I don’t even have words!

Well, I do, I’m a liar. I live in Australia, and I’m not sure exactly how the sizes correspond, but basically our smallest size is a 6, and then sizes go up in twos – 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26… etc.

Sizes 8-16 seem to be considered “normal”, but it really does depend on the shop. A lot of shops like Valley Girl, Ice, Temt, Dotti, etc, cater for a 6-14, and larger stores such as City Chic (pretty much the only larger store I’ve heard of for women that consistently caters to those under the age of 50. Autograph exists, but it is very hit and miss) claim to go from 14 up, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything smaller than an 18 in pants – and their shirts are all Xs-XXXXL or something, which makes comparision REALLY hard.

Having said that: I seem to normally be an 18 in pants (going up to a 20, 22, and in one case a 24, which terrifies me, which I am ashamed of), and a 14-16 in tops. It can be really hard to shop for clothes – I’m 20 years old – that are right for my shape, my size, and my age, especially because most “normal” stores stop before I can buy pants, and I have trouble finding plus sized places to buy pants that are actually stylish.

I feel whiny saying this… But I /do/ feel the pressure to lose weight, especially from my mother. She was diagnosed with diabetes last year, and she gets on all our backs to lose weight. She makes me feel uncomfortable and just.. well, fat.

I have never been skinny, and I struggle all the time with the concept of HAES and FA, especially while my mother and my government are ramming the message down my throat that fat is unhealthy and unattractive.

Anyway: Thank you, Kate and Sweet Machine, for being awesomepants.

This is basically me too. You look at me, and you know I’m fat. There’s no denying it. I do feel that being a size 26/28 (who has no qualms going up to a 30/32 if I know I’ll have more wiggle room) but can also fit into 22/24 in some things, I don’t feel pressure to get thinner, because in a lot of people’s eyes, I’m already too heavy to be dealt with, that I’m “beyond help.” Where if I were a 14/16/18, I might have people tell me I would look even better if I was smaller than that. Even if I lost 100 lbs, I’d still be fat and considered obese by the medical community. So I try and be positive and work with the body I’ve got, rather than the body that the majority (especially men looking for more jerk-off fodder) want me to be. Of course, for my health don’t you know.

*Clothing sizess aren’t standardised. Problem!

bolod, what that tells me is.. it’s ALL bullshit. Or, well, it’s all relative. There IS no reliable appearance-based feedback system. I think that can be potentially empowering as well as frustrating. It’s like… the mirror’s broken, anyway. So we might as well stop looking in it, and look to other things which ARE reliable.

When I’m feeling anxious about money, I just remind myself that money is all relative, too, as anyone who has traveled will know. There’s just no consistency at all between what your money will buy in one country v. another. I don’t quite know why, but somehow that can be a comforting thought. I guess because it means.. well, it’s not that I’M crazy and dysfunctional.. the whole system is. We just cannot look for all our cues outside of ourselves. ‘Outside’ is just not reliable, and I don’t think it ever has been or ever will be.

“And now sometimes I can look in the mirror and preen, and like what I see, and tell people without irony or shame that I am pretty. I could not do that when I was socially-acceptably thin and convinced I was horribly fat, and not only that but fat was the worst thing I could be looks-wise. But I can do it now.”

For much of the time that I was socially-acceptable thin- for me, that was at about 120 to 125 pounds, and I was that weight, give or take, for about ten years – 15 – 25 – for much of that time, my weight was, in my mind, a horrible problem to be solved. My mother reinforced that. I think she has/had eating issues of her own. One thing that blows my mind is that, when I was about the age my daughter is now (16), my mother suggested that she and I should go on the cabbage soup diet together – a diet which promised that we would lose 17 pounds in 10 days.. or maybe it was a week .. I do remember the 17 pound promise, though. A 17 pound weight loss would have put me at a little over 100 pounds. I would have been .. well, scarily emaciated at that weight. And yet, this is what my MOTHER was suggesting, as a drastic solution to the ‘problem’ of my weight.

Maybe being closer to a social ideal actually makes it harder, increases pressure?

