Your Body Isn’t the Problem, Your Strategy Is

“I can’t dress the way I want to until my body changes.”

That is one of the most painful lies women carry around with them, and one that’s often used as an excuse not to dress how they really want. If you’re one of them, it’s time to say, “No” and figure out how to accept, love, and embrace what you’ve got. You don’t need to change your body; you just need to change your rules.

In this episode of The Visibility Shift, you’ll learn the necessary mindset shifts that need to happen if you want to embody a magnetic personal style. You’ll discover how the realities of retail make for a frustrating shopping experience, how you hold yourself back and limit your style and leadership potential, and how a perspective shift on how to dress your body will give you the confidence you’re looking for.

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2:47 – The prevalence of body image issues, even among those with “ideal” bodies

5:32 – What you might not have realized about the “perfect” body type in the media

9:16 – Three ways the retail environment makes it difficult for you to love your body

15:34 – How a rigid or limiting mindset with your style impacts your leadership potential

19:21 – How a rigid or limiting mindset with your style affects the way you show up energetically

21:11 – The power of learning to work with your body to create balance and proportion for genuine confidence

25:20 – A few things to remind yourself that your body isn’t the enemy

Mentioned In Your Body Isn’t the Problem, Your Strategy Is

The Hidden Rules Holding You Back (and How to Break Them)

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Full Transcript

Welcome to The Visibility Shift, the podcast where style becomes your most powerful strategy for being seen, standing out, and leading boldly. I'm Ellie Steinbrink, stylist and personal brand coach, and if you've ever thought, "My style just isn't working anymore," take this as your sign. You're ready for your next level. And instead of launching into a panicked shopping spree, what you really need is a strategy. A style strategy that reflects where you're headed, not who you used to be or who you think you need to be to fit in.

Because when your style aligns with your brand and your vision, everything shifts. You lead with more presence, you attract the right opportunities and clients, and you fully step into the woman you're becoming. Because showing up as yourself, that's the most strategic thing you can do. Now let's get visible.

Welcome back to another episode of The Visibility Shift podcast. Over the years, I've worked with every body type imaginable, and one thing is pretty darn clear. No woman loves, absolutely loves her body. There's at least something about her body that she doesn't love or prefer, and that includes women whose body that society has deemed as being perfect or ideal.

The reality is here that we're all struggling with what we've got. And if you're in the same boat as me, I'm in my mid 40s and I'm going through perimenopause, it seems like our bodies are changing daily. So what we once knew now seems like a whole new landscape to deal with.

Here's the deal. The difference between the women who make a successful transformation and those whose brands become really magnetic and those who stay stuck, those are the women who choose to see their bodies differently. To choose to see it in a more expansive lens, those are the ones that make the big shifts.

This episode, what we're going to talk about is the necessary mindset shifts that need to happen if you want to embody a magnetic personal style. Guys, this is something we just can't ignore, okay? Body insecurities aren't the thing that are going to make you attractive, at least in the energetic sense. We're going to talk about the ways we hold ourselves back and ultimately limit our style potential and our leadership potential.

We're going to talk about the realities of our retail environment, which make it very easy to feel frustrated while shopping. And finally, I'm going to leave you with a new perspective on how to dress your body in a way that will ultimately give you the confidence you're looking for. All right, so how did we even get here? You know, even the most successful, confident women that I know, this includes clients and otherwise, and women that I see on stage that look like they're smashing it, we all carry around body image issues.

Let's just normalize this fact, okay? Because I think it's easy for us to look at someone who we think has got it all together and we think, "Oh, they must not deal with this like I do. They must not struggle shopping like I do. They must not look in the mirror and feel like they're criticizing every part of their body."

It's just not true. The truth is that we're walking around with these internalized narratives and beliefs and stories that are just not true. Someone who's petite, that's a problem.

Someone who doesn't like their arms, that's a problem. Now I can't show my arms. Beliefs and rules around what we can or can't wear as we go into different roles or as we go into different ages.

And what I've seen specifically when I'm working with my clients, especially during the phase where we're defining a new style vision for ourself, the part where we finally just kind of get honest with what do I even like? What do I want for my style? If I could imagine the best thing for me and the woman that I'm becoming, what would that even look like? I see these rules and these limiting beliefs about our bodies sneak their way in.

