I just found it today, this very day, and already feel better.

Mind you, I’ve been on-and-off dieting, anorexic, and just generally bodily dysmorphic for seven years and have hated my body for probably sixteen years (I’m twenty-two whole years old) … so it’s not going to happen all at once.

For example, I’ll be god-damned if I’m not about to go eat macaroni and cheese for lunch, then, thanks to this post, go shop for some bigger pants.
But in the meantime, I am putting off the whole ‘leaving the house’ today because
a. I am afraid of harassment, and
b. I’m so deeply in love with my own self-hatred that
c. I’m having panic attacks deciding what to wear so that other people I don’t even like will maybe accept me.

The sick thing about this is, I’m not fat. I’m not even technically overweight.
But even so, brainwashing has gone so far in this culture that I’ve been taught to hate myself —

that men have been likewise endoctrinated, such that they not only ‘other’ me, but also feel entitled to both fetishize my ‘curviness’ and simultaneously mock me for being a ‘fat pig’, a ‘dog’, or a ‘cow’ —

and that some other women feel the need to compete with me, to prove their pretend superiority with their 23-inch waists as opposed to my 26-inch waist (for fuck’s sake! the insanity!), in the arenas of career and romance, and even for the right to walk unmolested down the sidewalk.

I imagine that we are all missing out on life, in one degree or another, because of this insidious patriarchal shitfest.

Two years later, this is still hilarious and SO TRUE. Well played.

This happened to me; I now have three pretty white scars on my tummy instead of a gallbladder.

Hypocritically, I’m sitting here in a tight pair of jeans shouting, “Yeah! You go girl!” as I read.

For years, I’ve been trying to squeeze into the smallest pants I could (this was after a few years of wearing giant clothes to try and hide in them). Recently, I finally said to myself, Fuck it! I want to be comfortable!

So now I buy clothes that actually fit me, and I feel so much better about myself.

I am new to this kind of thought- accepting myself and not belittling any extra weight. I have done extreme things to lose weight and it makes me sick to think about them- hardcore drug usage, anorexia, over exercising. I am done with those things- been clean in all areas for a year. I just haven’t been able to change the thought process (yet).

I’m only 22 and I am PISSED about the time I’m wasting worrying about something so stupid and meaningless. I am repulsed by the fact that I felt that being thin was so important that I risked my LIFE for it.

I know I can’t change my mindset in a night but all of your words have given me something to think about. I’ve always considered myself a freethinker and a feminist but for some reason I JUST NOW realized that my way of thinking about my weight doesn’t not co-exist with those notions.

I can’t say I won’t obsess about said pants sizes- I can only say thank you to all of you for giving me food for thought. :-)

I have just recently discovered FA, after 3 straight years of diets and punishing exercise routines. I suddenly got sick of pouring myself into size 6 pants one day, and tossed them all in a goodwill bag. I went out and bought size 8 and 10 jeans and starting googling things like “I love my thighs”. This has only been a couple of months ago, but I’m NEVER going back!! To hell with tiny pants!!! :)

For whatever reason (temperament, neurosis, whatever) I’m someone who thinks a lot and often has a lot of complex thoughts in my head, including in situations or on topics where people around me are not saying a lot of complex things. This tends to be useful in academic pursuits, but has caused me a lot of stress and anxiety in social interactions. The most recent example was a conversation yesterday about obesity and body weight regulation with some friends/classmates. Thanks to my reading here, on other FA blogs, of medical literature I got interested in as a result, etc., I had a lot to say. And as usual, this led to all kinds of worries about how much of what was on my mind I should verbalize, whether people would think it was weird or bad that I had so many thoughts (before even getting to the content of those thoughts), and whether I *was* weird or if other people had just as many and as complex thoughts but just didn’t verbalize them, making me socially inept if I did.

Then it occurred to me this morning that all this is virtually identical in form to the anxieties we’re conditioned to have when we’re out for lunch with a bunch of people eating salads with vinegar and what we’re really hungry for is a cheeseburger and fries. “Should I order the cheeseburger? What will they think of me if I do? Is there something wrong with me for wanting one? Does anyone else actually want a cheeseburger even though they’re not having one?”

Making that connection at least momentarily inspired me, in the same spirit that I would tell someone* to just get the damn cheeseburger, to feel less bad about speaking my mind. And although there are no actual pants in this story (well, I was wearing pants throughout), it seemed in line with the overall idea that there’s no good reason why your pants, life, conduct, ideas, ambitions, etc. should be smaller than you are.

*I don’t actually eat cheeseburgers, for religious reasons, but it was the convenient shorthand that popped into my head.