Through the magic of the internets, I came across the tumblr site, Stop Hating Your Body. And I've come to a decision about my future weight loss plans.
I'm just not going to weigh myself anymore. I'm not dealing with the numbers well. I doubt I've ever dealt with the numbers well. The only gauge I care to keep track of is not measured by weight. The numbers are bullshit in any event. According to my height, my BMI would be "normal" even if I were down to 95 pounds. Well, you know what, BMI chart? Fuck you.
For everything else I'm about to say: honest to god, I know some websites would flag things as "triggering" and divide up the triggers -- self-harm, anorexia, bulimia, all that. To the best of my self-diagnosis abilities, I have never actually suffered from an eating disorder. Maybe some relatively minor anorexic tendencies in my early 20s, some compulsive overeating here and there in times of stress, but I wouldn't call myself a sufferer. I wouldn't normally consider myself to be "triggered" by, well, anything really. Which isn't to say that I'm not at least minorly affected by certain things. But I don't count myself among those so ill as to need counseling, therapy, intervention, etc.
So I'm just going to talk about what I'm going to talk about. I don't know if any of it is triggering. To be honest, a large part of me doesn't want to devote any more brain power to ED rules, so I'm just going to be honest and see where that takes us. If you're the kind of person who can be triggered (I suppose by anything), don't bother reading on.
I found as I was scrolling through SHYB that I was skimming, pausing only for numbers and pictures. 140 pounds and 5'10.5", 178 pounds here, "only 102." I stopped at a nude side shot of someone who was purportedly Adele and stared at her stomach. I thought about what my stomach must look like from the side.
I should say that I'm not very good at skimming, so the numbers were convenient hooks for me to pause on. I don't know if I was scanning specifically for numbers, but at this point, I can't honestly tell you whether I did or didn't. I read some of the submissions and found they were by teenagers. Babes, practically. Fourteen year olds with (already) histories of diagnoses, obvious familiarity with trigger terms and clinical vocabulary, and as much adopted lingo from the pro-ana/mia communities as I ever knew when I lurked within them a few years ago.
Hardly anyone out of their teens. Is that only about one generation removed from me now or two? How old am I again? Most everything was tl;dr. Even when it wasn't. It makes me want to apologize to the authors. And if it didn't have a picture at all, I was skipping right by it. I was making myself uncomfortable by the time I got to the second page of archives. I got to the third and just had to stop. I had wanted to hit the "follow" button on this tumblr, but couldn't.
I'm in a strange little spot. And a lonely one, filled with anxiety. I want to support the body-positive movement, but I am in many ways far too judgmental to be in it. The young woman who runs SHYB posted a video that went viral a few months back. She vlogged in a bra and panties about body acceptance and not needing to be skinny to be happy. She noted her own numbers as one of the first things she says: 5'8.5 and 195 pounds.
Although I wouldn't call her my type, I do think she's pretty and that her weight is fine. Her message is a good one and she makes a positive example for a lot of people. If I don't sound super ultra positive about it, it's because I feel slightly like I'm reporting. This isn't my crusade. I have my own issues with body image, ideals, flaws. "Flaws," I should say. But with her, I think she's perfectly fine. I think this, this, this, this, this: all perfectly fine. I didn't have a good idea of what 195 pounds in a 5'8.5" frame looked like, but then I saw it, and I think it's fine.
But -- and I don't know if this is an extension of my own problems -- I have a much harder time trying to say "you're beautiful just as you are" to the morbidly obese. The fact is that I did take a look at her and decide, "I agree with her that her body is perfectly fine." It was her positive attitude really that really makes her seem just fine the way she is. She doesn't have the aura of, "I think she'd be more positive about herself if she just dropped a few pounds." She doesn't give the impression of "My confidence would rise if I were a size 8."
In an idealized world, was I supposed not want to watch the video at all, because, well, who cares what she looks like? How much of me clicked on the video because I wanted to see what a "body positive" person actually looked like?
I don't actually know if the body-positive proponents would extend their mantra of positive thinking and self acceptance to those over, say 400 pounds on a 5'2 frame. To the extent that I do, it's because I think that positive thinking and body acceptance would serve to cut down on compulsive behaviors like binge eating. But I have a much harder time clinging to body-positive imaging when my gut reaction is to infer depression and self-loathing.
I don't know how right or wrong any of that is. But my basic instinct is guilt over the whole messy debate taking place in my head. And the guilt alone points in the direction of "wrong." I struggle with that.
I'm not a very good feminist. I'm not a crusader, warrior, advocate. I'm not very positive about, well, anything. I know I'm more positive about other people than of myself. But I know that that positivity toward other people has its limits too. And it feels like looking at your whole being as a map and seeing that the part of you that's a Good Person just doesn't go on forever.
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