I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
This girl, the one on the left, she’s me. In the flesh, me. Five years ago, after three babies. Me.
This photo was snapped at the lake, two months before my 35th birthday. I was the smallest I’d been since I was 17. I went into J Crew to buy khaki pants three weeks after this was taken and asked for a size 8. The kind associate told me she thought I was more like a 4. I said she was nice, but to bring an 8 anyway. And they fell down. I was 123 pounds, the thinnest I had been since I was 15.
And yet, I looked at this photo after it was taken and thought I looked fat.
Here’s the me you may recognize:
This photo was taken two months ago, four months after my 40th birthday, with my five kids. I’m the one who looks like the mother.
My weight went up and down over the years. Way up, like the bottom photo. Way down, like the top photo. It’s been kind of like a rollercoaster, only way less fun. This is what happens when you’re at the Six Flags theme park of pregnancy, breastfeeding, nursing school, forced exercise, loathing exercise, loving exercise, and being compelled to exercise.
I attained the physique in the “after†photo after losing one sweet baby girl; after being married, divorced, married; after a half dozen moves; after a broken leg and a broken ankle; after catching a dozen babies not my own as a labor and delivery nurse; after ushering more than a dozen people into death as a hospice nurse.
The other body you see there, the body of “physical hotness,†I attained by eating a “plentiful†1,000 calories a day; by running 35 miles a week (10 on Sunday); by sleeping an average of three hours a day; by counting every bit of food I ate, down to a single cherry tomato; by writing and tracking my weight every day for a year; by running the stairs of the hospital during my 12-hour shifts; by losing my period; by denying myself food when I was hungry; by denying myself sleep.
Are you confused?
Maybe you see where I’m going with this. I know that most will see this and say one of a few things. 1. Wow you looked HOT. What happened? 2. HOW did you get to weigh that much? 3. Wait, why do you look worse in the after picture? That’s not how this works.
Maybe a few of you will say I’m fat.
Maybe a few of you will say, you look happy and healthy.
I am both of those things.
I want to blow this stereotype right out of the water. Because it. is. bullshit. My being thin did not make me happy. My having a six-pack was, well, me having a six-pack. Being a size 4 made it infinitely easier to shop for clothes and presumably to look “better†in clothes, because let’s face it, clothes are mostly designed for people who are a size 4. Being a size 4 made strangers’ heads turn. Repeatedly. It made men in the grocery store hit on me and doctors at the hospital propose torrid affairs. It made me obsessive about every detail of my body, from my stretch-marked belly to the definition of my bicep.
It made me a lot of things.
It did not make me happy.
It made me obsessed with my workouts, with how much time I could fit in at the gym between taking care of three small kids and working 12-hour overnight shifts. It made me Google every food for its calorie content. It made me eat food I hated (rice cakes, spray-on butter) and avoid food I loved (mostly cake). All of that made me thin.
It did not make me happy.
This isn’t to say that thin people aren’t happy (duh), but this is to say that being thin is not: A. A cure for sadness or B. A guarantee of happiness.
It is to say this: Happiness does not require thinness. Fatness does not presume sadness.
I’ve been writing this piece in my head now for weeks. And today I read this. That post was my call to finish this up and publish it. We need more voices speaking out so that we can be heard over the media, over the drone that is weight loss pills and get-thin-quick cures and plastic surgery to fix things that aren’t broken.
My medication changes (to treat my bipolar disorder) have resulted in a gain of 10 more pounds since that last photo was snapped. Most of my clothes don’t fit, and that is discouraging. I’m not pretending that squeezing myself into jeans two sizes too small is fun. It’s not. It’s a lot like stuffing a sausage.
But now, I see dramatic changes not only in my body, but also in my mind. There is a stillness, a joy, and a peace I’ve never had. It’s worth 10 pounds. Ten pounds are insignificant when compared to my willingness to let some things go, to sit with my kids, to sleep.
I’m happy. I’m fat and I’m happy.
You want to really blow people’s minds? Try this at home: Be fat and happy. Be unapologetically fat. Wear a bikini, and mean it. Eat pizza and ice cream and enjoy it. Drink up your life and a bottle of wine, and make no apologies.
The world wants you to want to be thin. There are whole industries built on your insecurity. They are bullshit. The world wants you to believe that thin and beautiful equals happy. It wants you to believe that you’re only worthy of love, and life, if you are beautiful. And beautiful people just aren’t fat.
Or maybe they are.
This story by Joni Edelman first appeared on Ravishly.com, an alternative news+culture website for women.
More from Ravishly:
The Problem With A Curvy Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Going Viral
Reflections On The Post-Baby Body
On Being “Crazyâ€: A Day In My Life With Bipolar Disorder
Words Can’t Do My Motherly Love Justice
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Start Loving My 185-Pound Body
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Runk is the star of a May 2013 HM swimwear campaign that gained widespread media attention for not relegating the gorgeous size 12 model to the “plus-size†pages of their website. In an interview with activist group SPARK, Runk told a young blogger: “I remember often feeling like I should be unhappy with my body, but it was confusing, because I never thought there was anything wrong with it until people started talking about it.â€
In a piece for the BBC, Runk wrote of her newfound media attention: “This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to accomplish, showing women that it’s OK to be confident even if you’re not the popular notion of ‘perfect.’… There’s no need to glamorise one body type and slam another.â€
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The famously outspoken “Hunger Games†star has been extremely vocal about resisting diet culture and pressure to be unnaturally thin. “If anybody even tries to whisper the word ‘diet,’ I’m like, ‘You can go f*ck yourself,’†Lawrence said in an interview for the November 2013 UK issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
She also hit the nail on the head during a Nov. 7 QA with Yahoo! employees. “The world has this idea that if you don’t look like an airbrushed perfect model,†she said to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer. “You have to see past it. You look how you look, you have to be comfortable. What are you going to do? Be hungry every single day to make other people happy? That’s just dumb.â€
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Myers’ slam poem about body image and disordered eating was awarded Best Love Poem at the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. Her incredible piece speaks for itself.
