Body Beautiful
How the Fat Acceptance Movement Taught Me to Love My Body, Even Though I'm Probably Not Quite the Target Audience
Various body and weight talk including actual numbers, near-strangers armchair-diagnosing people with eating disorders. Also some mentions of sexual violence.
And by "not the target audience," I mean I weighed, last time I was asked to step onto the scale by a medical professional, 103 pounds. I'm 5'4" and somehow miraculously manage to have boobs! and thighs that do not fit into certain styles of jeans! I also have weapons-grade pointy elbows, no hips save my actual pelvis, and a ribcage you could play like a xylophone. I am now pretty much okay with those last three, but this was not always the case.
So I would not say I am so thin I am routinely mistaken for anorexic and subjected to the "eat a sandwich" side of body policing; I currently occupy one of the safest possible zones when it comes to body policing. But due to the conflict in my eating habits and my middle school's lunch policies,* some anonymous student or students reported me to the guidance counselor for, like, totally obviously having an eating disorder.
* Students were required to eat in the cafeteria, at assigned tables that were rotated every so often. I only knew of one person who was, for religious reasons, exempt from eating cafeteria food - yes, we were not allowed to bring lunch. It. Sucked.
I think my mother put the fear of god into the guidance counselor (because she knew I hated the food I was supposed to be eating, that I was very hungry every day when I got home from school, and that I would eat a huge snack every single afternoon and then also eat dinner, and my mother had been even thinner than me), because after that one incident, none of the school's employees bothered me again. (Except that one time when we were reading Ordinary People for English class and I mentioned empathizing with the protagonist over suicidal thoughts, in a rather vague manner that did not actually demonstrate that those thoughts were behind me [except for the ones that were in front of me, which I could not predict], to a guy who in retrospect was probably into me.)
But I now had a conscious awareness of my body size. It didn't really gnaw at me until eighth or ninth grade, though, when I had a 'click' moment about wanting to sleep with girls instead of just admiring them for various totally-platonic-I-swear reasons. It was a "free seating" day in the cafeteria and I was sitting with some kids who were cooler than me. A girl walked by our table - she'd been out of school for a few weeks and the most consistent rumor about it was that she'd been receiving treatment for an eating disorder - and one of the guys I was sitting with made some comment about how she was getting chubby, or something. I don't remember that detail because what mattered about that moment was my chain of reactions: the indignation of mocking a person's weight when she'd (probably) been devoting a lot of time to reaching a healthier sense of herself and her body; the counterargument that, tummy or no, she was gorgeous, actually, stfu; and the realization that I kinda really wanted to make out with her.
This girl and I probably could have shared clothes if we'd been clothes-sharing friends. But after that, I found pin-up girls and started hearing "real women have curves" everywhere that wasn't selling a new diet. So for a few years I didn't like my body because, if it'd been another girl in there, I wouldn't have fucked her (me). Because she (I) was too skinny.
We will gloss over the time I spent with my first boyfriend, wherein I kind of dropped the body size worries for assorted sexual woes (including piss-poor communication about consent, why am I not having orgasms? clearly I am the problem here, rape, arguing about the babies I never wanted to have, his fantasies about raping and impregnating me, and some coercion to round it out).*
* I was childfree before dating this scumbag and I remain so. I just now have a heap of triggers relating to pregnancy, forced pregnancy, and the assumption that Every Woman Must Want/Have Children. Which is not to say that I am upset by being around/hearing about the happily pregnant, their pregnancies, their babies and children, etc. - it can be kind of nice, actually - only when it becomes "you must want this! Everyone does!" does it get to the bad place.
And then I bumped into some really awesome fat acceptance folks a few years ago, by way of my sister's better ability to make friends in real life. They were not ashamed of hanging out with thin people like me! They were not ashamed of themselves! Nobody told me to eat a damn sandwich! Nobody told anybody to not eat a damn sandwich! They were concerned about fatphobia, not smacking down random skinny people! It was all very lovely (and continues to be lovely), and just being around them, in a friendship group with a serious body-acceptance bent, has been good for me.* I'm glad to still be friends with the vast majority of them. :)
* They were also my first round of happy shiny fun consent-valuing kinky people I could hang out with. Also very important.
In conclusion: people who love their bodies, people who are working to love their bodies, and people who are working against the kinds of crap that make people hate their bodies: ♥
I was originally planning to type this up for Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, but today seemed like the right day. I do hope to get some other thinky thoughts out there during 3WFDw. Link | Reply
comments
How to use OpenID
Various body and weight talk including actual numbers, near-strangers armchair-diagnosing people with eating disorders. Also some mentions of sexual violence.
