i’ve been at war with my body for as long as i can remember. it hasn’t always been about active combat, about beating my natural shape into submission. often, it’s been much more subtle than that.
memory: i am 5 years old, joining my best friend joia at ballet class. i’m watching her long, lithe limbs glide effortlessly across the wooden floor. by contrast, i feel heavy, leaden; uncoordinated and uncouth. i can’t match her lightness, i can barely get the steps. i don’t go back.
memory: i am 8 years old, watching my mother weigh out each piece of food she puts on her plate. she’s gained a few pounds; she is fretting over this fact. it is clear to me that food is not friend but foe—something to be measured carefully.
memory: i am 11, my body beginning to bud. it’s summer, i’m wearing a bathing suit in the pool. i love to be in the water, and haven’t, until this moment, put a ton of thought into my body within it. my grandma is visiting, and as i exit the water, she shakes her head, tsk tsks softly, and tells me she’ll pay me $10 whole dollars for each pound i’m able to lose.
memory: i am 14, sunning myself on a brilliant maine beach. i am fully aware of the cute boys at my summer camp, and even more aware of how little attention they pay to me. bending backwards to grab something out of my bag, i’m horrified to realize i have rolls of fat on my back. i immediately learn how to contort my body so that they do not show.
memory: i’m 15, trying out for my high school’s newest sports team, crew. i’m pulling and pushing all my weight against an erg machine in front of the coaches, praying they don’t comment on my weight, thinking already about whether i’m too heavy for the boat. one coach looks at the other, motions to me, and says, “she’s strong.” i bask in the glow of this compliment for far too long.
memory: i’m in my early twenties, freshly dumped by my college friends and grasping at straws to rebuild my life in new york. dating apps are just entering public conscience; i download them, and soon receive a message that simply reads: “sit ups. you should do some.” i stare at it for a good ten minutes, unsure of whether to cry, scream, or do both at the same time.
memory: i’m in my late twenties, boarding the m14 bus at union square. i’m wearing jean shorts i cut out of large men’s pants purchased at salvation army, and i’m holding up the line because my metro card doesn’t want to swipe. behind me, a man yells, “move your fat ass!” i want to crawl into a hole and die.
i’m not proud of the way in which these memories are cemented in my brain. lodged in my heart, threatening to leap into my throat any time i start to think that maybe, just maybe, my body is something i could be proud of. and yet there they sit, like tiny devils on my shoulder, reminding me that my body, my temple, the shell that holds my soul—it might never be good enough.
over the last year, thanks to a strong shift in my eating habits, and the addition of running into my exercise routine, i’ve lost 35 pounds. i’ve got 30 more to get to my “goal weight”—a term i despise and also don’t really believe i’m capable of reaching—but i’ve made it halfway.
losing this weight has been, to put it mildly, a total mind fuck. i am simultaneously thrilled and proud of my progress and riddled with guilt for how deeply i’ve bought into the narrative that thinner is better (then again, this is the narrative i’ve been told my entire life). diet culture, we’re told, is the enemy. all bodies are beach bodies, they say. and i believe these things—sort of, almost, a little bit, on a good day. or perhaps more accurately: i want to believe these things. i want to believe them so deeply that i don’t care if i weigh 5 pounds or 500. but it isn’t true, not really.
the truth is that i feel better in my body right now than i have, well, ever. i feel, for the first time in my life, like i might be attractive. that my outsides might finally match my insides (though those, too, i’ve been told to make smaller time and time again). i feel a budding sense of confidence like none i’ve ever felt before; the kind of confidence that used to make me positively emerald with envy whenever i saw others who possessed it.
and i feel goddamn guilty for all of it. i feel like i’m betraying my former self, like i’m betraying anyone who’s ever lived in a bigger body and resented it (and perhaps even more so, those who’ve lived in a bigger body and haven’t). i feel like to want this thing—to wish to be smaller—is sacrilege. forgive me body, for i have sinned.
sometimes i wonder, is it possible, really, to love your body in any state its in? are the folks that say they do faking it? do they really wake up each morning and say, gosh, i love the way my stomach rolls when i bend over or goodness, there’s something so sexy about the way my underarms jiggle? will there ever come a time when i can say something like the above and mean it?
sometimes i wonder, am i allowed to be proud of my weight loss? or will that pride always be tinged with guilt? will losing weight mean i gain yet another thing to apologize for?
i’ve been thinking a lot recently about all the ways in which the world works to keep women small. there’s the physical, of course, but there’s the emotional, too.
there’s the male coworker who spent the entirety of the hour-long meeting in which i was presenting this afternoon interrupting me, talking over me, and shaking his head when he felt i wasn’t hearing his very important points.
there’s the fact that just last week, i was scolded for daring to ask a clarifying question during a client meeting, for fear that my doing so might be interpreted as ‘pushing back’ on the man running it.
there’s the millions of tiny moments over the past year where i was told i was overreacting, being too sensitive, feeling, saying, being too much.
there’s the guy i went on two dates with who was perfectly content to talk my ear off for 2+ hours about his life, but barely asked a single question about mine.
there’s the fact that my boss—the man i have to report to—told me recently that anyone who still thinks women are treated differently than men in the workplace are “living in the past.”
and then, of course, there’s this week’s supreme court decision to strike down roe v. wade, a move that is about nothing if not keeping women small.
these things aren’t related to my weight loss journey, and yet, they are inextricably tied to my weight loss journey. smallness and bigness, bigness and smallness. forever trying to toe the line between being neither too little nor too much. forever trying to figure out where what i want compares to, is correlated to, is influenced by what others want me to be.
my body is getting smaller, but my knowing—it grows by the minute. as i shrink, my determination to be exactly who i want to be, ungoverned by the bullshit requirements of anyone else, grows. what if i’ve always been powerful, and i just didn’t realize it? what if i’ve always been pretty, but i never knew? what if—though it’s hard to see right now, in the depths of despair—there’s a world more beautiful and perfect than we can even imagine? one where women’s bodies are governed by no one but themselves, one where equity is realized and equality isn’t just a bullshit term people throw around to make themselves look smart? what if there’s a world in which our bodies are just that—ours—and we can do with them as we please, let them look anyway we like?
i’d like to live in that world. maybe you would too?
What a beautiful and honest reflection. Thank you for being willing to share with all of us!
I love the reminder that it’s all connected.