I was 11 the first time someone told me I should lose weight. It was a doctor. I was in for a school physical. He didn’t ask about my life, my happiness, my relationship with food. He looked at a chart and told my mother I was overweight. I was 11. That was the beginning of a 35-year education in how the world treats fat women. We’re told to shrink. To apologise. To be grateful for any attention we get because we should expect less. We’re told our bodies are problems to be solved. I believed that for decades. I’m done. Here’s what I’ve learned – about desire, about worth, and about the radical act of adorning a body you were told to hide.
The lie of “be grateful”
How many times have you heard it? You should be grateful anyone finds you attractive. Grateful someone wants to sleep with you. Grateful for whatever crumbs of desire come your way, because fat women aren’t supposed to be desired – we’re supposed to be tolerated. I have had partners who made me feel like a concession. A compromise. A they’ll do for now. And I accepted it because I believed that was what I deserved. It wasn’t. Desire is not a limited resource that only thin people get access to. It’s a human birthright. Your body – whatever its size – is worthy of being wanted. Not despite its size. Not as a consolation. Fully. Enthusiastically. Without apology. The first time I was with someone who desired my body exactly as it was – who didn’t want me to lose weight, who didn’t suggest positions that hid my stomach, who looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the room – I cried. Because I realised I had never been looked at that way before. And I should have been. From the beginning.
What I do differently now
I wear what I want. I bought a body chain that traces across my stomach – the stomach I was told to hide – and I wear it in front of the mirror for me. I stopped dating people who made me feel like a compromise. I started telling partners what I wanted and expected them to listen. I started adorning my body instead of trying to shrink it. The chain doesn’t hide anything. It frames everything. It says: this body is worth decorating. This body is worth seeing. This body is mine.
If you’ve ever been told your body is too much – too big, too fat, too present – you’re not too much. You’re exactly the amount of body you’re supposed to have. And every inch of it deserves to be desired. Without apology. Without gratitude. Just because it’s yours.
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