It's Okay To Be Fat

For the last few years, my weight has slowly been increasing along with my size. I've gone from a size 8-10 to now dithering between a 14-16 and probably soon an 18. In reality, in the plus size world, I realise I'm on the smaller side of the scale but I see the looks of "pity" I get from people when they haven't seen me in a while and notice how much weight I've put on. But it's hard. suffering from anxiety as well, part of my disorder makes me feel like I have to justify myself and my weight gain but then the rational side, says, hang on; you do not need to explain yourself to anybody: your body = your business.

I'm really scared about writing this because I'm terrified I'm going to say something problematic but the key thing is here: I'm learning. If I do something wrong or if I fuck up, I want to be told. I want to unlearn problematic behaviour that has been instilled in me from a young age. I have constantly had problematic fatphobic thoughts drilled into me; whether that is from TV to friends and family who were insecure with their bodies and tried to pass that on to you. I still have fatphobic thoughts about myself and I HATE IT but I think it's a journey. I'm on journey to love myself and be kind to myself and know that those thoughts aren't going to stay with me. I don't have fatphobic thoughts about other people anymore but I did growing up. It's hard not to when you grow up watching shows like Friends, which treat fat people as a joke. They make you believe fat people can only be on television as something to laugh at or something that should be bullied. When you open your eyes to it, you can't escape the fat jokes on television. Jacqueline in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, for example, jokes that she doesn't need to worry about her husband having an affair because his secretary is fat. Jokes like these are sad, alienating and completely dehumanising. Are television writers that lazy and unfunny that they have to keep turning to fat people to get their laughs? This is also a regular occurrence with race, gender and sexual orientation. Once you open your eyes to it, you cannot get away from it.

Most recently, I was attacked by a troll on here who commented on all my posts, telling me how grotesque and fat I am. They're probably reading this now and I think good. I don't care. No matter what you say, my body size or anybody else's body size, don't determine their worth and if I make you uncomfortable...I'm glad. I hope fat people continue making you uncomfortable because we're deserving of every bit of space on this planet. After I showed people what the troll said; I got an abundance of "AW, you're not fat, you're beautiful!" and that's really sad. Being fat DOES NOT mean I am not beautiful. I know that I'm hot shit so pretending I'm not fat only annoys me. My body size doesn't mean I'm not beautiful or sexy. I have times where I question myself and my health but that has more to do with my mental health than my physical health. I'm not gonna sit here and write that my diet is perfect, it's not. I eat Mcdonalds and pizzas and chips..but that's none of your business and I don't need to pretend I'm healthy to be validated.

The media and the world (capitalism) is set up to gain profit from making fat women feel like absolute shit. I recognise though, that I still have my privileges.  Although I'm a plus size woman, I'm still on the smaller end and get deemed as "the acceptable kind of fat" - this is the kind of shit I fucking hate. All bodies are good bodies, all bodies are worthy of love. When people preach body positivity, I've discovered they don't mean fat bodies. Society, including campaigns such as Dove's, they only want body positivity to include women up to a size 16. Anyone fatter than that? They're deemed as "too fat". Look at Amy Schumer; she's made a career off of making jokes about how much she loves pizza and eating junking food, but she gets away with it and people think it's funny because she's a size 8/10. If a fat person, from size 18 upwards made that joke, they'd be bullied, harassed and have it hammered into them that they are an unhealthy human being who shouldn't be the size they are. I'm tired of seeing friends who are size 18 and upwards, 22/24/26/28/30/32 etc have to justify to other people that their diets are healthy even though they are fat. Their diets and lifestyles are NO ONES business but they're own. They shouldn't have to prove they live healthily to be accepted into society. Society needs to accept that healthy bodies look differently and even slim people are unhealthy. Society is set up so that slim people can brag about how unhealthy they are (slim people loving so much pizza) and they are deemed "cute" but terrorise any fat person that does the same.

Fat people are people. I hope that one day I can go back to watching films and television where fat people aren't the butt of every joke. I hope one day I won't be surrounded by people who used to be fat talking about their former fat selves as if they were always a 'before' picture, that they were unworthy of any kind of love. I think there are a lot of topics that I wanted to cover here but I fear it would become overwhelming to read. I'm not trying to talk on behalf of women who are bigger than me, or fat women of colour who have other issues they face on top of fatphobia but I thought I'd bring to light on my blog some things that have been bothering me.

Representation matters. In the media, we need to see more fat people. We need bigger fat people modelling clothes that are made for them. We need a bigger range of clothes. We need more women of colour. There are so many issues that need to be fixed, we need to keep fighting for them. I'm unapologetically part of the cause but I'm also still on a journey where I'm continually learning. There are issues that I don't face at all but I want to know about them in case that I have behaviour that needs adjusting. Personally, I want to see more of bigger women with smaller boobs. All the women I see that are my size have big boobs and I often feel isolated or somehow ~wrong~ because I don't have them. That is my one insecurity that I'm trying to work on!