Last December, I accompanied my dad to the senior center to pick up my grandmother’s lunch. I enjoy going with him because I know several of my grandmother’s friends and I like greeting them and exchanging hugs. On this particular day, one [large] woman that I didn’t know (but who knew me) said to me, straight out of the gate and somewhat snidely, ‘Well, I guess you just don’t ever put on any weight do you?’ In an attempt to diffuse and move on I chuckled and vaguely said ‘well sometimes more than others.’
But let’s be clear… I didn’t find it one bit chuckle-worthy.
As a kid I was sensitive about being called ‘skinny’ because it was used derogatorily against me. (It was also used against my mom when she was young, which she told me in an attempt to help me feel better - solidarity and such - but it only compounded the injustice of my own experience. I wondered why people would be mean to her too). When I met Benjamin I asked him to please never refer to me as ‘skinny’ because of those hurtful associations and asked that he instead refer to me, if he must at all, as ‘slender.’ The change in words lessened the blow for me and ‘slender’ seemed at least graceful.
As an adult woman who gained weight in her early twenties, I sustained comments about my weight-gain from family members. When I lost weight rapidly in my late twenties (after abandoning sugar and dairy) I sustained criticism from family and coworkers for that too.
The truth is that since I found the weight range that’s right for me (confirmed by how consistently my body lingers there when I listen to it and feed it what it asks of me) I started thinking less about my body and my weight. My self-image improved because I felt healthy in my skin. Yes, this is the privilege of being born a scrawny kid in a society that’s wholly obsessed with underweight women. My privilege is that I don’t struggle with being overweight. But I’m sometimes reminded that others look at me and see me as a body type - one that makes them feel and say the kinds of things that leave me at a loss of words.
While I may be exempt from the kind of insecurity that comes with having curves in an emaciation-obsessed society, hear me when I tell you that I have some sort of weird reverse insecurity from having a thin body. I feel the eyes on me of other, fuller-figured women who want what I have (I’m not saying this in vanity. I’m speaking from my lived experience of hearing these comments both in ways that are wistful and in ways that are straight-up hateful. Both of these kinds of comments leave me wordless because what really can one say to either in return?) I’ve sustained many hurtful comments about my skinny body. (Once, I was told by an older family member that Benjamin and I would have lizard-children because we were both so slim. They thought this was a funny joke. That was more than 10 years ago and I still look at my naked body in the mirror sometimes and hear that lizard comment in my head). Just like other women around me, I don’t have the freedom to exist in my own body without people thinking, feeling and saying things to me about it.
When it was hard for me to digest even small portions of food and I was just needing to get back to some semblance of manageable health, I found myself worrying about explaining my diet and inescapably visible weight loss to others as my clothes hung loose on me and I declined food that I couldn’t eat. While my focus should have wholly been on rebuilding my health, my attention was divided because of insecurity fueled entirely by comments like the aforementioned. That’s both sad and ridiculous. Can we please just all agree to let each other be, to acknowledge that we’re wonderfully different, and that none of us know each other well enough to provide commentary on others’ lives?
Comments about someone’s body can be hurtful even if that person isn’t overweight. When I walked into the senior center and the old woman made her comment to me I would have liked to have said to her all of the things I’ve shared with y’all in the last seven posts - to her, to the lizard-joker, to the middle-aged family member who hated me for my slim physique, and to all the other people who have commentaries whether they’re haters or allies: “You may see my body or how I eat, but you don’t know me at all and you haven’t seen the road that’s brought me here.”
The same is true for you too, which is why I’m finally speaking up and saying something. Be kind to yourself. Find what wellness means to you and then give yourself permission to dwell there and savor yourself and your goodness, just as you are, where you are right now (even if you have future hopes and goals for your health). Do all you can to quiet the voices of those around you who don’t understand yet still insist on speaking up. And most of all, let’s all do more to shed light where there is darkness. Let’s lift each other up every chance we get. And when we find ourselves on the receiving end of hurtful words about our bodies, we don’t have to absorb them. We can speak up with kindness and let others know how their words make us feel.
I’m not doing all I can to make that vision a reality. I’ve said things that I realized later probably landed insensitively. I’m guilty of not praising others (or myself) enough. And I’ve definitely never stood up for myself and told a single person how their words affect me or how I play those words over again in my head. But I’m imagining myself as kinder (to myself and others both) and as bolder because that’s the kind of world I want to live in and be a part of. I’m starting by writing this series (which wasn’t entirely easy to share), imagining how I can be more to others, and offering genuine gratitude to my body in its struggling state even as I work to bring it back into more fullness health. Won’t you please join me by doing the same for yourself and others alike?
