[Images in this post contain gifted items]
It’s been a bad week for body love / confidence / neutrality.
It’s been a bad week for body love / confidence / neutrality.
Adele’s weight loss making her an (unwilling) tabloid darling, BMI in healthcare eternally in the spotlight, trolls desecrating the memory of a wonderful woman based on purely her body size; If you’re a fat woman, its very difficult to switch off from your physicality right now.
Even amongst the plus size world, we see instagram pages full of
“I wish my body was like yours,”
“Goals,”
“Inspiration”
My friends, you are replacing one thankless task with another.
You are setting out to achieve something that only the reorganisation of your body organs and skeleton will achieve. Which I hear is pretty tricky.
Want the same body you had ten years ago?
I have interesting news for you: Skin changes, body shapes change. I have a completely different silhouette to the one I had in my twenties and no amount of sit ups is going to change that. You can’t cheat nature forever and I’m completely cool with it.
I’d love for my boobs to go out and up rather than across and down. If my bum used its mass to resemble a shelf rather than a reverse bum bag I’d be delighted. And more than anything, this tummy which I am told will only be flattened by strenuous efforts it has so far refused for 36 years, is the one area I focus on more than anything. And don’t get me started on my face...
Other fat women have all of this so surely I just need to *work at it* and *try harder*?
But I don’t. And I won’t.
Because the way I currently look is the way that someone who lives their life happily looks.
Someone who eats the food that fuels her body,
who is able to do the things she wants to do (pre-lockdown obvs),
who loves and is loved and
who really doesn’t usually have enough time on her hands to be dwelling on all of the things she doesn’t love about this.
And even if the first two points are out of the window. I would still be worthy of point three.
Because that’s how having our own life works.
The tabloids are trash.
Medical guidelines without any foundation are trash.
Trolls are trash.
And yet, the Fat = Bad rhetoric can kill.
Every time you like a “this is me after quarantine” meme, you’re not only potentially smashing someone’s self respect for a day, you’re also contributing to a society desperate for scapegoats, and we all know how that goes.
Just because the world is burning, doesn’t mean we have to sit and take it.
Just because the world is burning, doesn’t mean we have to sit and take it.
Take care of yourself, respect others and use this time to think about what’s important to you.
For me, it’s family, sanity and getting out the other side of all of this.
Em x
This post was written during UK lockdown due to COVID-19, 2020
