I don’t want to write about my body anymore. I don’t want to think about it at all, actually. I want my body to be such a distant, insignificant detail of who I am and what I bring to the world that I wouldn’t even think of adding an “inspiring” caption to a photo of me in a bathing suit. I wouldn’t for one second think that the thing that makes it worthy of existing in the world is explaining that fact to everyone, and watching how the explanation might help everyone else feel better, too. I don’t want to be inspiring at all, really. I don’t want to know that if I talk about stretch marks or cellulite or gaining weight or clothes not fitting that it will be met with a wave of likes, of comments and praise. I don’t want to know that, but I do.
A friend of mine used to joke that the easiest way to boost engagement as an influencer existing in a plus size body is to simply post a bathing suit photo. Caption it, “Life’s too short not to wear the bathing suit!” or “Here to remind you that cellulite is normal,” and call it a day. I’ve done this, too, of course. Both because, yes, life is too short not to wear the bathing suit and cellulite is normal and also because, if we’re being honest, it feels that much easier to wear a bathing suit or to have cellulite when you have hundreds of strangers sending you flame emojis in response, cheering you on. Of course, you never know if this is because you actually look hot, or because you make them feel “brave” enough to wear a bathing suit, too. To take a photo of it and share it. I’ve considered before that, at best, it’s maybe 60/40, or 70/30. The majority portion always being the ~inspirational content~ column of things. But it doesn’t really matter. Both options are not really the correct motivation for anything, I’ve found.
But I’ve been writing and sharing about my body and how I feel about it for years. In essays, on Instagram, through blog posts. I wrote about it so much that it became part of my brand, why people started following me in the first place. It helped me be honest about the ways I had starved myself, the years I spent tracking and measuring myself — through weight, through photos, through apps, through goal clothing, through it all. It helped me let go of diet culture and stop lying to myself about “lifestyle changes” and “strength training” and “clean eating.” It taught me that all of it, without exception, was just a way to be skinnier. That it was never about health, but more about being thin feeling like safety, like winning, like relaxing. Writing about every dark thought I had about my body was the only way I would really get to know myself, I realized. If I wanted that, I had to be real about the truth of it. It wasn’t comfortable, of course, but it was the first time I could look at something I wrote about myself and really believe every word of it.
Over time, I’ve watched publications want essays about body positivity, then body neutrality, then something that combines them both, or explains both concepts in an easily digestible, advertiser-friendly way. I’ve written those essays. I’ve felt good about them. I’ve been honest in them. But now so many of them, though honest, just feel like a way of searching for the same thing I always thought being thin would bring me: Safety, a win, relaxation. I thought if I could just explain my body and how I felt about it well enough, then I would suddenly be content with it. If I was confident enough online, if I wore the bathing suits and explained why I should be allowed to, then I could take a break. I could take a break from the constant calculations of what to eat, what not to eat, of scrolling through old photos and comparing body parts side-by-side, of fantasizing about how life would be easier if I was a size 12 again, or a 10, or even smaller. I wouldn’t be tempted by weight loss drugs, wouldn’t feel envious of people I see online who used to be the same size of me getting smaller, wouldn’t obsess over missed workouts and how many calories was in a glass of wine or a medium banana or a bowl of popcorn. And though life feels more sustainable this way than it did during the years when I would start each morning stark naked standing on a scale, determining my mood by what it said, all those other thoughts and feelings haven’t really gone away, either.
Last year, I wrote an essay about a particularly bad body image day, and someone replied and said, “You know, there are things you can do about that, right?” as if I hadn’t considered that I could lose weight. As if because I had been so open about accepting myself as I am instead of constantly trying to shrink that I wouldn’t feel allowed to lose weight. They said more than this, but the larger implication was that I had backed myself into some body positive corner where I felt like I owed the world this version of me, at this exact size. As if I felt I wasn’t allowed to get smaller, so I didn’t try. As if I didn’t realize, every single day, as I have for my entire life, that working to become thinner would always be more understandable and more praise-worthy and more ~inspirational~ to people than that not being the goal anymore. That even if I was starving myself, even if felt out of control and hungry and scared of food constantly, that it would still probably be easier to understand than just being ok existing as I am. As if I don’t know in my gut, if we’re being honest, that that will always be the truth about the world on some level.
