Sunday Sundries: Let's have a talk about body image, shall we?

Roald Dahl

I know what you're thinking. Like, yeah yeah, yawn yawn, another person just dying to talk about diets and exercise and making this your 'best year ever!' by trying to make your body into something that certain people (which people? I don't know) deem acceptable, no matter how much it hurts, dammit. I mean, that's the way it is all the time, but at this time of year, everything seems to be amped up a notch. Psychotic amounts of 'YOU NEED TO BE SKINNY AND IF YOU AREN'T YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH'. Screaming. From everywhere.

And I know. If you don't want to hear it, then don't. Just ignore it. Don't let it seep into your mind and remember your own criteria for whether or not you're good enough. If you don't like it, just don't read it. It's my philosophy for things on the internet (rather than seeking out things you hate JUST to rant-comment on them- but that's a topic for another day) and it would be my philosophy for this. It normally is, but this year, for some reason, it's got me thinking about things, and those things won't leave my head. So you get to read all about them. (You're welcome!)

I have never been a skinny person. Not ever. In fact, you might say that my body is the opposite of skinny. You might eeeven go so far as to call me fat, probably not to my face, but you'd be thinking it. There was a time when this would have bothered me, but I've read a whoooole lot of things about body acceptance even in the last year, and frankly I've decided that my body is really only my business, it's not property that can be owned, and, and frankly this is the most liberating thing I've ever read, 'It's much harder to hate yourself than to be fat.' (I can't actually find this quote ANYWHERE on the internet. But if I made it up then that's amazing. But I really didn't.)

So there might have been a time where I'd never have been able to tweet about how hungry I was, or how much I want to eat cake, for the fear that there'd be someone reading and thinking 'yeah, I'll bet she eats cake all the time, the fat bitch'. Because people are awful, you know. But you know what? I'm going to eat cake if I want to, and I'm going to eat vegetables if I feel like it, and dammit I'm going to talk about it all I want. But I wouldn't have been able to not so long ago. So now I'm all about the body acceptance and really, I kind of just don't think about it anymore. As long as it's doing everything that I need it to do, then I more or less have no qualms with my body.

Bring it.

But. I work with someone who is genuinely, the thinnest person in the office, and she's constantly calling herself fat. It has always perplexed me when people do this, and I'm sure they've done it to you too. But maybe not so much as they've done it to me. Allow me to elaborate. I'm not saying that when people say to me 'ohmygosh I'm soooo fat' that they don't genuinely believe they look fat. It breaks my heart that they think that they're fat because they don't have Keira Knightley's body. This whole 'thin is hot' thing is really a very very new societal requirement, and sometimes I feel like it's been put in place to keep women SO worried about their bodies that they're too busy doing that to just take over the damn world already (but that's ALSO a topic for another day).

So anyway, there's that. But the other part of this whole rigmarole is that, in me experience, people who tell me, specifically me that 'OMG I'm sooo fat' typically want something in return. There's a reason they're saying this to me specifically, and I've never been able to play my part in this little performance, because I like myself too  much. My role is, when they say 'I'm sooooo fat', I'm supposed to respond, 'No you're not, look at ME!'  wherein they do, and then feel better about themselves. But really, I'm a lot more like

or, at a stretch, 'No you're NOT, don't be silly!'

Because, frankly, I'm not willing to tear myself down to make other people feel better. Not even when I was a lot more insecure, and certainly not now. I just won't do that shit.

Let me be clear. I'm not saying that there's anything at all wrong with being thin. I'm not saying that being overweight isn't unhealthy (sometimes...) or that I am at all times happy with my body. I'm not saying that it's wrong to want to lose weight, if it's something YOU want to do and it doesn't fully control your life. If you genuinely believe that it's your life's mission to have THE perfect body, then go on out there and get it and I wish you well. But babe... What are you going to do with that body when you've got it? Just, like, keep maintaining it and depriving yourself of all the good things in life, ignoring the fact that this perfect body is one day, like all things, going to be dust, and never really living properly, freely, at all?

I say, fuck that. Fuck thinking that what you look like, or the amount of space you take up in the world is the most important thing about you. I think that basically everything about us is more important than the way we look, and frankly, we don't have enough time to pretend that it does. I don't even have enough time to be writing about this, and I'm not saying that it's been a busy week at work, I'm saying that it's a very very short life, and there is no time to waste worrying about whether our butt could be an inch smaller (oh wait, are we supposed to have big butts now? I forget) or our boobs a cup size bigger. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT.

I'm being dramatic. How surprising. But here's what I want. Can't we just get dressed in the morning in whatever size clothes fit us, and then get on with our lives and frolic and have fun and read and walk and eat and laugh and cry and dance and enjoy life without constantly having to think about what we look like? And can we all just not judge each other based on what we look like too? And can we please stop caring about what some magazine that constantly undermines women (ie basically all magazines) says we should look like? I think we'd all be happier if we did.

So... That's just some stuff I've been thinking about this week. You?