Despite surface political correctness, the deeply-entrenched nature of people’s biases comes out sometimes. In this case, I’m specifically talking about how people are surprised by my love for my chubbier-than-usual body. These people don’t fat-shame. They are very politically correct. But they have no response to a woman who is not uncomfortable with her body. Here’s why.
My weight is changeable. Hating myself? Less so.
For a little perspective on my attitude to my body, allow me to introduce you to the yo-yo that my weight is. Starting out as a scrawny teen, I put on 18 kilos on vacation. I then dropped the weight in five months. Following that, I “developed” in ways I couldn’t have controlled. Throughout my twenties, therefore, I’ve been on the curvier side, despite being petite.
In the past year, my weight has spiked visibly. Now, relatives and acquaintances used to a thin me, are waking up and noticing. Everyone’s worried about me not finding a man. Everyone thinks my weight gain might ruin my life. They have assumed that I probably hate myself for it. Very kindly, they give me backhanded compliments about how it’s good I’ve put on weight. Now I look “healthy.”But I definitely should not put on more.
We usually have bad things to say about ourselves.
This response from people isn’t entirely unwarranted. Women are expected to be demure and dismissive about themselves. This includes appreciating themselves and accepting their bodies. So obviously, people expect me to be apologetic about my looks. If a pretty girl has to shyly brush aside compliments, then a plump one like myself most certainly isn’t supposed to take pride in her looks, right? Wrong.
People patronisingly think women need constant validation and are shocked when that isn’t the case.
The problem here is that people think social standards of beauty are the final word. People are shocked when they say I’ve put on weight and I say thank you to that.
The world likes rescuing a damsel in mental distress about her body weight with “You’re not ugly!” when she calls herself fat. The trouble is, I never called myself ugly. I never said I feel bad about being chubby. I don’t need rescuing from a complex, because I don’t have one, despite people expecting me to.
I have the trappings of an “unattractive” person. How come that doesn’t affect me?
The entire problem is that nobody can swallow the fact that I, a pimpled, short, gap-toothed, chubby girl, don’t hate my body. I don’t call myself ugly. Many a time, I feel rather pretty. I have all the trappings of a person who is “unattractive” by social standards. That this does not affect my opinion of myself is very confusing for many people. This is why everyone has trouble accepting the fact that I love my chubby body more now at 25, than I did my skinny body at 15. Despite that, it’s almost like people want me to feel bad about my weight gain.
Others are more bothered by my weight gain than I am.
When you gain a certain amount of confidence in who you are as a person, that becomes the defining factor in your attractiveness. Any minor physical change should not be allowed to dictate how I see myself as a person. After much disappointment in my body, I have finally accepted this today. I have finally accepted who I am. I don’t see the “ugly” parts as much of an issue, because I still think there is a lot to consider beautiful in me. This is why a few pounds don’t affect my sense of self-esteem. My only hope is that everyone else going through body-image issues can feel the same way, too.
