By Krystal Sieben 
I’m 46 years old—almost 47—and I would say for about 40 years I’ve been very conscious of how my body looks.
Comments (“joking” of course) about my butt and its shape started easily by the time I was 10. In sixth grade, a boy I was friends with used to move down the lunch table feeling girls’ backs to see who wore a bra. I wore one, even though he told me once I didn’t need to.
A relative once asked me how much I weighed, then proudly stated, “I weigh a little less than that!” She was an adult, and I was in eighth grade.
In high school, my boyfriend told me (in front of my family) that his best friend noticed I was “getting a little chubby.”
On winter break from college, I arrived home excited to talk about my life, and the first thing my grandpa said to me was, “You gained a little weight.”
On vacation with a boyfriend in my 20s, we observed a woman wearing a thong bikini in Miami; he asked me (being totally genuine), “If you looked like that, would you wear that?”
These examples took me less than two minutes to recall. And I don’t think my experience is out of the realm of normal for most women my age. Honestly, as a middle-aged woman reflecting back on all of this, it actually really sucks.
But if there is a silver lining to an aging body (for me at least), it’s this: At 46 years old, I took a beach vacation with my best friends of 30 years. We put up our umbrella. We packed (as seasoned moms do, even when kids aren’t present) our sunscreen, healthy snacks, coconut water, and all the things. We headed to the most gorgeous beach in Destin, FL, with cool breezes and the clearest aqua water you’ve ever seen. It was perfect.
But you know what made perfect even better?
Not the family next to us. Not the person pushing the cart in an extremely flattering bikini. Not each other. Not society. Literally no one. Here we were, a bunch of ladies with bodies that had been stretched and pulled and chopped, from thyroidectomies to heart surgeries to C-sections and mastectomies. Scarred, literally and figuratively, by life in the most beautiful way. And finally, in middle age…swimming at the beach and not considering what other people thought of our bodies. No one cared how we looked—and maybe (despite the comments) they never really did.
Maybe we have realized through all the trials and triumphs of our bodies that at our age, we have the freedom not to care. The life experience to know our worth isn’t tied to having a “perfect” body, and the mindset to know spending even a minute at that beautiful beach worried about what some stranger might think—it just doesn’t make sense anymore.
At 46 years old, I finally found the love for my body to stop the negative messaging, to tune out the brainwashing women have endured for decades, and to realize anyone thinking about my fortysomething body has bigger problems than my C-section scar.
It’s joyful to be at the age where I can happily get in the water—and not worry about the comments.
by Ashli Brehm 
by Michelle Koch 
