Dont You Want To See How It Ends
This is a link to a piece I wrote on my old blog about the concept of ‘plus size’.
I wanted to share it because I’ve noticed that many of the folks I follow, as well as many of the women and men I know personally, have been showing concern about their size/weight. Unfortunately, most of them are completely ignoring what they actually look like, and obsessing over a number on a scale or pair of pants.
I wrote this about a year ago. At the time, I weighed the most I have ever weighed in my life. At about 145lbs, I was the same weight as when I was pregnant. In the last year, I have struggled myself with my weight. Honestly, looking back on photos of myself I look absolutely no different than I do now, even though I now fluctuate between 125-130lbs.
Some days, I look at myself and want to cry. I hate that my stomach is squishy and that my face is all round and I think I look really gross when I smile and it can be difficult to bring myself to leave the house. But other days, I look at myself and I love that my hip bones poke out a little bit and that I look great in a miniskirt and that I was blessed with my grama’s facial bone structure. For me, it’s all relative.
When I was a teenager with a super thin, boyish body ALL I wanted was to be curvy. My best friend had the most curvaceous body and I envied her soooo much. Of course, she was never happy with her body either. But isn’t it funny that I now have a body that my 16 year old self would have killed for, and half the time I look in the mirror and disgust myself? And I still look at my best friend and wish I had her body. And she still wishes she had mine. And I look at girls who have the body I used to have and wish I had that body too. And I look at girls with super long legs or big full lips or giant eyes or small feet or round bums or full tits or normal sized heads and I want those things so badly…
Is there really such a thing as being happy about the way you look? We spend so much time decorating our bodies with clothes and makeup and hairstyles and jewelry that our shape and size becomes sort of irrelevant. It’s scary to think that most of us will never LOVE our bodies. Truly.
I know it doesn’t make anyone feel any better, but I want to emphasize that what is presented to us as being ‘ideal’ is flawed and that it shapes this idea of what we should be that none of us are ever, EVER going to achieve. And we all feel it. Maybe not every day, but every single person living in the western world (at the very least) hates their body, even only once in a while.
Hopefully that fucked up sense of unity can give us all a glimmer of peace…
