Without fail at noon on every Friday, 30 minutes before my beginner ballet class starts, a mixture of fear and dread ooze into my mind. It starts when I think of getting dressed for class. Despite a well-stocked closet, I am never content with my choices. I spend 20 minutes scouring my closet for a garment that doesn’t exist—I am looking for something that will make me invincible. Exasperated, I leave wearing the same men’s gym shorts and oversized t-shirt. My nerves don’t get any better once I get to class. I am scared to look at my body in a mirror; I am scared to compare my body to my peers. I try to stand in the back rows as far away from the mirrors as possible, and I still occasionally catch a glimpse of my double chin. Or my belly escaping the drapery of my shirt. I am scared that even after working at accepting my body and fighting tooth and nail to get those around me to change their actions and opinions, I will see something repulsive. I can’t get through a weekly dance class without having to give myself pep talks. It takes all that I can muster to remind myself that I am beautiful and, more importantly, worthy of being in that class. It takes all that I have to remind myself that I love my body and that I can take pleasure in moving it. I can take pleasure and find beauty in my body.
I loathe classifying these problems (yes, I acknowledge that they’re problems) as “body image” problems. “Body image” isn’t really about the image of bodies. It’s about the holistic relationships we have with our bodies. It’s about how bodies look, how they move, what they feel like, and how we treat them. Even if we ignore semantics, conversations about body image almost always come down to health. Most conversations I’ve had about body image blame the media and advertising for exposing young girls to impossible standards in order to sell products. But more than selling products, these images drive people to unhealthy habits—crash diets, disordered eating, and sometimes even more dramatic actions like diet pills and self-harm.
And yet many of these behaviors have been recommended to me by health professionals. You see, I’m fat. Not does-this-dress-make-me-look-fat fat, but eligible-for-weight-loss-surgery-morbidly-obese-death fat. I’ve been fat for as long as I can remember, but the first time I remember my size being an issue was at a check-up. I was 8 years old, and after plotting my height and weight in one of those grids, my pediatrician had one of those ‘talks’ with my parents and me. I was too heavy for my height and age, so he presented me with a Xeroxed list of 10 ‘helpful tips’ for eating.
It was meant to be innocuous, but I became obsessed with that sheet of paper. It was the first time I saw my body as a personal failing, and that list was the way to redeem myself. I followed the rules to a tee, and yet I didn’t get any smaller. That simple piece of paper was only the beginning. My adolescence was filled with appointments with doctors and nutritionists, medically facilitated crash diets, and crying fits in dressing rooms. My doctors pathologised my body, and I believed them. I believed that my fat body meant that I was overeating, even when I would leave the dinner table hungry. I believed that I was lazy, unkempt, untrustworthy. I couldn’t trust myself.
I can’t rely on a conventional understanding of health to fix my body image issues because my body image issues stem from those conventional understandings of health. To find peace with my body I’ve had to reject mainstream medical wisdom. I screen my health care professionals, and I set firm boundaries. I am not interested in weight loss, and I will not step on a scale. I don’t care about a new diet regimen; I care about eating. I’ve learned to love my body—I love the look of my body; I love the way my squishy, soft flesh feels. I have embraced my fat. I do this because I care about my body. I care less about the image of my body, and I care more about my relationship to my body.
When I stand at the barre to begin my weekly ballet class, I am reminded that loving my body is both difficult and important. As we go through the usual warm-up routine I feel my muscles stretch and flex. I am present in my body, and I appreciate the grace and flow of movements. As we transition into leaps and jumps, I am reminded of that power in my body. My hearty legs can push my body in the air again and again in rapid succession. I land easily each time.
I am still scared that even after working to accept my body I will catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and find something ugly. So far, I’ve only seen my body. My fat, beautiful body.
When Jenn Leyva was 16, her dad told her that he’d buy her a car if she lost weight. She cried, finished her calculus homework, and is now a New York based fat activist and a senior at Columbia studying biochemistry. She authors Fat and the Ivy, a fat blog about social justice, feminism, science, health, and fa(t)shion.
This piece was originally published on Role/Reboot here and has been republished with full permission.
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Top Comments
Hypothetical Situation: You're 40. Your doctor has discovered a blockage in one of the major arteries in your leg and you've just had surgery to remove it, as it was causing numbness in your leg and after a few weeks of that you started having trouble walking. You're not overweight, you don't drink, you exercise moderately and eat healthily. However, you do smoke cigarettes. Further tests have shown that you have several other arteries in your body that aren't completely blocked, but are over 50% blocked and will only continue to become more so. This is putting increasing strain on your heart.
Your surgeon and your doctor both sit you down after the surgery and tell you that the plaque blocking your arteries is a DIRECT result of your 30 a day cigarette habit. They both tell you, as medical professionals, that if you do not quit smoking then there is a VERY high risk that this will kill you prematurely.
Do you stand up, get angry, yell at the doctor and surgeon not to be so bigoted, and storm out? Or do you sit up and take notice and realise that you need to stop smoking otherwise your health and circulation is only going to steadily decline, as is your quality of life? You have been given a direct instruction that quitting smoking will improve your health, probably dramatically, and extend your life measurably.
Do you stand there and say that you're a proud smoker? That no matter what people think about your smoking habit, that you love yourself as a smoker and couldn't see yourself any other way? Do you say that it doesn't matter that this affliction is slowly killing you, because you're happy with yourself and you enjoy smoking and that is all that matters to you? Let's face it, being ALIVE is what matters most to anyone when faced with the alternative.
We really need to get off the bullsh*t horse when it comes to obesity. I'm talking "eligible-for-weight-loss-surgery-morbidly-obese-death" obesity. If we continue to deny there is a problem, or deny the overwhelming scientific, medical and SOCIAL evidence that a terrible diet and a sedentary lifestyle is slowly killing some of us, then there really is no hope of changing this. We as a society need to step up and say that this is not OK. Not when so many of these illnesses and issues are preventable within the individuals who carry them. Yes I do understand some cases are not the persons fault. However, if someone is morbidly obese because of, say, a thyroid condition, does this mean because they have a condition that makes their obesity "not their fault" that we should not still try and treat this obesity in this person? Whether it's your own fault you're obese or the doing of some other underlying medical or psychological condition, it does not make being morbidly obese any less disasterous for the body or dangerous for the person who has it.
Personally, I believe the ONLY opinions that really carry weight (pardon the pun) in this debate are those of trained medical professionals, those who have trained for years in this field and who have used the combined knowledge of humanity, collected over hundreds of years, to form educated opinions on the matter.
Why is everyone so against someone being happy with themselves?
This woman has managed to find love for herself in a world telling her to literally kill herself, starve herself and exercise herself to death. She is living life and loving herself with a positive attitude.
Why can't people accept it and then think what would make me love myself like that?
In a world full of shallow, vain people that only care about looks I believe it is heartening to see that some people despite the messages the media/strangers sends can love themselves.
Fat hate must end - as must healthism. Many people have health problems that are entirely unrelated to their weight. And health does not equal our worth.
I love you, Jenn Leyva. Truly, I do.
As a kid I was told by my parents, constantly that I was fat and overweight. I was confused, ashamed and had no idea how to handle it. I was eating flaxseed salads and diet shakes in high school when all my friends had ham sandwiches. I got that I was fatter than them, but I didn't get why. It wasn't until I moved out, at 22, that I started to realise how my body worked and that the way it worked and looked was ok. Buying my first lot of clothing without my mother there telling me "It's not the right cut" was breathtakingly cathartic. I now am a much happier person and spend more time taking care of the inside of me than the outside. It comes down to understanding, not striving for a certain image.
Seriously, so much love for you. x