Okay, so.. I am an obese 23 year old woman and I look good. That's not being conceited, it's not being ignorant to health issues.. it's just a fact. I like my body! Of course there are some things that I would change, but overall, I'm very happy with myself. I blame these wishes on our society. On that note, I wanted to devote my first Fat Friday post to Fat Acceptance.
A little history, I've been fat my whole life. Other than when I was 5 or 6 and had appendicitis because I couldn't eat or when I went through a period of anorexia/mental disease central while in middle school and ended up only getting down to a size 12 or so.. I've never been healthy and been smaller than a size 16. And we all know that a size 16 is considered disgusting in our culture. Every time I go to the doctor, do they say anything about my weight? No. The nurses actually tell me that I look great, that all of my stats are great and that I'm healthy.
Our culture has spread its disgust for fat people throughout the world; when developing countries start to watch our television shows, for example, it is fact that the rates of eating disorders multiplies compared to what it was before America puked its beliefs all over the place.
In my post from the other day, I said that I couldn't find any healthy Tumblrs that featured naturally thin people; I only found pro-eating disorder/fat-shaming blogs. I found one that pissed me off to no end, and I need to explain why. The Tumblr is named I Will Become Skinny, and I do need to warn.. I'm confident in myself and in my body and this tumblr made me feel like the biggest, warmest, most disgusting pile of elephant shit. It must be a pretty new Tumblr, because I went to the bottom in no time, thank god.
They featured some posts with before and after pictures of people, celebrities and 'normal' people, and honestly, I don't know what was wrong with the majority of these before pictures! They also have a link to an article with pictures of What Junk Food Does to Girls. GIRLS, that's it. What about men? Men are allowed to be fat, but women aren't... didn't you know that? This further supports our culture's ideals about women needing to be oppressed in comparison to men, we are supposed to look down in pictures.. be as small as possible and take up as little room as possible, which is why it's ladylike to cross your legs, right?
They also have this picture:
This is so fucking irritating that I want to punch my face in, seriously. If you're hungry, do those 6 things because you're not really hungry! Swearsies, honey. WHAT!? If none of those things work, then you should eat because your body really needs food? Are you sure? Yeah? Okay.
This brought me to a Tumblr named Curveless, the one credited for the above picture. There, I found the following pictures:
Food is the bad thing in this pyramid, you aren't supposed to eat.. duh.
Will you ever get there? NO YOU WON'T. Do you know why? What's the sad thing about these 'thinspo' pictures? THEY'RE not real. That magazine picture above? It's clearly photoshopped! That isn't a REAL body, therefore.. you'll starve yourself and work out forever while continuing to stare at thinspiration and never look like that!
Then I was taken to this Tumblr, You Should Know Why, and yeah. I just think it's completely ridiculous that these girls who don't eat and exercise an unhealthy amount are considered to be the healthy ones, when I am the one eating my three meals a day and I'm considered unhealthy because of my body type. I know, from experience, that it's impossible for my body to look like any of these people from the internet, magazines or advertisements.. it doesn't happen! I've experienced the physical being more important than the mental in many instances and I've actually quit jobs because of how artificial and uncaring people can be.
When I was in middle school, I starved myself. I went through a very bad stage of OCD and because of this I was obsessed with having control. I was afraid of getting food poisoning, so I'd only eat pre-packaged food--I know it makes no sense but I honestly believed it then, and that food was a Pop-Tart. One package a day. That's all I'd eat. I lost weight
(well, duh)
, I got complimented, I felt amazing because everyone thought I was beautiful. This developed into an eating disorder and I got to the point where my mother had to carry around anti-nausea medication because if I ate the smallest amount of food, I'd feel sick to my stomach. This was because I never ate! You know it's bad when your stomach can't even handle a salad without feeling sick, because of how small it had gotten. I loved the grumbling hunger pains, because it meant I was doing something right. This went on for a few years. After all of this, I wasn't under a size 12.
Can you say that I'm lazy because I'm built differently than smaller women? Honestly, yes, I'm lazy sometimes. If I wanted to be a smaller size I could work out and I could eat more nutritious meals and lose weight. I know this because I used a website called SparkPeople when I weighed 315 pounds, realizing I was unhealthy and feeling like complete shit, I signed up and lost 60 pounds in a matter of about 6 months. But, my OCD came back in full force after I'd controlled it for years and I began obsessing about tracking every calorie and about working out for 75 minutes on the elliptical at least 5 times a week.
Is it wrong of me to not want to feel like a crazy person? Is it wrong of me to love my body when I'm a size 20(ish)? Why is that so bad? I feel beautiful the majority of the time. I'm not blaming anyone for how I look. BUT if these websites make me feel bad about myself, and I've grown into a pretty confident person, I can only imagine what it does to people who have extremely low self-esteem.
Screw you thinspo blogs and fat-shamers but I give the biggest screw you to our culture.
Here I am, take it.. or leave it.
xoxo forever,
Cortnie
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