Hi friend,
These are the days your body was built for.
During this pandemic, so many people are finding that their bodies, for the first time, are now in the âplus sizeâ or âfatter than I wantedâ categories, and are finding it a pretty scary place to be. Itâs scary because, if youâve been alive more than five minutes, youâve seen the way that fat people are treated, and itâs perfectly reasonable to want no part of that.
(Psst â itâs also a wakeup call to change how you treat and value people in fat bodies. If you donât want to be treated like us, treat us better and advocate for equity so that if and when your body changes, youâre not in for the same treatment.)
No matter what size and shape your body ends up, you have exactly the same worth and value that youâve always had. You will deserve the same respect, good treatment and dignity that you always have.
If all you do through a global pandemic -- and, depending on where you live, a recession -- is survive, you are doing just fine.
Iâm sending lots of ease and hope for you. Hang in there.
If you want to also be good to the fat people around you and who see your posts online, hereâs what to do: Avoid talking publicly about your terror of existing in a body like those of your fat(ter) friends. Itâs hard to also be trying to survive a global pandemic while constantly hearing and seeing that people are distressed because they now look slightly more like you.
That does not mean that you canât talk about your struggles! It just means being a little more careful of how you share your body fears. Maybe instead of saying âIâm so afraid Iâll get fatâ or âI'm now a size YY and I hate it,â reframe it as âmy body is changing in ways I canât control and that scares me.â
No one wants to shut you up, or marginalize you, if you live in a smaller body and youâre talking about your body fears. We fat folks would just like to not hear for a few minutes about how terrified you are of our unruly bodies.
Because, after all, our fears really do come down to control. The culture we live in teaches us that we can control everything if weâre smart, strong and rich enough. If we could just control what our bodies do, if we just had enough discipline and willpower and determination and drive, we could mold and shrink our bodies so that they looked just like the bodies weâre told should be our #goals.
But we donât have that control.
Our bodies have deep instincts and rhythms, anti-famine devices and intergenerational trauma, that are simply out of our conscious control. Not only have our routines and rhythms and, possibly, food intake changed recently, but we are quite literally in the kind of situation human bodies were built to withstand.
Your body is saying, âOh, hereâs the catastrophe Iâve been preparing for for a thousand years. Bring it on. Weâve got this. Iâm here to support you.â
How tragic is it that weâve been taught to feel like our life partners, our physical ties to this world, our unique earthly forms, are trying to betray us, when theyâre giving their all to protect us?
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