My body is your worst fear

Because there's nothing worse than being fat

Ozempic is a drug often prescribed to patients with Type 2 Diabetes to help them manage their weight and keep their blood sugar levels in check. It is also the drug du jour for anyone looking to suppress their appetite and lose those extra pounds fast.

As a child of the 90s I grew up with the likes of Kate Moss and Jaime King modeling the latest trends. Christina and Britney wore jeans that only just covered their respective mons pubis. I vividly remember when Keira Knightley wore those super low jeans with that white, wrapped, cropped tube top to her movie premiere. Which is to say, my sense of self was first built when heroin-chic and peak thinness were aspirational.

When your clavicle was covered by a healthy level of muscle, skin, and the villianous body fat, there were myriad placating remarks. “You’ll grow out of your baby fat when you’re older,” or “you just got your womanly figure earlier than your peers.” Knowing you would not match the ideals was heartbreaking to say the least. Joining Weight Watchers as a teen and other similar diets only helped to cultivate an unhealthy relationship with food on top of a poor image.

Growing up I hovered around a US size 16, which is the average size of the American woman. It left me just out of arms reach in most stores, many of which topped out at size 14. If I was lucky, I might find a single pair of bootcut jeans, folded and stuffed at the back corner of some dingy bottom shelf. Don’t even get me started on the amount of business clothing I had no choice but to don as a kid. That said, I seemed to come of age at the precipice of change.

Over the past decade or so, more and more retailers began to acknowledge the lucrative plus size market. For the first time there were multiple stores to shop at. And somewhere along the line, I changed. I decided not to wait to enjoy life because of my size. I would wear what I wanted, do what I wanted, be who I wanted. If you follow astrology, I blame it on my Aries rising. If you don’t, the perpetual “mother” casting in nearly every play I’ve ever been in got pretty damn tiring.

It’s not to say I didn’t struggle with my own body image. I still do at times. There was the summer I lost 40 lbs by working 80 hour weeks and surviving on one salad per day and Cheezits if I felt I was going to crash. There was the year of Halo Top ice cream (can it even be called ice cream) and convincing myself it was satisfying. But I made the choice to love my body for what it was, not what I dreamed it might be, and the world seemed it was beginning to be okay with that.

For each wound we heal, we’re often forced to test the strength of our resolve.

Many of the retailers that were praised for expanding their size ranges have begun to silently remove them from their shelves. Their plus size customers went from hiding in dark corners, to being included for once, to yet again being relegated to a different corner, this time the dreaded “curve” tab on a website.

Lately, many of the influencers and content creators who helped me find the language to describe my journey with body neutrality and self-acceptance are switching gears. Some are proudly sharing their journey with Ozempic, others are pivoting to becoming fitness bloggers. While I do firmly believe your body is yours to do with as you please/need, there is something disheartening about watching teachers, so to speak, do a complete 180. When they abandon the audience and platform they built to now begin preaching another message.

I understand the impulse, the desire. The world is cruel and it views fatness like a virus. On every corner is a new diet to try, a new fitness regime, or a new girdle to pull in and camouflage your bits. If you’ve never been fat, its hard to imagine the added labor that comes with being of a larger size. I check weight limits before activities on vacations and before buying furniture. I research seat measurements before traveling or purchasing theater tickets. And I’m what some in the body positivity movement call a ‘small fat’, meaning that even at my larger size I still have the privilege to move pretty seamlessly in the world. I haven’t had to purchase a second plane seat nor do I deal with any physical limitations (but why do stairs suck?).

The truth is fat people have always existed, and will continue to do so. The world is a big place, so why do we insist on being small? On taking up less space? Life is too short to try and fit into the boxes set forth by other people. It’s too short to live as a square peg forcing itself into a round hole. And its far too short to delay or deny yourself the happiness because you’re too big, too soft, too round.

There’s too much joy to be had. And there is freedom that comes with radical self-love.

Just a thought…