What that looks like is they'll put some things on the Pinterest board for inspiration and I'll be asking them to dream. And then when I work with them to talk through what they've put onto their Pinterest board, they'll say things like, "Well, you know, I love this style, but obviously I don't look like that woman. So I probably can't pull this off."

I mean, have you ever done this to yourself? Like you pin something on Pinterest and you're like, "That, that is my style. When I think about the next level version of myself, it's right there, but you know, it's probably not going to work for me."

But what I want you guys to know is these beliefs and rules that we've collected along the way, and let me remind you, most of us are carrying a lot of them, whether we realize it or not, these aren't style truths.

It's conditioning that we've inherited from our culture, our media, from our moms, from our aunts, from our families, from all sorts of experiences, and even from our workplaces. Remember in the episode where I talked about the rules and beliefs about style and our bodies that are holding you back? Well, guess what? Our bodies is a huge category where I see these rules and beliefs coming from. But when we think about it, let's get back down to the truths and the facts, okay? When we look at body types over the years, I'm talking about women, specifically about the idealized body types in media, I don't know if you've ever stopped to think about this, but those body types change about every decade.

There's a different body type that gets idealized for the moment. So if you were around in the 60s, I wasn't, but obviously I know of those icons, Twiggy was it. So these lanky, skinny, straight bodies. And then we go into more recent times when I grew up. I grew up in an era of supermodels in the 90s, like Cindy Crawford. You know how these hourglass shapes, these really defined shoulders. They were very tall.

And then go into present day and we've got this curviness that's being really celebrated, like in the example of the Kardashians. We talk about body image all the time, okay? But have we ever stopped to think that keeping up with whatever is the current idealized body image of the moment is just not realistic? When we start to think about all of us have these rules that we've collected and they really are shaping our choices and decisions slowly over the years.

For me, I'll just say, you know, you've maybe even heard me talk about on this podcast about at an early age when I was 14, I had a couple of experiences that led me to make the decision that I was no longer going to wear short skirts or short dresses because I made a belief around that time that showing my legs was a distraction to my skills and my talent and my expertise.

Maybe you don't know this about me, but I am very small-chested and I've seen that as a difficulty and a problem my whole life. I've painted that as a major distraction when it comes to creating the ideal style for myself. I also had things from my childhood both from my mom and just my family and also the fact that I grew up in a very religious household that being really sexy with your body is definitely not okay in the form of like showing lots of things.

So I just want you to know, I'm right here along with you, but also that the mirrors we have are all distorted. Meaning when you look at yourself in the mirror, it's a distorted view of yourself. In fact, this just happened to me last week when I was on a business trip and I was getting some content filmed and I've talked about this.

I really love the outfit I was wearing. I was feeling very good in my body, but still, still I am cursed like the rest of us. I saw that video, I saw those pictures and immediately started to pick apart things.

It's a curse, and it's something we have to work against every single day. But one of the things I like doing for my clients, it's a complete joy for me, is I like to become a new mirror for them in which to see their bodies. Not from a place of judgment but a place of possibility.

As I'm talking, I want you to be thinking about maybe examples from your own life. What's one rule you're following about your body that was passed down or given to you or you convinced yourself of along the way? I want you to ask yourself, first of all, is that even true? Is that belief or rule that you've made up about your body, is it even true? And secondly, how does that limit you in your style choices now? I want to talk about why do we even continue to struggle with these beliefs? Yes, it's being reinforced culturally. In addition to that, we live in a retail environment which makes it even more difficult to change our beliefs and to shift ourselves in a new direction.

There are really three things that I see happening in a retail environment and in our world that make it especially difficult to just love and accept our bodies and embrace what we have. One would be that the fact that sizing is not standardized. Man, I struggle with this myself and what that looks like.

Just this past weekend, I went into Banana Republic and I grabbed my normal size. I tried it on and I was swimming, swimming in this. This was not like an oversized billowy kind of dress.

This was supposed to be a fitted dress. I was swimming in it. Just a week earlier, I had ordered something from Sézane, which is a European brand, and ordered my normal size.