And by "not the target audience," I mean I weighed, last time I was asked to step onto the scale by a medical professional, 103 pounds. I'm 5'4" and somehow miraculously manage to have boobs! and thighs that do not fit into certain styles of jeans! I also have weapons-grade pointy elbows, no hips save my actual pelvis, and a ribcage you could play like a xylophone. I am now pretty much okay with those last three, but this was not always the case.
So I would not say I am so thin I am routinely mistaken for anorexic and subjected to the "eat a sandwich" side of body policing; I currently occupy one of the safest possible zones when it comes to body policing. But due to the conflict in my eating habits and my middle school's lunch policies,* some anonymous student or students reported me to the guidance counselor for, like, totally obviously having an eating disorder.
* Students were required to eat in the cafeteria, at assigned tables that were rotated every so often. I only knew of one person who was, for religious reasons, exempt from eating cafeteria food - yes, we were not allowed to bring lunch. It. Sucked.
I think my mother put the fear of god into the guidance counselor (because she knew I hated the food I was supposed to be eating, that I was very hungry every day when I got home from school, and that I would eat a huge snack every single afternoon and then also eat dinner, and my mother had been even thinner than me), because after that one incident, none of the school's employees bothered me again. (Except that one time when we were reading Ordinary People for English class and I mentioned empathizing with the protagonist over suicidal thoughts, in a rather vague manner that did not actually demonstrate that those thoughts were behind me [except for the ones that were in front of me, which I could not predict], to a guy who in retrospect was probably into me.)
But I now had a conscious awareness of my body size. It didn't really gnaw at me until eighth or ninth grade, though, when I had a 'click' moment about wanting to sleep with girls instead of just admiring them for various totally-platonic-I-swear reasons. It was a "free seating" day in the cafeteria and I was sitting with some kids who were cooler than me. A girl walked by our table - she'd been out of school for a few weeks and the most consistent rumor about it was that she'd been receiving treatment for an eating disorder - and one of the guys I was sitting with made some comment about how she was getting chubby, or something. I don't remember that detail because what mattered about that moment was my chain of reactions: the indignation of mocking a person's weight when she'd (probably) been devoting a lot of time to reaching a healthier sense of herself and her body; the counterargument that, tummy or no, she was gorgeous, actually, stfu; and the realization that I kinda really wanted to make out with her.
This girl and I probably could have shared clothes if we'd been clothes-sharing friends. But after that, I found pin-up girls and started hearing "real women have curves" everywhere that wasn't selling a new diet. So for a few years I didn't like my body because, if it'd been another girl in there, I wouldn't have fucked her (me). Because she (I) was too skinny.
We will gloss over the time I spent with my first boyfriend, wherein I kind of dropped the body size worries for assorted sexual woes (including piss-poor communication about consent, why am I not having orgasms? clearly I am the problem here, rape, arguing about the babies I never wanted to have, his fantasies about raping and impregnating me, and some coercion to round it out).*
* I was childfree before dating this scumbag and I remain so. I just now have a heap of triggers relating to pregnancy, forced pregnancy, and the assumption that Every Woman Must Want/Have Children. Which is not to say that I am upset by being around/hearing about the happily pregnant, their pregnancies, their babies and children, etc. - it can be kind of nice, actually - only when it becomes "you must want this! Everyone does!" does it get to the bad place.
And then I bumped into some really awesome fat acceptance folks a few years ago, by way of my sister's better ability to make friends in real life. They were not ashamed of hanging out with thin people like me! They were not ashamed of themselves! Nobody told me to eat a damn sandwich! Nobody told anybody to not eat a damn sandwich! They were concerned about fatphobia, not smacking down random skinny people! It was all very lovely (and continues to be lovely), and just being around them, in a friendship group with a serious body-acceptance bent, has been good for me.* I'm glad to still be friends with the vast majority of them. :)
* They were also my first round of happy shiny fun consent-valuing kinky people I could hang out with. Also very important.
In conclusion: people who love their bodies, people who are working to love their bodies, and people who are working against the kinds of crap that make people hate their bodies: ♥
I was originally planning to type this up for Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, but today seemed like the right day. I do hope to get some other thinky thoughts out there during 3WFDw. Link | Reply
comments
How to use OpenID