It's A Shame To Be Fat

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Why are we ashamed that our body is "not too sexy"? Trust in the body is something that we are born with and that we lose over the course of our lives - because of the environment, because of the parents, because of the healthcare professionals - and these are just a few of the possible causes of loss. We did not agree to this. We are too young to know what happens when the tone of talking about our body begins to change. And then, over time, we internalize people's reactions to our body, we begin to consider them as our own, all this ends with a distance from our own body, the confidence that something is wrong with us, and this "wrong" needs to be corrected … We are no longer innocent, we are now responsible for fixing what others see as a problem

Do you know when you started to lose confidence in your body? For most women, this moment came in puberty. The fact is that girls usually put on some weight before menstruation begins, but many people do not know that this is a normal and natural process. This is exactly the moment when some parents or doctors consider weight gain to be pathology, children in school start to tease and we try our first diet, often with the support of significant adults. In her book Eating Under the Moonlight (2000 edition), clinical psychologist Anita Johnston writes: “Just as ancient societies had a special ritual for girls who began their period to celebrate their becoming a woman, our modern society also has its own ritual for adolescent girls, marking their entry into the world of women. And it is called - diet."

Don't you feel like screaming in indignation? In addition to this attention we receive regarding our weight, our breasts grow, our hips are rounded, and our bodies are transformed into sexual objects. We draw unwanted attention from strangers on the street, brother's friends, girlfriends fathers and classmates. We are not mature enough to grasp the essence of these messages (whether we like them or not), and we do not have enough self-confidence to defend ourselves and feel safe in the world. We are given this power before we are ready for it and before we agreed to have it. Under the yoke of all this attention, we do not have much time (or private space) to connect with our true sexuality, because now we are sex objects, and the focus of our gaze shifts from "what we want" to "how much they want us" … Carolyn Knapp, author of Appetites (2003 edition), says: “We turn our gaze to the outside world instead of the inside and learn to experience our body as an object outside of our self, as something that a woman possesses, and not as something that is the woman herself. We "dismember" the body into ever smaller parts - each of which is carefully evaluated and compared, each flaw is studied and ultimately exaggerated, and each part is more significant than the sum of the parts. Is my butt big? Is my belly flat enough? Do people think I'm cute? Do boys want me? " Anita Johnson says: "In the end, a woman buys into the myth that her sexuality comes from" beauty ", instead of realizing that it is precisely beauty that is a consequence of her sexuality." And, of course, it's not surprising that eating disorders very often start at this time. Many of us end up being obsessed with diet and fitness workouts that promise to give us a body we want, while few want to be just a sexual object, especially if we have the trauma of unwanted attention behind us when we were too young to know what's going on. And all of this puts us in a difficult position because we are women living in an important transition period and we want to be taken seriously. Virgie Tovar says: “When people say they want to lose weight, they often mean that they want respect, they want to be loved. To be noticed. They want to get rid of fear and hatred. But the cult of "weight loss" cannot give them this, because it is based on sexism, racism, class hierarchy and discrimination based on bodily capabilities. " And it becomes clear that we find ourselves in a very confusing situation in which we are trying to somehow orient ourselves. We are torn between our body, food, sexuality, pleasure and our desires. Thus, we seek our own dignity in a place where it cannot be found. We use food and our bodies in any way, as long as they distract us from the truth of our lives. Someone avoids something, someone endlessly consumes, someone limits themselves. Someone constantly changes partners, and someone avoids intimacy at any cost. And at the end of the day, we still feel empty, because our value is not in the outside world, it is something that grows from within. She's not a pair of shoes, jeans size, or a flat stomach. She's not the number of people who will find you fit for sex. Our value is something that we cultivate from the very center of our being. Until we start asking the right questions and looking for what we really need in a place where we can actually find it, we will be trapped in an endless cycle of dieting and eating disorders, existing in what can only roughly be called life, instead of in order to know the real power that can be found in our own bodies. The author of the popular column "Dear Sugar", Sharyl Straid, asks his readers a provocative question in the headline: “What's on the side of the global revolution, which is moving from hatred to love of one's own body? What are the fruits of this liberation? " Straid answers as follows: “We do not know this - we do not know as members of our society, as representatives of the same sex, as individuals, you and me. The fact is, we don't know if the ideas of feminism are true. We start businesses, we get positions, we get awards, but we never stop worrying about what our butt looks like in jeans. And for this there are a lot of reasons, numerous sexist aspects, of course, influence this process. But in the end, whatever it may be, it all depends on us."

This is true. Everything depends on us! The permission to love your body of any shape or size will not come from today's culture anytime soon. The patriarchal system will lose a lot if women stop endlessly striving for the ideal of thinness, and the diet / fitness industry will not survive this either. It is time for women to put an end to this madness and start trusting their bodies so that we can help young girls grow out of today's toxic culture and focus on more important questions such as: What gives me pleasure and satisfaction? How do I want to live my life? Why am I in this world? How can I show my strength and body sexuality? In her memoir Yes Please (2014 edition), Amy Poehler writes: “If you're lucky, there will come a point in your life when you can say for sure what your value in life will be. I decided early enough that it would definitely not be my appearance. I have spent all my life to realize this idea and I can say that now I have succeeded by 15-20 percent. And I think this is quite a big progress. "Switching from hate to love is a process, sometimes very long, but it is worth our time and effort. The good news is that the movement" for a positive attitude to the body "is gaining momentum today. More and more women are abandoning the dietary mentality and turning their attention to more important things than the ideal of thinness. And while the media matters, the hate-to-love revolution really starts with the conversations you have at home, at work, on the street. It starts when you are having dinner with your friends and decide to talk about more important things than how to "lose weight by summer." (By the way, there is no "summer body", your body is a body for all seasons!). The revolution starts when you refuse to participate in discussing someone's body or another diet; when you defend your boundaries, when someone comments on your body or your food, saying something like, “You have no right to talk about my body. My body is my business. " This will happen when you turn sympathetically to your own body and listen to it with kindness and curiosity. To choose this path means to be a pioneer. You are in front of the column. You are like a fish swimming against the stream when everyone else succumbs to the stream. But this gives much more strength than maintaining the status quo. This is the place where you will find freedom and build a lasting peace with your body. Let's move forward together. Imagine your freedom - yours and everyone else's. Allow yourself to relax. Show us your gentleness. We all need to step on the ground of compassion for the body, for the sake of freedom. In today's cultural paradigm, this is a very tough conversation, but for those who yearn for truth and intuitively feel the path to freedom, this discovery will give indescribable delight. We must all go first. The last lines in the book "Appetite" speak of the urgent need for such a revolution: “The road in front of me at two o'clock in the morning was empty, the sky was black, but starry. I pictured a little girl eagerly sucking on her mother's breast. A crumb who appeared in the world in her body, which was given to her to protect and guide her through this vast world, and I began to pray for her, to pray for changes to take place. I whispered to the universe: let her life be full."