Every time I hear someone much older than me talking about how their shame about their bodies and weight have robbed them of all kinds of fun experiences and simple joys and delights in life, it breaks my fucking heart. Older women, in particular, have been shamed into and forced into (and perpetuated themselves) so many stupid narratives about what one "can't do" if you look a certain way. Sometimes they don't even notice it...they'll just casually be saying something like, "I would have loved to play volleyball back in school but this big ass wasn't going to look right in those shorts tee hee" and I'm like that's??? actually??? tragic???????? Especially when it's something they COULD still pursue or try but they've got a fixed mindset about it.
My 84 year old aunt really spent all of her 30s-60s believing that she COULDN'T just put on a swimsuit and enjoy the water in the summer. I have so many memories of this mindset affecting her all summer. Just casually existing by a pool in a swimsuit was something that women who looked like her Could Not Do. This is someone who broke so many gender barriers in her field, who was a pioneer and a bad ass, but who held herself back from something she truly enjoyed for DECADES because she's fat. A couple of years ago she told me how stupid she feels having thought like that now that her age has changed her mobility and safety in going to a pool and it's no longer literally possible for her to do so.
She bought the bullshit and deprived herself of happiness when it was possible, so she lost her chance at hundreds of moments of simple enjoyment she now looks back on sadly.
Really sadly.
I think this is a topic where we can literally see a huge generational change among society right now. The bitchy boomer who says something like, "oh she should NOT be wearing that" when a happy, chunky Gen Zer bops by in a crop top sounds like the death rattles of an ancient relic to most of us in younger generations. After we get over the overt hate that surges when we hear things like that, most of us can see right through that prickly exterior into the deeply damaged, sad, and vulnerable person inside who is the one that's the real problem in the equation.
And yet, while it can be easy to think, "Thank god I'm not like THAT" none of us are truly immune to the messages that are blasted in our faces all the time that still shame fatness and make us feel like we owe society a certain kind of "beauty."
Just keep an eye out for any limiting beliefs you have that are depriving you from joy and delight you want and need. As anyone like my aunt could tell you, you won't someday look back and think, "I sure am glad I didn't do what made me happy all those years!"
Growing up in the 70s and 80s I cannot overstate how heavy the pressure of body conformity was, but it was *weak* compared to what was pushed on my mother, who grew up in the 50s and 60s.
I can't help but think that a whole lot of the backlash against trans people has to do with people who grew up in this mindset.
I grew up with a rock solid message that I must never, ever wear horizontal stripes because they would "make me look fat".
I *AM* fat. And one day I found this dress with horizontal stripes made out of the softest knit fabric, a maxidress, with pockets, the kind of thing you toss on and don't have to wear anything else at all when it's hot... the fabric is literally cool to the touch...
And it dawned on me that there were no number of vertical stripes in the world that were going to make me look not-fat and I bought the damn dress and I still sometimes wear it. It's one of the more comfortable things I own, though I've almost completely replaced my wardrobe to be sensory friendly fabrics. My 40s were about unpacking all the bs my mother fed me, which was, still, tame compared to what she had shoved at her her whole goddamn life. Things like, "You have the wrong head shape to wear a buzz cut." Like really, that's a thing that was said to me when I had literally never tried it. I've been clippering my hear now for eight years and you know what? There's no wrong shape to go nearly bald.
The cost of nonconformity was much, much higher back then. We're not so very far from the times when failure to dress "correctly" could land one in a mental institution or jail.
It must have killed my mother inside when I had my massive growth spurt at 7. I grew over a foot. And I got heavy.
Then I stayed heavy. But I was never fat. I was a thick girl built for moving hay bales and feeding calves. I was literally active for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for the entirety of summer.
But I wasn't the slim, perfect teenager she had been. I was a size 16/18. And she made sure I knew it. So many snide comments, only half in my direction but absolutely meant to sting.
I spent the entirety of my teenage years thinking I was fat. I didn't want to do anything where someone might see any part of me. But the girl in those pictures was healthy.
I had a brief period in my 20's where I was almost thin enough. It was... Not good for me in a lot of other ways. Now, it's the nagging knowledge that I managed to get the weight off once, I can do it again.
I'm still unpacking it all. Still trying not to hate myself after having my son via emergency c-section. Then massive PPD. Because I know I'm never going to get rid of all the fat around the scars. But that voice, that sounds so much like my mother, wants me to feel bad.
