The first time I ever heard winter arc, it tickled my brain like something funny. Two such polar words, pushed together, springing apart like repellent magnets. To me, winter consisted of staying desperately cocooned from the cold and wringing every last drop from the holiday spirit before the bitter trudge toward April.
But this concept was incessant. It dredged up the caveats of a calorie deficit and an intense gym grind. It fixed the cold, dark winter months as the perfect cover under which to build a summer body, made of skin taught over muscle and lean limbs to reveal in the spotlighting sun.
Each year now, I see the winter arc resurface from the ever-churning, insidious mechanism of diet culture, and it doesn’t seem so foreign. The Earth’s rotation induces trends that endorse a never-ending cycle of self-improvement. But I ask myself: why do we value self-improvement over self-compassion, especially in the desolate depression of winter?
The standards that drive the winter arc train us to ignore the inherent cozy, restful intimacy of winter, its ripe opportunity for indulgence and connection, its holidays that centralize food - rich and homemade to family tradition - for the sake of fullness, not for functionality. Doesn’t it feel ridiculous to demonize a steaming mug of hot chocolate for its lack of protein? Criminal to reduce a roast dinner to a subtraction from our fitness goals? Perhaps we should consider that these vehicles of love and pleasure are healthier than the “discipline” it takes to deprive oneself of them.
After all, our bodies were made to change with the seasons. To keep us warm, asleep when days are more dark than light, the world freezes over, and it’s almost painful to trudge down the sludge-slicked streets to our worldly obligations. It’s enough to simply survive - to be here with a bowl of something warm and the self-love of repose - though the winter arc tells us it’s not. Simply, the grind is not intuitive; it’s purposeful scarcity when our minds and bodies crave abundance and stillness. We all knew this by some natural, united understanding, before internet beauty standards forced us to forget it.
We treat the winter arc like a temporary lock-in, a means to an end. But, really, it never does end. It hardwires us toward progress and discipline, running on the message that we are inadequate, dismissing the joy of embracing comfort when we need it the most. Then, covertly, the trial of achieving the body becomes the anxiety of maintaining it. The beauty of nature’s inherent change - and being present within this rhythm - is lost when we’re ceaselessly striving to meet standards taught to us by someone else.
There is so much of winter to cherish, but we miss it when our eyes are fixed down at our bodies instead of up at the wonder surrounding us. A window-framed portrait of snow, a blanket thrown over goosebumped legs, steam rising from a Pyrex, peace; eclipsed by a voice urging us to be better, and the exhaustion of constantly becoming. But maybe - just maybe - the only arc we need is the curve of the boreal sky, and the self-acceptance to thank it that we are here, now, enough.
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