I could not zip it up. I could not zip up the pants over my butt and my stomach. We need to understand that retailers are all playing this dumb little game where they're changing sizes to make us feel better or feel worse.

I don't know. There are tons of conversation. This is a whole different podcast about why retailers are doing this with our sizing. It is so confusing. When I'm shopping with clients and we're shopping in a new brand, I often will encourage them just to say, listen, we're going to do our best here. We're looking at the size charts.

We're butting it up against your measurements. We're going to make our best guess, but we really got to get away from putting all of our confidence and our security and our comfort into what size we are. We just got to realize that it means nothing.

It really does. It means absolutely nothing, but we've made it to believe something.

The second reason why it makes it so damn frustrating in the retail environment to just kind of love and accept what we got, it is really impossible for manufacturers of clothes to create a set of clothes that are going to work for every one of our unique bodies.

Here's where, if you've heard me talk about tailoring, that's why I am such a big proponent of tailoring, because to expect that you're going to be able to walk into a store and try on a garment that's going to fit your body perfectly is just an unrealistic expectation. But what happens is we walk in and we try something on and it doesn't fit, we automatically, what? Who do we blame? We blame our bodies.

Okay, we got to stop this. When I've talked about this before, I've had women come up to me and say, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to tell my daughter about this because this is something they need to know." So please, if you don't do anything else from this episode, go and tell a young girl or a daughter in your life that the retailers just simply can't create garments to match all of our unique body types.

It's just not possible. And this is the mantra I would have you repeat to yourself. Your body isn't the problem. The clothes are the problem. In fact, in my try-on sessions with clients, if we try something on and they're like, we're both like, "Wow, that is not great," I'll just say something flippantly like, "Well, great. Thanks for that. No, thank you." We don't make it about us, but we do, don't we?

The goal is to not make it about us. Make it about the clothes. The sizing is a part of this problem too, but this is a separate problem. Your body isn't the problem. The clothes are the problem. Remember that. Write it down.

The third reason why we continue to struggle to love and accept our bodies in the retail environment that we are in is that there are trends constantly coming out. And some of these trends are going to work for your unique body type. Let's not even talk about trends in the relation to personal style.

That's a different topic. But there are going to be trends that come out that just work for your body or they don't. But what do we do? The trends come out and we want to fit in and be current.

We want to be relevant. And so now we're putting it on our bodies whether or not it works for us or not. And we try to shift shape our body into something that doesn't work.

So no wonder we're going to feel horrible. One of the first times this realization came to me was, I mean, it was probably five years ago when the higher rises started to come out. And I was like, "Okay, I'm going to try this."

And honestly, I'm going to just say very blatantly, I didn't know how big of a deal rises were in pants until this happened. So I started to play around, you know, granted, it was a trend, but I started playing around, and I was like, "Wow, the higher rise that I have, this really balances out my body." I have a very long torso. And when I put on a higher rise, that creates more proportion on my body top to bottom. I didn't know that.

Fast forward to today, and what are we seeing in the marketplace? We're seeing the low, the low slung, baggy jeans, we're seeing the mid rises, the low rises, and I'm like, "Heck no. That's not going to work for me. And that's not going to work for my body. So I'm not even going to try," because I know if I go in there and give it a shot, that I'm just going to end up feeling worse about my body because that is not suited for my unique body. I am okay with that.

I've learned now—and this is what I do in my services and in the Visibility Edit—you're going to learn what works and what, I don't know if I want to say doesn't work, but what just works against you, I guess.

I think that talks about the frustration, right? The reason I just want you to have some comfort in why you're feeling frustrated, why you feel like you do when you walk into a store, and you just leave the dressing room feeling like it's a total failure, this is a part of the problem. And the more you can be aware of it, and the more you can combat against it in the ways I just shared, the better off you will be.

I want to round out this conversation to talk about what's the bigger impact here? I'm really not here to convince you that your body's okay. That's work you're going to have to do. It's work that I've had to do.

But in my line of work, where I see this conversation about how you feel about your body, how you dress your body, the impact it has is how we actually show up energetically as leaders. Leaders in our life and leaders in our business. And I really see there are two major impacts here that can either impact you positively in how you show up, or negatively in how you show up.

