002 Reading the Body Beyond Appearance

We live in a world that teaches us how to look well long before it teaches us how to be well.

There are endless ways to soften the signal.
To disguise fatigue.
To mask inflammation.
To manufacture vitality.

Hair extensions.
Injectables.
Surgical reshaping.
Filters, lighting, angles, timing.

None of this is inherently wrong.
It’s simply revealing.

Because when the internal environment is struggling, the instinct isn’t to investigate — it’s to cover. To compensate. To manage the surface.

That’s where my obsession began — not just with appearance, but with the feeling that my body wasn’t responding the way it should.

I couldn’t lose weight.
My body felt swollen and reactive.
My skin was inflamed.
My hair thinned.
I looked dull instead of radiant.

And yet, the story assigned to me was a familiar one:
She’s mentally ill. She just wants to be skinny.

That label didn’t just misunderstand me —
it ended the conversation entirely.

What it erased was the reality underneath. Not a desire to be smaller, but a desperation to look healthy. To glow. To feel like my body was functioning the way it was meant to.

Because the visible symptoms were the only ones people knew how to name, they became the focus.
Weight.
Skin.
Hair.
The surface.

We don’t long for digestive capacity or detox resilience — even though those are what actually govern vitality. We long for what we can see.

Not because those signals are superficial —
but because they’re legible.

This is where the health industry and the marketing world quietly converge.

We are sold solutions to our desires while our discomfort is simultaneously reinforced. Products, procedures, protocols — all promising confidence, beauty, control — while subtly reminding us that we are not enough as we are.

The instruction is consistent:
Fix what’s visible.
Improve what’s marketable.
Manage the appearance.

What’s rarely taught is how to read the body as a system.

After decades of paying attention — to my own body and thousands of others — patterns become unmistakable. I can often see the story before it’s spoken. Diet history. Digestive capacity. Detox burden. Stress load. Training mismatches.

Not because bodies are simple —
but because they are honest.

The external body is not the problem.
It’s the record.

When the internal work is done — genuinely done — something shifts. The need to manage the surface softens. The body begins to express health rather than perform it. Radiance becomes a by-product, not a pursuit.

The world that profits from dissatisfaction will not change because of awareness alone. It is too well designed for that.

But what can change is how you feel inside it.

When you understand your body, the noise loosens its grip.
The marketing lands differently.
Comparison dulls.
Urgency fades.

Not because you’ve opted out of the world —
but because you’ve stopped outsourcing your sense of wellbeing to it.

And that, quietly, changes everything.

Jenna — The Body Column