On Bodies: New years resolutions, weight, and 3 years of lessons.
I get it. I super super get it. I also can't wake up, pass a mirror, put on clothes, take a selfie or basically exist without wishing my body were a different size or a different shape or a different make-up. 3 or 4 years ago, I decided to do the thing you are doing. And I did the thing, I lost 80 pounds in a small amount of months. I felt amazing in my body for the first time in my life. People congratulated me (which felt good), people engaged in my process and asked about my path (which felt good), people sexualized me (complicated, but it felt good). Nothing about being skinnier felt bad. Not one single thing. But bodies don't care about how you feel about them, they have their own processes and their own plans (and some science). And rarely do their plans include keeping weight that has been lost off. Naturally (and I MEAN NATURALLY), I slowly started to put weight back on. The congratulations went away, the engagement went away, and yes, most of the flirting went away too. I had convinced myself that I was in control of my body, and as such, my brain made this my fault, my failure. A year later I hit my current weight, almost squarely in between my biggest and my smallest (and who knows where I’ll be next year). It does not feel like a triumph. If feels exhausting. On bad days, it feels like I spent 3+ years working on my body and not on my self. On bad days, it feels like I used what will power I had to buy a vacation through the life of a "pretty" person, only to come back to not being one. My partner at the time and I talked about it afterwards (she had also gone on vacation with me) and we both agreed it was so much better when we didn't know what that was like. I don't want this for you. I don't want this for anyone. Sure, build a better relationship to food if you have a bad one (I sure did/still do). Get into a gym because building strength feels good. Do the things that your body likes doing. But don't make it about weight. Don't let your friends make it about weight. Question the people who use your size to flirt or not flirt with you (fuck these guys, in particular). It is better down there, this is an unfortunate truth. The world puts a lot of work into making it better down there. Even us fat folk help make it better there (I for sure know I have - maybe more on that later/being a photographer is weird). Let's maybe not do that so much. We can all undertake individual paths to our own “failures” trying to get somewhere unrealistic, and make other people feel like shit in the process, or we can try to make it a little better up here in fatland (it's the snuggliest). What I'm saying is this - if you really want to be something different, don't be a skinny person, be a bear - be fat, be rad and eat the smaller creatures.