Okay, so the first concept of how you see your body and how it relates to your leadership is whether you are adopting a rigid or limiting mindset or whether you're adopting an expansive mindset. I mean, I know we've heard this before, probably from leadership, training, coaching, various different things in our life, this idea between rigid and expansive thinking, well, the same is true with your style.

What embodying more rigid and limiting thinking in relation to your style means is instead of reaching for things that would maybe light us up or make us feel our most powerful and magnetic selves, we have a million excuses for why that can't work. And so we don't even try. That's a limiting mindset.

Another limiting mindset is that I will be my most stylish, magnetic self when I'm at a certain size, which means that until I get to that certain size, I'm just going to kind of like hide my body. I'm going to hide myself. I might wear darker clothes instead of more colorful, bright things that I like.

I might wear looser fits. And I'm just going to say right now, how is it possible for you to rise and be your most magnetic self when you are hiding yourself in this way or believing that you're not good enough to want the things you want or achieve the things you want until you're a certain size? It's just not a good vibe. It really isn't.

And I think the worst thing of all when it comes to like limiting versus an expansive mindset is all of these rules and beliefs we've accumulated about our bodies over the years really leads to a limitation of options. When I first start working with women, it's common for them to say, start putting their rules out there like, "Well, I don't want to show my arms and my belly has changed because of all these pregnancies. And now my body is changing through perimenopause."

And I'm like, "Okay, so what do we got to work with then here?" And for those of you listening who may be my clients, hello, I love you. You know, I love you. We got to just kind of laugh at ourselves in this moment, right? Because we all do this to ourselves.

We all put so many limits on what could be that we can't even open ourselves up to something bigger, to something better. And I got to tell you, it's really difficult to create a personal style when all we think about are the things that are not possible for us. Do you see the difference? And you guys, I'm putting myself right here with you in this same category.

I'm right here with you. I'm just like working through this like the rest of you, but it's something you got to be committed to. This rigid versus expansive mindset is a huge impact on your leadership.

It obviously has, as I described, impact on your style, but can you see how a rigid mindset in your style can lead to a rigid mindset also in how you lead? Okay, so the second major impact I see this having, our beliefs about our body, is that it can really have an impact on your energy and how you show up. I mean, just think about the times when maybe you wore something that made you feel really self-conscious. Like maybe it's something you loved, but the last time you wore it, it worked great.

And now you're like, "Oh my gosh, I feel bloated or my body is changing. And the last time I wore it was fine, but now it's not." And you show up at this event, whether it's a meeting you're going to, whether it's a stage appearance, whether it's a networking event, how do you show up? What is your energy? Are you like standing tall? Are you introducing yourself? Are you in your body feeling good? No, you're probably like hunching over. You're probably fidgeting with it because you're uncomfortable. And this sort of fidgety hunching over is not a good vibe.

I think we've all seen both of these types of women at events we've been in. We've seen the women who are wearing something and it's like, the clothes are one and part of them. It's like they're not even thinking about it. They're just moving. They're flowing. Like, wow, they're just like so comfortable with themselves.

And then you've seen the women even on stage where they're tugging and pulling, they're fidgeting. You can tell they're uncomfortable. And I don't know about you, but I want to be the woman on stage or at a networking event where I just feel like I'm free flowing, like I'm in my body, like my body's not perfect, like nobody is, but I am owning it. Wow. I know. Let's take a deep breath because this is heavy. I get it.

And this is not something that is solved in a day, but it's something worth committing to working on. I really want you to think about instead of finding reasons why things can't work with your style or why you can't have what you have, what about opening your mind back up to what's possible and also opening up your mind to doing something different, trying something different. And this is, in fact, one of the things, you know, I teach with my one-to-one clients, but I'm going to be teaching in the Visibility Edit is to learn about your body type so that you can kind of expand your parameters about what's possible.

You will actually get practical tips for things you can try and do differently. It reminds me of one of my clients who we were working together after she had gone through multiple pregnancies and she was, you know, like her body wasn't the same as what it was when she was in her twenties or any of ours really, but she was really especially self-conscious about her waist.

