The other day I received a message in my DMs. It was from a girl who wanted to connect with other bloggers in her area. Since, I am always up to meeting new people, I replied; before we knew it, we were engaged in a conversation about our lives, our goals, and the plus-size community in Miami and on Instagram. In our entire chat, one thing she said really struck me. She had been a size 18 (weighing 255 pounds) and had decided to lose weight for health issues (that was her personal decision—I am aware that not everyone who is heavy has health issues, she did). When she began losing weight, she noticed that people stopped following her or accused her of not being body positive. This both resonated with me and irritated me. I recalled being told I wasn’t body positive because I wasn’t “fat enough” and other moments on Instagram where my only reaction was WTF?! Really? Like when plus size model Latecia started working out and people in her comments were accusatory asking her if she was going to become “regular sized” or “skinny.”
That is absurd. While I understand that the diet culture is unhealthy, I don’t think we should shame people for losing weight or working out or leading a healthy lifestyle. These are NOT things to be ashamed of. These are not things we should discourage. Moreover, people should be allowed to make their own independent choices without all of us criticizing. Can you imagine being in pain or having health issues and NOT losing weight because you are afraid people will judge you? That is sickening.
Now, just like in politics, in weight I consider myself somewhere in the middle. I don’t think I am neither fat nor thin. If you ask me, Graupel has the right idea with the hashtag #iamsizeme, because that is precisely what I am. I have always been a full-bodied woman. A healthy, full-bodied woman. And a proud one in spite of my insecurities or the bullying I have endured simply for being myself. So when I heard of the body positive movement after having my baby, I jumped on the bandwagon. I felt bigger than usual, but I also felt beautiful. And I thought that was what the body positive movement was about: loving your body in spite of your imperfections.
But I quickly learned that it wasn’t—at least to many of the women who used the hashtag on Instagram.
There are so many ugly feelings still out there. From BOTH sides. From skinny women who ridicule fat ones for embracing their bodies. And from fat women who shame skinny women on their privilege. And I understand that the prior have faced a lifetime of hate and prejudice, but is fighting hate with hate the answer?
The truth is, we ARE all beautiful in our own ways. And you know when we become ugly? When we judge and hate… especially when we dislike it being done to us. I don’t understand, we hate when we get fat shamed so we skinny shame in response? We become nasty towards our fellow woman? We don’t let them in to our exclusive bopo club? That’s not fair. Particularly when many of these “skinny” women are struggling too. Many of them have body dysmorphia, and eating disorders and insecurities. They are also fighting a battle and should be allowed and encouraged to love themselves and their bodies.
Happy and confident women don’t go around hating on others, so something has to be ping on in their lives.
And to the ones who continue to be mean, let’s be the bigger person (no pun intended). Kill them with kindness, show them that their opinions really don’t matter through indifference.
Being body positive should mean being happy with who you are and loving yourself regardless of what you look like. That means there should be body positive women who are thin, thick, fat, short, tall, built, etc. And none of us are in the right to judge them or shame them for their choices. We reject people who shame fat women and call them unhealthy. Then, we should reject people who ostracize thin women and believe that loving one’s body is solely reserved for women who aren’t thin.
Simply put, we need to stop the obsession with weight. Let both fat and skinny people be. We advocate so much about who we are on the inside, but we let who we are on the outside get on the way.
Everyone should love her body, no matter what she looks like. And all of us should really dedicate ourselves to being kind to each other. We don’t know the plight of the girl on the other side of the nasty comments. I’ll use an old saying that gets used often but not applied enough: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. And another one just because it’s an oldie and a goodie: live and let live!
This post is not about excusing people’s behaviors, it’s about taking ahold of ours. But let’s definitely try to stop breaking each other down because we really are stronger together.
All I could think about as I read this post was: live and let live, but it has already been said here. For some reason “the internet” is home to bullying and people acting bold because of anonymity (real or imagined). I believe that a persons character is measured, when they behave in a humane and caring way when no-one is watching. I dislike bullies, I think we need to be more bold in how we deal with them, because unfortunately it appears that most of them don’t know that they are bullies, or something more explicit. By bold in dealing with them, I mean simply calling them out banding together and pushing back a little. Another strategy is to not say anything at all, but my fear here is that they’ll just move on to somewhere where they can engage and attempt to destroy or harass someone else. I have learned to speak up, I think that there is a lot of force for good, but people just wont speak up.
We need to find common ground, if we are to make it as people, and by people I mean mankind. It’s not very logical to concentrate on the differences, we can all find so much in common by being patient and communicating.