I think at some point… and it took me a very long time, but at some point… I stopped looking outward for external cues as to what I ‘should’ look like, and started looking inward to what I wanted.. what I wanted it to feel like. Here’s what I know:

I want to wear clothes that are comfortable and fit right and that are an expression of my style. When I was conventionally thin, ironically enough, I spent a lot of time in ill-fitting clothes. I think I was always trying to squeeze into a size smaller than I really needed. Or maybe it was a form of self-punishment. Who knows. Now, thanks largely to what I’ve seen on fatshionista, and to the fact that I have let sizes larger than 14 into my world, that ‘wish’ has been granted. Yes, I know the fact that I can find clothes that fit me makes me .. priveleged. I know that’s not the case for everyone. It’s a random blessing from the universe, and one that I’m happy to have. When I was 125 pounds, I thought I ‘couldn’t’ wear jeans.. that they just weren’t made to fit my body. Even as recently as last year, I thought I ‘couldn’t’ wear leggings. I’m just thankful that I realized I was wrong on both counts.

I want the ‘right’ to have three decent-sized, good tasting meals a day without feeling that some of the foods are ‘bad’ and that, in any case, I should eat as little of them, or of anything, as possible. This is a big deal for me. My mother… whom I don’t blame, because I know she had issues of her own… was constantly limiting my eating, from the earliest age. Like, seriously, from the age of about 2. The ‘three square meals’ concept is one that .. well, that I didn’t really have, growing up. I knew that others did… and that they could eat without the ideal being eating LESS.. and I wanted what those others had. And now.. well, it took me a LONG time, and there is still part of me that feels I’m being ‘good’ if I skip a meal.. but now, for the most part, I can have my regular meals. No restriction, no guilt.

I want not to feel that I’m endangering my health. That was the last missing puzzle piece for me. Even after I accepted what I looked like, I still had that little niggling feeling that it just isn’t ‘healthy’ to be fat. Kate’s post on that topic was very, very illuminating. It’s wonderful to have worry removed.

And, finally, I want all those other things that pretty much everyone wants – love, friendship, rewarding work, fun times, self-expression. These things are NOT about weight.. none of them… but I think I used to think that they were, once upon a time. I think, for example, when I was afraid of being fat… it wasn’t that I was afraid of the actual amount of flesh on my bones. I think I was afraid that I wouldn’t be loved, because of it…or that I wouldn’t ever be beautiful to anyone, or that I wouldn’t get to do the things I wanted to do, because I was just too damn fat (at 125 pounds). I am older and wiser now, and take it from me, NONE of those things are about weight. Sexiness isn’t about weight, either.

So, where that leaves me is… if I can have all those things I wanted anyway, and if I can have them without losing a single pound, because it was NEVER ABOUT THAT.. well, then the motivation to be thin, magic-wand-induced or not, sort of disappears. I just think… well, if I was thin, I wouldn’t look like ME, I’d have to buy new clothes, I’d get all kinds of attention I don’t want, because that’s what society is like.. nah, I just don’t want that.

Okay, you know what I really think? I think we women have been sold a bill of goods. I think we have been told over and over that, yes, we can be out in the world and achieve things, BUT, what still matters most of all, what we will be judged on the basis of, is what we look like. And I think that as long as we’re influenced by that, weight, and weight acceptance, will be a struggle. We may win or we may lose, but we will struggle.

Maybe we need to…get selfish. Look inward… what do WE want, rather than what does society want us to be?

And then, do those things we want really have anything to do with weight? I mean, maybe in some cases they do. If I aspired to be a ballerina, or a jockey, I guess I’d have to lose a bit of weight. But I don’t really aspire to those things. As it turns out, weight actually has very little to do with any of the things I actually want.

I just wish I had known that when I was 20, you know?

Mara, whoa, the thinking you’ve made me do.