And this particular client of mine had a traditional hourglass shape. You'll learn about that, what it is in the Visibility Edit if you join me. An hourglass shape is one in which you do want to define your waist.

So we're doing things like adding belts to things. We're finding dresses that naturally define the waist. We're tucking things in, we're getting our rise correct.

And when we first started doing the work, she was a little unsure. I remember her saying, "If I'm tucking in or adding a belt or wearing a dress that has ruching right there at my waist, is it actually going to work to highlight my belly as opposed to," I think her words were like, "minimize it or hide it," and what we realized through the process, because she was brave enough to try and think differently and step outside of what her old beliefs are and move forward in a new way, what she discovered is when she looked in the mirror, it was like she was looking at a whole new body. Like completely transformed her perspective of her body. And guess what? We didn't do a single thing to change her body.

We just changed what we put on it and how we styled it to make it work for her. That is the power I'm talking about. I hope this episode is helping you see where you're stuck and maybe where you need a little bit more freedom.

If you're holding back in your style because you don't believe it's possible with the body you have, you are limiting yourself. You don't need to love every part of your body, but you do need to learn how to work with it. And that's a skill.

And listen, our bodies may change daily. It kind of feels like that for me right now at this time in my life. When we learn how to dress our bodies to work with our bodies and not against it, everything changes.

And you're going to find that you will have more confidence as a result. And it's not confidence because it's a number on the scale, it's confidence because you like what you see in the mirror.

This has nothing to do with weight or size. And it's why I'm going to continue to talk about body types in my services, in my programs, here on the podcast, in my social. I know there are people who have went away from body types, but to me it's not about labeling people.

It's not about fitting people into a box. It's about data. Okay, I'm a daughter of an artist and I see clothes on your body as the way my mom used to think about balance and proportion in her paintings on the canvas.

It's the same in finding balance and proportion in interior design or floral design. This is data. This is science. It's a skill you can learn to create more proportion and balance on your body. It's a skill. Okay, this isn't about labels.

And when we continue to think of our body as the enemy, this does us no good towards a major style transformation and an up level in our life and in our business. It is going to hold you back. So as we close today, I want to leave you with a few major ideas you can hold on to or mantras maybe.

First of all, I want you to recognize where you're attached to rules or beliefs that are ultimately holding you back. The first step is awareness, guys. So if this is your first step right now, great. Check that off the list. Awareness.

Number two, stop believing that your body has to be perfect to achieve your style vision or that your body has to change to meet your style vision. It's just not true. I've known tons of women with "imperfect" bodies that are realizing their style dreams and realizing things they never thought possible because they're opening themselves up to a new way of thinking.

Number three, remember that we can so easily be sucked down by a system that makes it incredibly frustrating to shop. And here again, this is where I want you to remember, the clothes are the problem, my body is not the problem. And also get a tailor. Do it. Trust me.

Number four, the most magnetic women are the ones who walk into a room that are fully expressed in and in full acceptance, who know that maybe things could be better with their body, but are choosing to embrace where they at. They know how to work with what they've got. It's a skill you can build. They've learned the skill. You can learn it too.

And finally, just imagine the energy shift that could be waiting for you once you allow yourself the luxury of loving what you see in the mirror. When you stop waiting for your body to change or be different and you start changing how you see your body, that's when the real shift begins. If you are feeling like this episode really has hit home, struck a chord, and you're ready to set aside your old ways and start dressing from a place of alignment and expansiveness, not limitation and rigidity, the Visibility Edit is your next step.

It starts in September. It's an eight-week experience. And this is one of the major things we will talk about. You will learn about your body. You will learn how we don't need to change your body, but we can change how you see it and ultimately, how you show up because of that mindset shift. I would love for you to join me. There's a link in the show notes for you to apply to join. And with that, I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for joining me on The Visibility Shift. If something in today's episode made you pause, rethink, or gave you permission to stop playing small, it would mean so much to me if you'd leave a review at ratethispodcast.com/visibilityshift.

If you're ready to stop second-guessing and start showing up as the leader you are from the inside out, The Visibility Edit is where that shift begins. Head to elliesteinbrink.com to learn more and join the next round. Because the next version of you, she's not waiting for permission. She's waiting for you. Let's make it visible.