Yesterday I was reflecting on how being raised JW has effected my body image. I remembered an assembly talk from a couple of years ago. The speaker was doing your normal talk about modesty in dress. He was saying how women need to think about how they are dressing not just because they don't want to "stumble" their brothers but because the demons take pleasure in looking at women!! Why after all, their first sin was looking at women and taking human wives! So now I had this in my brain that if you dressed seductively at ALL there were DEMONS looking at you! Wow,what better way to get women to wear mumus than an argument like that!
So now after being mentally free for 2 years I am connecting the dots about how I view myself. As a witness you should look nice but not TOO nice. I've realised that my whole M.O. was to just blend in to whatever crowd I was in, at meetings or at school. Attention from the opposite sex was bad. At school, you didn't want worldly guys interested in you because you couldn't date them anyway, and at meetings you didn't want to "stumble" anyone. So blending in, not standing out too much, thats how I operated. It didn't help that I was a 5'10 tall skinny blonde.
Fast forward to now. After marrying I gained weight and was considered a healthy weight (as a teenager was underweight naturally). But as the years passed, I got a bit heavier. I wanted to do something about it but for some reason I just didn't CARE enough. Had a baby, now I am just about 15 pounds over weight. But I want to tone up and build strength while looking more fit. I haven't been able to get serious about it though and I think I have just figured out why, due to reasons stated above. If I work out and get fit I want to be able to show it off! Which was something I couldn't do while a witness without feeling guilt! And also I wouldn't be blending in. Now that I'm out, I feel like I want to stand out a little bit more and if I put in the work on myself I want to be able to flaunt it a little bit!!
Did anyone else feel this way when they were JWs? How do you feel they affected your self image?