Despite the hugenormous strides I’ve made thanks to all of you wonderful people, if I had the choice, and someone offered me that wand and said, “we can make you 110, heck, 120, with zero negative side effects, also, you won’t have to starve yourself to maintain it the way you used to have to,” I’d take it. I’d give them an entire paycheck for it. Even if they left the slight chubbiness in my face and thighs and upper arms and would only take away my not-at-all-slightly chubby stomach, I would do it. I don’t even know if I’d hesitate.

That was an embarrassing realization for me to come to. I still have such a long way to go. But at least I’m getting somewhere! YAY! Six months ago I’d be talking about how disgusting I am. Am I still disgusted? Yes, more often than I care to admit. But now I finally am able to understand that that is the result of social training. I as a physical being am NOT inherently disgusting.

And now sometimes I can look in the mirror and preen, and like what I see, and tell people without irony or shame that I am pretty. I could not do that when I was socially-acceptably thin and convinced I was horribly fat, and not only that but fat was the worst thing I could be looks-wise. But I can do it now.

To all the people who say “size 14 is average and if you’re a 14 you’re not fat (implication: you’re faking it you whiner),” I want to scream and hit my head against the wall in their general direction, and then show them a picture of me and let them decide how “NOT fat” I am. The people at work who tell me how I’m not fat when I say I am? Drives me nuts. I’m not putting myself down, I’m stating a fact. Don’t tell me you got sudden onset blindness just because I’m in this dumpy apron. My gut is completely unmistakable.

I want to show them a full-on side-view in my undies pic, maybe even seated. My stomach, compared to the rest of me, looks like one of those Highlights “what does not belong in this picture?” puzzles. I’m five feet and an inch or two (depending on which doctor’s office measures me) and not built particularly heavy. Yeah, a size 14 that sits mostly on one’s tummy is pretty freaking fat at that height and build. My body is not put together in a shape that warrants accolades or hell, even an acceptance pass, let alone clothes that fit.

But I want to yell at the whole world (including me) to GET OVER IT. It’s harder when people keep denying it to me like that, as if my experience as a fat person is invalid. Or, like some of the people in my family, who act like it’s such a huge deal and something bad that I MUST FIX AS I AM BROKEN. Either way, it treats my fat like something of great shame. I wish it could just be something that IS, with no qualifiers. Not “you’re fat BUT,” or “you’re fat AND,” just, “you’re fat.” No. Big. Deal.

Maybe someday we’ll get there. Maybe someday.

In the meantime, this pretty much seems to be the ONLY place I can go where anyone but me wants that or even remotely understands that.

I think perhaps younger girls and women tend to fantasize about looking different because our worlds are rather limited. We experience life through our classmates (usually aka hell on earth) and through popular media. That’s definitely going to skew a girl’s perception of how she looks and how she thinks she should look. It doesn’t help that boys at that age are often such cowards that they are afraid to admit they might like girls who don’t look like the latest Hollywood starlet. Once you’re an adult and you can move behind the restrictive high school life, the world opens up and you see that not everything fits into that narrow range of high school-approved appearance and behavior.

When I was a teen, I wanted nothing more than to be six inches taller, with smaller breasts, a smaller nose, naturally blond hair and blue eyes, and to be one of those personalities who instantly knows how to be the popular queen bee. I’m 30 now and so glad I’ve moved beyond that. I wouldn’t mind the smaller breasts because bra shopping would be SO much easier, but beyond that- I’d love to travel Europe, devote more time to singing in chamber choirs, learn to cook like a gourmet chef, make most of my own clothing, etc. Hopefully I’ll have time to do that when I’ve finished this PhD (yet another dream I’m working on fulfilling).

I know this is far from being an original thought, but I do think it’s very distressing how often the fantasies of women in our society do revolve around what they would like to look like. Or, no, wait. I shouldn’t assume all or even most women do that. But I know there was a time, when I was just a bit younger, that pretty much all my fantasies revolved around that. Now, interestingly, none of them do. I just realized that. Nowadays, I fantasize about: Things I would like to buy, places I would like to go, and people who live far away from me (but whom I love dearly) whom I would like to see.

“No, Mara, it’s a great question! In fact, it’s about to become a post.”

Well, I would be very honored if that were to happen!