Oh, hi. As you may have guessed, this post is gonna be a *tad* on the heavy side. Are you here to make yourself feel bad? Or maybe, on some level, can you relate to the crushing emptiness that is desperately dreaming you could mold or reshape or downsize or tone or firm your body somehow? I suspect this is a deep pit our minds have spiraled into at one point or another in our lives. If you haven’t… holy shit and congratulations!
First things first, I’m going to share a pretty fucking vulnerable poem. Typically on my Instagram I’ve followed the rule that I wait a little over a year after writing to post my poetry, so the drama of it all has died down. Today I’m gonna break that rule, because you all are special and deserve the insider scoop! And in all seriousness, because I know I’m not alone. This is just my own experience in the body dysmorphia pit, which may vary person to person, but holds the same cruel darkness. So this is a little something I wrote a couple months ago… and don’t you worry, my therapist IS aware and I’m making incredible progress!
VAPING ON AN EMPTY STOMACH
i’m here sunbathing in nicotine,
jumping headfirst in the dopamine,
flattenning my hollow tummy with ease.
left my vape at home, ate too much bread—
now my head’s in the toilet, puking memories
of everything i ate and what he said to me
“wish you were skinny but guess i won’t leave”
they said he was a perfect man for me to wed.
but no one has to know i’m unhappy—
they say, “could be the adulterous daddy”
“or i heard she grew up on the addy”
but i just want you to think i’m a baddie.
vaping on an empty stomach
all so men will want this
they named their price, i bought it:
vaping on an empty stomach.
it was so warm feeling loved again,
failing not to fall in your deep end—
but now all you fuck are flat tummies i guess.
tale as old as time, found worth in getting laid,
and therein lies a grim history
of my critical boyfriend at sixteen,
of cosmetic celebrity and trickery.
i know this to be poison but drank the kool aid.
“nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”
whoever said that never vaped peach ice, for real
lucky for me, it’s a two for one deal…
i just wish it felt like a homecooked meal.
vaping on an empty stomach
all so men will want this
they named their price, i bought it:
vaping on an empty stomach.
here’s to my boyfriend,
he says he don’t care that my belly’s rounded
here’s to the tv,
guess they’re casting “real bodies” lately
here’s to the trauma,
cause in the end they say it made me stronger
and here’s to you,
because all of the above turned out to be bullshit too.
vaping on an empty stomach
all so men will want this
they named their price, i bought it:
vaping on an empty stomach.
-j.l.
There is, of course, a publicly well-known and privately well-hidden history of eating disorders and commentary on bodies and what they “should” look like. My own TLDR history would be as follows: barely eating in high school, gaining weight as soon as I moved out with my then-boyfriend and started eating again, bouts of on-again-off-again top-secret bulimia after being told he wished I were skinnier, and after the divorce a lot of vaping on-again-off-again to try to suppress my appetite… and of course this has been hard for many years and often I still have no-good very-bad days. But those are much fewer and farther between now. Now I just have so many thoughts… and almost no idea how to connect them.
First of all, let me get one thing out of the way right now: fatphobia doesn’t exist because people who don’t know you want you to be “healthier”. They gave in to purposeful marketing that spanned over a long period of history and now, even if not on a conscious level, believe people have to be conventionally attractive as a qualification on the scoreboard of human worth. And on some level, even if I don’t agree with that logically, I gave in to that too. Because I thought I’d be more loved if I were skinnier. We buy into this without realizing. Or we call it a “personal preference” because that’s easier than admitting we’d rather be thin than simply do what feels good to our bodies and souls, and accept whatever physical outcome that brings. Of course, I now try to do the latter.
Because I love me. And if you love someone, you don’t wish for them to be thinner. You wish for them to do what’s good for their souls. Have the courage to wish that for yourself.
People can proclaim all day long that they look down on “overweight” (whatever that means) people because they “care about their health”. Do those same people boycott Gilmore Girls? A key character trait of the two stars of the beloved show is binge eating junk food and takeout, and for most of the series (save one episode in later seasons) never go to the gym or exercise. Did people send hateful letters to the stars and the writers and creators for showing a bad example of health? You bet they didn’t! Cause Alexis Bledel and Lauren Graham were rockin’ an unhealthy lifestyle with the key people were ACTUALLY looking for: flat tummies.
