As a tween in the 90s, my worth always felt intertwined with the number on the scale or the tag on my clothes. The things I believed about myself were coloured by the continuous messages that pervaded society via magazines and TV – but also in doctor’s offices and at school.
The world told us that thinness = success, beauty, and health. And everyone I knew agreed.
The pressure to conform
As if high school wasn’t hard enough, we were constantly bombarded with images of “perfect” bodies – as were all the other people in our lives.
The not-so-subtle negativity towards the bodies in our own homes meant there was no escape. Maybe it was a sibling comparing their latest diet with friends – whether to slim down or ‘beef up’ – it was never just to fuel their growing bodies.
Or mothers criticising their bodies as they readied themselves for the day, all the while having a weekly subscription to ‘who wore it better’ comparisons and hit pieces on bikini-clad celebrities with their every flaw circled and headlined.
And it didn’t end when I graduated – it just changed from daily jibes (or sometimes, just the anticipation of them) to the more insidious damage that came with not being able to fit into ‘standard issue’ work uniforms or clothes for going out.
For more than 75% of my life, I was convinced that losing weight would solve all my problems.
During my mid-twenties I tried all kinds of weight loss tricks. When I look back, I’m horrified at the ways I was willing to punish my body for not being thin: Duromine, starving myself, diet programs with shame-inducing weigh-ins.
The continued support for my pursuit of smallness by everyone in my life only reinforced what I already believed, and made it that much easier for romantic interests to treat me poorly.
Weight stigma once again made itself known in my home – except now it was my partner, a person who was supposed to love and care for me, reminding me every day how my fat body was the reason we hadn’t moved onto the next phase.
“We can’t get married until you get under 100kg,” he told me.
Thankfully, I never did either of those things.
Changing my mind, not my body
I pursued the life of a thinner me for a long time, undergoing weight loss surgery as a ‘final chance’ to be slim and happy. I don’t regret doing it, because everything that has happened since never would have, without every choice that came before. However, I know that my body not remaining smaller would have some people characterising me as a ‘failure’.
I don’t see it that way. Failure is relative to what you consider success and the joy and contentment I have found in accepting my body and championing the right for it to be treated with respect is more of a triumph than slipping into a smaller item of clothing could ever be.
I’ve changed a lot, but nothing has changed me like motherhood. After years of seeing my body as a problem to be fixed, I realised that I was responsible for making sure my child never felt the same way about their body, or anyone else’s.
Learning to speak with kindness to myself for him created a habit and a belief that, actually, it IS completely kind to be yourself, to look however you want, to be happy with who you are.
I laud traits about myself and others that aren’t physical to remind him that we don’t need to look a certain way to be the person we strive to be. Kind, creative, generous, witty, all things you can be regardless of your appearance. I learned to celebrate my strength, my resilience. I deflected body compliments and destigmatised words by using them without inflection.
Changing the pattern
The truth is that weight stigma is something we can’t escape without more people understanding what it is, and why it’s harmful.
The experience of being body-shamed by a doctor, a shop assistant, or even a loved one is hard to get through even when you have changed your own mindset about fatness.
Remind yourself: my worth as a person is not defined by my size, and what other people believe about my body is not my truth. I do not deserve to be treated badly because of my weight.
These days, when we talk about bodies we use words like ‘self love’, ‘acceptance’ and ‘liberation’. These things are more than just mantras or affirmations. They are acts we have to deliberately engage in to push back on bias and change the way the world treats all bodies.
Social media is rife with advice about weight loss disguised as wellness. The same tired assumptions that health is something you can see and measure based on how someone looks. We know that’s not true, but it’s so easy to fall back into a belief that we’ve had for so long. There’s a level of vigilance needed to spot this sort of rhetoric: if you find yourself caught up in something that makes you wonder whether you should be trying harder to shrink your body to meet some imaginary standard, don’t blame yourself. Shake it off and remember what’s really important to you.
Having a more compassionate relationship with yourself allows you to also show compassion for others. Your body is worthy of love and respect, and so is theirs.
For support with eating disorders or body image concerns, call Butterfly National Helpline on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673) or visit www.butterfly.org.au to chat online or email, 7 days a week, 8am-midnight (AEST/AEDT).