I also wanted to tell them, well, actually, I had lost a decent amount of weight in the last year. And didn’t they see that? Couldn’t they tell? Or was that good enough? I wanted to tell them, I can do that. I know how to. I’ve done it before. I still have the calorie counting app on my phone. I can cut out coffee creamer. I can drink vodka sodas instead. I can run harder, walk further. I wanted to tell them that I am not an idiot. That even though the ways I lost weight more recently were different than the past, that I never weighed myself, never tracked calories, never restricted food, being slightly smaller than I was the year before didn’t change how I felt about anything. It didn’t suddenly make me feel like I could relax or stop, or pump the breaks. I might have been upset about a slightly smaller size of clothing not fitting, but the feeling of wishing I was smaller, still, was the same. The fact that it was a 12 instead of a 14 didn’t matter, because I knew a 10 was out there somewhere, waiting. The urge to push harder, get smaller, be better was the same. The disgust I felt toward myself in my darkest moments was the same. Nothing about it was new, and it never has been, no matter how much smaller I get. I wanted to tell them that this is why I stopped dieting, stopped obsessing over weight. That this is exactly what made it unsustainable, but all I could think was that they probably thought this was just an excuse. A way to avoid hard work. That I was lazy. Pathetic. Weak. I considered that maybe they had a point, but mostly I just felt tired. Because as I’m realizing now, how are any of us supposed to want anything other than to be smaller in this world, as it is now.
So no, I don’t want to write about my body anymore, maybe. I don’t want to feel like I’m justifying it. I don’t want it to be inspiring. I don’t want to open myself up to people who read my deepest, darkest thoughts and then say something like, “Hey, have you tried to lose weight instead of, you know, working through those feelings? It might work better!” But writing is how I make sense of the world, of myself, so I suspect like now, I’ll keep on writing anyway. It might not change anything, but it helps me understand where I stand. And mostly what I’ve concluded so far after nearly a decade of writing about my body is that it makes sense I haven’t gotten to some magical self-acceptance equilibrium. It makes sense that I might never get there. How could any of us expect to get there in the world we live in, when cosmetic procedures are supposed to empowering, and weight loss content is suddenly about “confidence” without considering where that confidence comes from, and every image we see is curated, posed, edited, or all of the above? When none of us are being honest about the fact that being thinner is easier, having less wrinkles is easier, worshipping a million different ways to be more attractive, by the world’s constantly-shifting standards, is easier? When everyone is saying “I’m doing this for me” when that could never possibly be true in this world? Because of the fact that you’re rewarded in this life, especially as a woman, when you’re hotter, thinner, younger — when you’re, at the very least, always aiming for that.
Thinking and writing and talking about my body is exhausting, yes. It’s far from the most interesting thing about me, and yet it takes up so much of my brain, and so much of how I operate in the world, as I imagine it does for many other people, and women in particular. I fantasize about a world where I stop writing about all of it and I throw in the towel. I do the thing I’ve always done which is respond to every insecurity with a knee-jerk, surface-level solution. Don’t like your body? Change it. Self-conscious of wrinkles? Hide them. Gain weight? Either hate yourself enough to lose it or love yourself in a way that allows you to lose it eventually, too. I know that it’s all more complicated than just waving goodbye to the world’s standards of beauty and existing outside of them, of course, but it also doesn’t have to be as simple of giving in to it all, all the time, either, right? It doesn’t have to be as surface-level and hollow and sad as accepting it and calling it a day, of believing that any single change will make us feel better when there are entire industries dedicated to making us feel the opposite.
So, yes, I might be tired of writing about my body and of working through how I feel about things and why and navigating the various responses to those things, but I’m more tired of surface level. I’m bored of surface-level. I am craving more than surface-level. And the deeper I go, the more I write, the more I realize that maybe it was never just about my body, or yours, but about the things we all lose sight of when we spend more time thinking about how we look than everything else. That maybe it was always about the ways we lose sight of ourselves so much more than it was about losing anything else.
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I'm currently writing a piece on my ED and trying to find peace in a world obsessed with thinness. It's difficult to navigate what I want to share with others and what I want to keep just for me. Your writing has always touched, particularly when reflecting on your body – however, you have never been just that. To me, you have been kindness, you have been strength, you have been warmth, you have been growth.
This piece made me reflect on what I want to do with my writing and more importantly my body; I too want peace, to just 'have' a body and never think of it as anything other than the vehicle to my life.
I hope we both find somewhere to situate ourselves, somewhere to sit, somewhere to rest – in our bodies, in our homes, and in ourselves.
Thank you, Olivia.
You might like (or already know about) the newsletter published by Jessica DeFino called Unpublishable. She writes a lot about the larger forces that make people (women, especially) feel compelled to conform to beauty standards. Just wanted to share!