Self Hate is Not Your Body’s Fault
Ugh! I was going to do a video today but I woke up feeling so tired and worn out and I have a big night tonight and then I saw an article/slideshow on Yahoo! that pissed me off SO HARD!!! Of course they’d put it on the front fucking page for everyone, of all sizes, to feel shitty about themselves first thing…ASSHOLES!!! I was just wanting to catch my horoscope (I love that shit). Here is the article, but I warn you that it is full of body shame. (And perhaps I am making a lot of assumptions below, but this was my gut reaction and I am going with my big, beautiful gut today.)
It is a series of photographs of a fat woman. She is unhappy with her life and has chosen to blame her fat body for it. This is what upsets me most. That she took these incredible images and chose to see the worst possible thing in them: her body? NO! Her body in those images is beautiful! The saddest is the “after” photos, post lap band, when she’s alone on the beach where she’d previously been surrounded by friends and when she’s saying goodbye to her boyfriend. She says, “I realized that I was capable of love and acceptance. I had been searching for this in my life…” Um…NO! Oh my gawd, NO!
I hate this messaging so much! You don’t have to have a ______ body to have love and acceptance in your life! You certainly don’t have to mutilate or amputate your insides in order to be happy or have confidence and acceptance. Her words are the antithesis of my own personal experiences. I know it’s hard to live in a fat body. I know it’s hard to love yourself in a fat body when society insists you shouldn’t, that you can’t and that you should be ashamed of yourself.
FUCK THAT!!!
This is a beautiful woman, “conventional” or not! This is an obviously talented photographer, too. Why didn’t her friends tell her this? Why didn’t they lift her up? You can see from the beach photo that her friends are smaller bodied, but are they shitty friends, too? I want to go back and tell this woman that she is incredible and amazing and beautiful and deserves all of the love and goodness in the world and SHE CAN HAVE ALL OF IT IN A FAT BODY!!!
I have all of it! I have a bigger body than she did and I am so full of love and acceptance. But I had to work for it. I had to insist upon better people and things and treating myself better first. I didn’t just stare out a window longing for my life to improve (okay, maybe I did a bit of that before I realized that I do in fact have control over how I feel on a given day).
I want to hug her and tell her that she deserves better and no one else will see that if she doesn’t give it to herself first. I would say this to anyone, though. We all deserve this! We all must find it in ourselves before we can expect it from others. I know this, I believe this and I see it in the world, too. Because deep down, no matter what your body looks like, if you don’t love and accept yourself you’ll never find happiness in the outside world.
An unhappy person will remain so without some self work, self love and self acceptance. When you tap into the wonders of you, you unlock the beauty and love you are and deserve, too. I hope she finds a way to see this within herself before the weight she lost is regained and she goes back to blaming her body size for her misery.
Amen, amen, amen. She clearly had no self worth when she was fat, it’s very likely that that her new-found self worth as a result of her weight loss will be temporary. I am fat. I suffer from depression. I often get down on myself because of my weight but do I blame my depression on my weight? Hell no. I know fully well that if I dropped the excess weight tomorrow, I would not be guarenteed a blissful life. Would I be guarenteed friends who love me for the person I am? A boyfriend who loves me and appreciation of my sex appeal from others? Who cares. I already have those things!
WoW! This is crazy, crazy, crazy! I had not seen those pictures yet, but find them to be strange & sends out the completely WRONG message to larger women!! I just recently found your blog yesterday and read a LOT of it. I find you to be very similar to me (we even found & love the same delta burke boy shorts!) lol. It is refreshing to come across a blog that says “here i am, yes i am fat, but i still love myself!” Amen girlie!! So sick of being put down all of the time by society when in all actuality, I love WHO i am! I am your newest fan 🙂