How I Learned to Hate My Body
My earliest memory of value being placed on body size came in 3rd grade. I was on the playground with friends. We were on the teeter-totters and we were declaring our weight to one another (why do 3rd graders even know how much they weigh?).
No one made fun of me, but in my head I knew it was bad to be a good 15 lbs. heavier than my friends.
The next one came with that same group of friends 3 years later. We were at a football game and got caught in the rain. Afterwards, my friend’s mom gave us some of my friend’s clothing to wear while she dried all of our stuff in the dryer. The sleeping shorts I was handed barely fit. The other girls all put theirs on with varying degrees of room, but mine were skin tight.
Next came middle school, and boys commenting on my body or picking girlfriends over the phone based on yearbook photos.
Greg, a popular boy a grade above me, called me fat one day. I remember taking it to heart so seriously. My sweet, 12 year old self taking this 13 year old boy’s opinion of me as gospel medical and moral advice.
“He’s right. I have to lose weight. My body isn’t good like this.”
There was Melissa, the “fat girl” in our grade. She “dieted” (engaged in VERY disordered and dangerous eating habits) herself down to a cheerleader and suddenly had the attention of every boy in school, now one of the “it” girls.
There was the time that Beth made a snide comment in gym class after I dropped down from the dreaded pull-up bar during the annual president’s physical fitness test. I landed hard on the stack of mats the gym teacher was sitting on. They shook a bit and he had to throw his arm out for balance.
I was definitely so fat I almost killed the gym teacher - according to snotty Beth.
Let’s not forget teen girl magazine advice.
“Put your hands around your waist. Do your fingers touch? Great! You’re just fine. If they’re far far apart, let’s fix that.”
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
My ADULT hands have a diameter of 6 inches. If I’m being generous that would give me a 19 inch waist.
In college during the EARLY years of online dating, a man asked me what size I was. I lied and said a “size 8” (I was a 12). He told me, “that’s too big.”
As an adult the message to hate myself has shifted, it’s now intrinsically linked to my sexual safety and my worthiness to be a romantic partner. Men fetishize size. I was at a bar with my former boss who leaned into me luridly and said, “you see the bartender there. She’s so sexy with that little roll of fat on her back there by her bra.”
He was talking about the skin/muscle that bunch up around every woman’s bra when she moves around.
This same man later told me about his escapades with a larger woman.
He whispered to me as though he were telling me something very shameful. “It was really nice. So soft. I liked it.”
Or the sexual harassment I receive on dating apps usually referencing how “spankable” my larger rear end is.
I’ve been on and off diets my entire life. Always ending up heavier than I started and hating my body a little more. And I feel lucky that I never hated myself so much that I developed a diagnosable eating disorder.
Today, I’m in my 40’s. I’m the same pants size I’ve been since I graduated college - though a good 30 lbs heavier. I’m an accomplished woman. I have a degree from a prestigious university. I have a good career, make a good living. I’m well traveled and fairly well liked amongst my peers. I’ve become a yoga teacher, worked with therapists and regularly preach the importance of body neutrality.
And I still struggle to not hate my body.
I struggle to feel safe in my body.
Being larger garners unwanted comments like the ones I described above. The idea, “I would be treated better if I was prettier (aka thinner)” regularly runs through my head. Though, ironically, it’s being attractive to the opposite sex that elicits these comments that make me feel unsafe. And I know that my thinner friends get this kind of bullshit too.
I know I’m not alone. The topic of youth, wrinkles, size, weight, diet - it’s a never ending topic loop.
But how do we get out of this?
The short answer is, we don’t. We learn to live in our bodies. We learn to tell the difference between what’s ours and what’s someone else’s.
Hating my body has lessoned as I’ve gotten older. I’ve found that my attitude towards my body fluctuates most in correlation with how well I’m taking care of myself now. Rarely does anyone comment on my body outside of the sexual harassment I find online, which certainly wears on me, but it doesn’t devastate me the way Greg’s comment did when I was 12.
As I’ve aged I’ve learned that self-care isn’t about size, it’s about deserving love and kindness because I’m a human. Full stop. I am a human and therefore deserve kindness and care.
There are benefits to taking care of myself - I’m lucky enough to be mobile and mostly pain free and things like exercise and nutrient rich food help me maintain that. This is a personal desire though, not a moral obligation.
It’s still hard though. The “obesity” epidemic nonsense and the discrimination against larger bodies is still very real. Instagram models, filters (hello, fun, but also really fucked up), the backlash against the body positivity movement - it’s a deluge of opinions on the mortality of having a particular body type.
Separating all of that noise from your intrinsic value is fucking hard.
So I sit with my body. I meditate and caress the parts of myself that society has told me are most offensive. I curate my social media feed and shift conversations away from the body and into the heart.
I work with a coach and a therapist. I decline to be weighed at the doctor unless it’s necessary for medication dosage (this is becoming easier as more medical professionals begin to under stand HAES principles but it’s a privilege afforded to me because I’m mid-sized to small fat, the largest fat people do not get this privilege).
I move my body and drink entirely too much coffee but make sure to also eat the things that make me feel energized.
I talk to people with advanced training in nutrition - all of whom think size and weight are bullshit measures of health.
I tuck in my shirt.
And I thank the internet Gods for being alive in a time when having a big bootie is trendy and that genetically it’s just there and I don’t have to spend hours in the gym squatting to get it.
And I tell men who comment on it to fuck off because my body is none of their business and spanking is really, like a 3rd date topic. ;)