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Taking Up Space

CBS News presents Speaking Frankly: Fat Shaming

I watched the above video this morning and went to share it on Facebook, and realized, I had more to say about it then would fit in a status block. It’s a CBS news piece on fat shaming and body positivity and features one of my favorites: Jessamyn Stanley. Following her on Instagram has challenged many of my preconceptions about yoga and health and life. I don’t always agree with her, but she makes me think about why I don’t agree with her, and that’s important.

I highly recommend watching the video. First, a tip: try to ignore the segments from the fame seeking ex reality show star with a major chip on her shoulder. Maybe they were trying to pick someone who could unironically spout all the anti-political correctness nonsense? Cause she does that pretty good. She’s a blemish on an otherwise really interesting piece.

It does a really good job of presenting lots of points of views on the issues of weight and health and self-esteem. And it hits on some things I’ve been thinking about lately. Namely, that navigating body positivity and good health at the same time is …. well, frankly, it’s a bit of a mind fuck.

I don’t know if my own experience is typical, as I am a champion overthinker. But my own context certainly illustrates the festival of contradictions that exists when you start to talk about weight.

I was a thin kid, but have gotten progressively bigger consistently since college. (And somehow, an inch shorter? Boo, early menopause.)

Today, I am 5’9″ and weigh between 205-210 pounds. And all of these things are true:

  • My self-esteem is negatively affected by my ability to find clothes that fit and look nice.
  • The size of my stomach bothers me a lot.
  • Babies love to bounce on my belly and it’s hilarious and pure.
  • These legs can run (slowly) for days.
  • My mood is improved by exercising.
  • My mood can be deflated by getting on the scale. And if I’ve gained weight, I feel like I’ve failed twice: once because I gained weight, and once because I care about it and I know there are more important things about my body then mass.
  • My arms give good hugs.
  • I have hands that can make food or necklaces or a software application.
  • The thinnest I’ve been in the last 15 years is also the sickest I’ve been in the last 15 years, when I was undergoing chemo. I lost a lot of muscle mass that I still haven’t built back.
  • My body beat cancer.
  • I am currently healthy by every measure besides BMI.
  • Because of the above, I know for a fact that I cannot tell if anyone else is healthy just by looking at them.
  • Type II diabetes runs in my family.
  • Potatoes and craft beer bring me joy.
  • So does perfectly seared tofu. We eat vegan about 50% of the time. (I didn’t always dig tofu. I still remember the first time I tried it in the 90s. It showed up on my meal instead of chicken, and I hated it so much that I was not only mad at the guy who took me to the restaurant, but also at everyone who was working at or eating in that restaurant and encouraging the existence of tofu. But I digress.)
  • My spouse encourages me not to diet or weigh myself. He loves me exactly as I am and tells me that a lot.
  • I am so inspired by the body positivity activists I follow on Instagram.
  • When I first started following body positivity activists, I had trouble seeing the beauty in the images. No matter how feminist and open-minded you are, our anti-fat programming runs deep. Following these people challenged my perspective and made me face some uncomfortable truths about my own prejudice.
  • In real life, I know take-your-breath-away-beautiful women of all sizes, both bigger and smaller than me.
  • Many successful women and men in my life are consistently vocally critical of their size or something else about the way they look. This includes people of every size, every age, every income level, every industry.
  • The last time I didn’t want to be thinner was high school.
  • Even as I’ve gotten older, and hopefully wiser, there’s still a tiny part of me that thinks: my life will be better when I’m thin again.

How crazy is that? I have a pretty good life. And the parts that aren’t great have absolutely nothing to do with how I look.

And yet, I know I’m not alone. A lot of us struggle with the natural opposition of all of these thoughts. I want to be healthy. I want to be able to get up and down off of the floor and play with my nieces and nephews.

I also don’t want to hold myself to standards created by a patriarchal society that prefers women to take up as little space as possible. I don’t want to give in to a culture that encourages us to criticize each other instead of building each other up. I get just this one life and just this one brain: I don’t want to waste it worrying about my dress size.

I don’t really have a point. The video just brought up all these feelings and I was like, yes! Exactly all of these contradictory feelings! Ok, most of them.

I wanted to share this because…well, let’s face it I’m an oversharer as well as an overthinker. But also, because I think we don’t always admit these struggles out loud, and it might help someone else to hear that they’re not alone. I get frustrated when my brain focuses on weight; I know better. I know I should be thinking about something else. So many other important things are happening, who cares about your weight?!?

Even though we know these thoughts are superficial, it’s like this little nugget of self-doubt and disappointment that just gets in the way of everything. The sand in our collective bathing suits. And the diet and fitness industry (especially people like the plastic reality star in the video) feed off it.

So, that’s what I’m working on: killing the nugget. How do I simultaneously let go of a body ideal that isn’t realistic, break the mental connection between my body size and my potential happiness, but also keep myself healthy for the future?

It feels like the answer should be obvious. Exercise but don’t beat yourself up. Eat what you want, but not too much. For me, at least, the reality is that the mental balancing act is tougher. I don’t know the full answer.

But I’ll be over here taking up space while I figure it out.

Black and white picture of a quote on a wall: Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
A stencil that was up in my sister’s house when she bought it. Source unknown.

Highly Recommended if you’re thinking about the same things.

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