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Lamm, an artist who works for MyDeals.com, used CDC measurements of an average 19-year-old woman to create a 3-D model which he then Photoshopped to look like a Barbie doll. His images of “normal†Barbie next to the doll sold in stores is truly worrying.
“If we criticize skinny models, we should at least be open to the possibility that Barbie may negatively influence young girls as well,†Lamm told the Huffington Post in an email. “Furthermore, a realistically proportioned Barbie actually looks pretty good.â€
It’s awesome to see a man take a stance on these issues, especially considering that many men experience their own body struggles — often in silence.
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Hall, a Dallas-based yoga instructor, abandoned all dietary restrictions between March and July of this year in order to see how her body changed when she wasn’t actively limiting her eating habits — and how people in her life reacted to her changing shape. The results of her project were not what she expected:
The people who didn’t know, who were just with me in my life — there was no difference that I could tell in the way that they treated me. The difference came in my own perceptions of myself, and I began to treat myself differently. I was very judgmental, and I would look in the mirror and critique myself… I would pick apart my body. Instead of looking at the whole of my body, I would look at different parts and analyze what’s wrong with them.
“My most shocking discovery through the process is that I’m afraid of not being loved,†Hall wrote in a Jul. 30 blog post. “I noticed the self-talk was that my beauty is only on the surface.â€
The experience moved Hall to better understand the dialogue happening inside her own head, and inspired her to help other people suffering from poor body image. “I want to empower people to love their bodies… if it’s going to start somewhere, it has to start within,†she wrote.
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Woodley, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in “The Descendants,†told Flavorwire in July:
I saw somebody — what I thought was me — in a magazine once, and I had big red lips that definitely did not belong on my face. I had boobs about three times the size they are in real life. My stomach was completely flat. My skin was also flawless. But the reality is that I do not have those lips and my skin is not flawless and I do have a little bit of a stomach. It was not a proper representation of who I am. I realized that, growing up and looking at magazines, I was comparing myself to images like that — and most of it isn’t real.
Because of her discomfort with how women are constantly Photoshopped and edited on-screen, Woodley doesn’t wear makeup to events. What a badass.
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Raouna, who was crowned Miss British Beauty Curve 2013, told the Daily Mail: “you don’t have to be size zero to be a model, and you can be pretty and plus size at the same time.â€
The beauty queen hopes to use her platform to inspire young women to be comfortable in their own bodies, regardless of their weight. “My confidence has grown over the years and hopefully I can inspire other plus-size girls to be confident in their own skin,†she said.
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The Refinery29 staff writer turned to intuitive eating, a practice where you learn to listen to your body’s signals and eat accordingly, to help manage her body demons — and is chronicling her journey on the Internet via the Anti-Diet Project.
“The goal here is not fast weight loss,†Miller told the Huffington Post in an email. “It’s about creating a healthy, neutralized relationship with food and learning how to be fit and active every day — but still have a life.â€
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Pree Bright’s photo series “Plastic Bodies†examines how beauty ideals affect women, especially women of color. Her striking images combine doll parts with segments of human bodies, and the discord between the two is startling. She told HuffPost in an email:
American concepts of the “perfect female body†are clearly exemplified through commercialism, portraying “image as everything†and introducing trends that many spend hundreds of dollars to imitate. It is more common than ever that women are enlarging breasts with silicone, making short hair longer with synthetic hair weaves, covering natural nails with acrylic fill-ins, or perhaps replacing natural eyes with contacts.
Even on magazine covers, graphic artists are airbrushing and manipulating photographs in software programs, making the image of a small waist and clear skin flawless. As a result, the female body becomes a replica of a doll, and the essence of natural beauty in popular American culture is replaced by fantasy.
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If you’ve ever doubted that fat can be beautiful too, watch this health coach and fat acceptance activist’s video response to a comment on her blog. Poretsky’s advice on such a delicate subject is both warm and practical: “One way to see the beauty in more and more people is to literally look for it.â€
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Adele says she tries not to worry about her body image and doesn’t want to be a “skinny minnie.â€
“The first thing to do is be happy with yourself and appreciate your body — only then should you try to change things about yourself.â€
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The actress took to Twitter to say, “I’m not trying to be hot. I’m just trying to be a good actress and entertain people.â€
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Source: “Body Image.†Rader Programs.
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Source: Dove Real Beauty Campaign, 2004.
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Source: The Renfrew Center Foundation for Eating Disorders, “Eating Disorders 101 Guide: A Summary of Issues, Statistics and Resources,†2003.
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Source: Shisslak, C.M., Crago, M., Estes, L.S. (1995). The Spectrum of Eating Disturbances. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 18 (3): 209-219.
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Source: Collins, 1991.
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Source: Rader Programs