Over the course of the past few years I have begun to come to terms with my complicated relationship with food, exercise, and the world around me. For many people this type of journey involves learning new words to describe their bodies in empowering ways. Supportive communities have sprung up around terms like “fat”, “disabled”, “queer” and “survivor” in an effort to give new meaning to words once used condescendingly and pejoratively. I have been attempting to steer clear of words, and focus on sensation— the feeling of stuffed vs. sated vs. hungry vs. about to faint; the feelings of anxious compulsion vs. actually desired activity; the feeling of empowerment that comes from listening to your body and giving it what it needs.
Something I have realized in the past year is that my negative relationship with my body is not just about how I look or how much I weigh; in fact that piece is almost secondary, a late addition courtesy of society and its seemingly unchanging view of women as beautiful objects. In actuality, my size and appearance are just examples of ways I feel my body has let me down since I entered adolescence. I was an active and skinny kid who barely noticed her body until she realized the skin on her face was becoming red and bumpy. Shortly after that followed the development of feet too giant for an 11-year-old, and boobs— dreaded in an early 2000s Kate Winslet/ Kiera Knightly-inspired tween fashion landscape. After finally vanquishing teenage awakwardness and acne vulgaris I assumed I was free to be a “self-actualized” adult, when the allergies came rolling in, right on cue. Mystery allergies will do a number on you, especially when you are already anxious, and your body has decided to stop accepting once perfectly healthy and acceptable foods, and cursing your sinus passages to be constricted seemingly forever.
I have been sick roughly once a month for the last ten years. Many of those years were spent not sleeping or eating adequately, but even when I get enough rest, eat leafy greens, and exercise regularly it still happens. I still don’t know why, and I still feel like it’s my fault sometimes. I have post-nasal drip almost constantly, which makes me dehydrate easily, and negatively affects my digestion. Sometimes, either because of fatigue/illness, or some sort of deep existential depression (or maybe both) I just can’t get out of bed. Sometimes, for the same reason, I find it hard to eat meals at regular times, or to exercise beyond walking from my bed to the kitchen for a glass of water. I have an eating disorder and it sucks a lot, but I honestly don’t think I would eat, refrain from eating, or over-exercise if it hadn’t been for years of feeling like those behaviors were the only way to feel like I could control what was happening to me.
At various points in my life I have gained or lost a visibly significant amount of weight due to swings in my disordered habits and my body’s general ability to function in a healthy way. One of the *super fun* parts of this has been watching other people’s reactions. At 16 and 20, when I was basically a wisp of woman teetering on the edge of dangerously thin despite no actual effort on my part (aside for some vague subconscious food restricting, maybe), adults and peers alike lauded my success:
“you look so good!” they would say.
“what’s your secret?”
“I wish I could be that thin/ I miss those days (depending on the commentator)”
at 14 and 24 when I was highly anxious and stressed after landing in a world I didn’t understand (high school and not school, respectively) or feel particularly successful at, and definitely eating a lot of candy, they were suddenly silent.
crickets.
“oh wow, I really like your sweater”
I do appreciate now when people complement my possessions because I have curated them thoughtfully and meticulously over the last decade (also because I’ve realized how messed up it is that people are always commenting on women’s bodies) but when I was 14 “i like your sweater” was either code for “that’s the ugliest sweater I’ve ever seen but I’m from Minnesota so I’d never actually say that” or “your sweater is the only part about you that doesn’t look like trash”.
Occasionally during these periods of 14 and 24, someone would tentatively suggest the word “curvy” if the topic of the way I looked came up for some reason— usually when I needed a costume for a theatrical production I was in. I hate the word “curvy”. It is a fairly accurate descriptor of my current body type, but it carries with it the idea that ‘there might be one or two things in your size towards the back of the store (don’t worry, no one will see you looking so large [and therefore unattractive], they’re all at the front looking at crop tops [which are only for people smaller than you])’. Maybe it’s because of my stocky east German genes, or the fact that I was an early bloomer, or the fact that I went to school with a lot of lanky Irish and Scandinavian girls, but the word “curvy” always reminds me that I am being compared to the people around me, and my “diversity” in this sense is not something to be proud of. It doesn’t matter how popular J.Lo and Kim Kardashian are right now; if you’re a white girl, you better be a size 6 or under, or it’s still passive-aggressive and exclusionary “curvy” until you die.
26 and 1.5 years into recovery, I am attempting to only own clothes that fit me, and are flattering. This is possible— I have gained what I would consider to be a significant amount of weight since starting college, but (helpfully, for me) not enough that I can’t still buy clothes from “normal” stores in “normal” sizes (the exception being bras, which I must buy from the internet). I’m not really “skinny” or “slim”, but I also don’t feel “fat” or “bigger” (both extremely vague descriptions with no criteria), and being that I don’t wear plus sizes, I’m not “plus-sized”. So… what I am I? Do I have to be anything? Wait, could I just opt out?!
…
No, ok, I know I can’t opt out, but goddamn, sometimes I really want to. Sometimes I want to just enjoy the little successes, like convincing myself to go swim today and feeling better afterwards, just like I told myself I would; or having a piece of chocolate cake and feeling nothing about it but pure enjoyment. I don’t want to deal with the people in the background who marvel aloud that cake is why they’re fat [and fat is bad]”, or that “swimming is a great sport for curvy girls”. (yes someone said that once, and no, I don’t know what the hell it means either).
I think it’s awesome that so many other people have found success and nurturing peers by seeking out people who have been put down by people with power for the same reason. It just isn’t where I fit in, I guess, because the problem I have had with my body has been an excess of words, and part of what I have needed to do is get away from words entirely (aside from the ones in the many pages and paragraphs on this blog).
skinny
slender
sensitive
pasty
red
“what are those things on your face?”
ugly
unflattering
boring
gross
flabby
awkward
curvy
cute
athletic
sick
anxious
lethargic
anemic
allergic
overweight
small
medium
large
normal
average
broken
weird
busty
…
human.
weary traveler 