shot. You've apologized to everyone for how you look at a picture before anyone else even had a chance to see it.
Tracey:So please hear me again, In case you didn't know earlier, this is not vanity. You are not shallow. You are a woman who was taught that her presence was conditional. So this week, here's how I want you to take care of yourself. Get in one picture and leave it alone.
Tracey:I'll do the same, okay? I will do the same. If I'm going to ask you to do it, I should do it myself. So don't crop it, don't filter it, don't delete it. You don't have to post it and you don't have to like it.
Tracey:All we want to do is just let it exist. And then notice what actually happens. Because I promise you the thing you're bracing for does not come. What comes is a picture of you at the movies with your people. And if this is heavier than photos, if the flatness and the self talk are running all day long, That is really worth a real conversation with someone licensed.
Tracey:And I mean, this is a hormone conversation. Not all of my podcasts are based around that hormone girl, but this one truly is. And so sometimes having the science and the power of the words to understand what's happening to you, that can help because there's a lot going on. Your sleep, your mood, your body, everything is changing all together in this season that is a hard ass decade, right? And they feed on each other.
Tracey:Like if we had all of these individually, we probably could be like, I got it. But we're dumping it all in the pot. So if I can help support you through hormone conversations, come over to that hormone girl and let me help you work through this time. Because here's what we know now. What your body is doing is not a betrayal, right?
Tracey:We're going to look at it as a transition. Missing the body you had is not vanity. It's grief. And it's grief that gets to be named out loud. And you do not have to like the picture to belong in it.
Tracey:And your family does not want nor need a smaller version of you in the album. What they need is they need you. They need your presence. They need your memories inside those moments. And the woman who stays in the frame, the woman who lets the photo exist, the woman who refuses to erase herself while she waits to become, quotation marks, acceptable, that's the most unladylike thing of all.
Tracey:Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice, and help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at That Hormone Girl. Until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.