Let’s truly ask ourselves, are flat tummies a reliable measure of health? Particularly bodies with uteruses. One thing I find frustrating as an owner of an uterus is it feels like my body never entirely belongs to me. Not just because of the political goings-on right now, but BIOLOGICALLY. I am not currently pregnant. But my body bleeds every month preparing for the possibility of housing a human even when I’m not. My body is storing fat around my abdominal area because that’s where the hypothetical human would be housed. My brain can’t tell my uterus to cut it out because she’s just wired to do so. How exhausting! AND probably an indicator that achieving a flat tummy, for my body type, might NOT be an indication I’m giving my body what she needs. The hormones that make me feel my best need to be fed.
And besides the question of what indicates health, is this an issue we need to carry on our shoulders all the time in order to feel heroic? Are we all collectively responsible for upkeeping the health status of our entire community? OR is that something medical professionals actually study and people can consult with them if they WANT TO? Breaking this down, I’m not sure the conclusion I can arrive at is that proclaiming shame on body types has any note of heroism to it.
Please understand, and I mean this TRULY from the BOTTOM OF MY HEART, if you walk around judging other people on how healthy they live their life… I find you to be a true LOSER. I’m sorry, but it’s just! Not! Your! Business! As far as I’m concerned, if people want to eat crappy food or never exercise or smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol (sorry babes, there is NO nutritional value to it) or chug monsters all day or what have you, it’s their GOD GIVEN right. And if they want help changing their habits, they can consult the trained professionals available.
And so, really, is any of this about health? What’s really beneath this “concern” we have as a society?
Is it sex appeal? If so, how utterly boring and trite. Fitting “sex appeal” into a universal cookie cutter mold as if everyone should have the same taste would drain life of color and vibrancy. Shouldn’t “sexy” be more complex and freeing and thought-provoking than “guys like long hair and flat stomachs” or “girls like rock-hard six packs”? (How heteronormative, first of all.)
Should we continue to allow “fat” to be a bad word? We all have fat somewhere on our body. By demonizing the term, are we not telling people a descriptor of them is unacceptable? And why should it be?
The body positivity/body neutrality movement is pushing onward and yet dating shows are primarily flat-stomached or heavily muscled. Fat characters are typecast or only one of an otherwise not-so-diverse group of bodies. Fat has a long history of being a joke. This sends messages, it always has. And so does our engagement with these messages.
What are they trying to sell us? Is the dark side of the beauty industry really something we want to accept into our own perception of something so intimate: our own relationship with our own sexuality and our own bodies?
Not to mention (and excuse me for asking), how is this affecting us in the bedroom? If we’re entwining our sexuality so closely with a standard body type… it might be no wonder so many of us are having issues achieving orgasm or truly letting ourselves be in the moment. Sex is supposed to be a positive experience. How can we truly be mindful and present with this incredible experience if we’re worried about how our body will fold and roll if we bend a certain way? Of course I’m not saying you should always have sex with just anyone even if you don’t want to. But man oh man, I’ve found myself attracted to so many different people of so many different physicalities, there HAS to be more to that kind of connection than just one conventional, collectivist “type”.
When did sex become so much about how we LOOK instead of how we FEEL? Doesn’t something seem off with that? (I am, of course, talking about body dysmorphia… not basic personal hygiene, if someone doesn’t clip their nails or wear deodorant, of course that’s gonna kill the mood.) How much of our sexual nature are we closing ourselves off to when we give into this nurture about how the people around us should look? How we ourselves should look? How much of our sexuality has been fed to us? How deeply have we looked and honored and loved?
It must be about more than just sex appeal, I’m guessing, because it’s at work and at the store and at the beach we’re also thinking about our bodies. How others are perceiving them. And it’s all, truly… just exhausting. And disheartening.
I don’t have the answers for you. I’m sorry if you thought you’d reach the end of this and I’d have the big secret that will suddenly make us all love ourselves the way we should be loved. I just have these spewed thoughts trying to break down how I got here… how so many of us got here. It’s not fucking fair, is it? What do we do with all the gunk? It feels so terrible to look in the mirror, and wish to cut parts off or smooth parts out or muscle parts up.
I guess really what I’m saying, dear reader… what I’m ASKING is that we all sit with ourselves and ask what narrative we’ve been feeding into that got us here. And what we can do to challenge it. And continue these conversations in the meantime. So that we can move forward.
I say, let’s stop paying the price. Let’s stop vaping on an empty stomach. Let’s just be and let be, with love.