This weeks bonus episode is a little different, I’m releasing it on all platforms, and I’m pulling up my microphone to read you the blog I wrote a couple months back. When I wrote it, we were just a few weeks into this new administration, shit was already going as expected and as I had predicted anti fatness has only gotten worse since. Below is the written version, and I recorded video for the first time — so enjoy!
These are not confessions of a former fat girl, or a fat girl who lost 100lbs and wants to preach about how nothing tastes as good as thin. I’m not a fat girl with a somewhat acceptable larger body, curves in all the “right places”.
I don’t fit into society's beauty standards.
You’d think that it would hurt my feelings, but it was actually a breath of fresh air, to realise that no matter what, I will never fit in.
On an exhale I simply asked myself, then what’s the point in trying? Who is all this for? This being the hunger, the mental arithmetic, the hatred towards myself for simply existing in this skin.
Throughout my teens and into adulthood, I’ve existed somewhere on the fat spectrum. From the age of 10 I started participating in extreme behaviours to shrink myself - mind, body and soul - and fit in with my peers. I grew up in a loving and caring family, parents who supported me, and also didn’t want me to be fat.
By the time I was 10, I was aware of my body. I believed that fatness was something to avoid at all costs, my youth spent trying to prevent the inevitable. Sometimes it’s hard to swallow the idea that I became the very thing my parents tried their damndest to prevent. Sadness threatens to consume me, when I remember the pride in my mothers eyes when she showed off my slimmer body, when she believed I’d “figured out” the thing she’s spent a lifetime chasing.
I hid food as a kid, learning that if I wanted to eat something my parents would consider “bad” I needed to figure out how to hide the evidence. I developed a secret binge eating disorder which led them to be even more concerned and strict over my foods. When my friends were getting chocolate at Easter, I was being told ‘I didn’t need it’.
I’d shop the shoe department, whilst my friends tried on the latest trends in Topshop, River Island and New Look, complaining that the clothes made them “look fat”. I’d wonder what they would think of my body if they saw their bodies as fat. I refused to wear a strappy dress without covering my arms for my 13th birthday, uncomfortable about how much bigger I was than everyone else.
…I came across a picture from that party, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t as big as I believed I was, and I wonder what would have happened if everyone had left my body alone. Let me grow up, learn and figure out how to live in this body. A body that was always going to be soft, round and on the fat spectrum.
What if I’d never dieted?
What if I’d never been body shamed, or bullied at school?
What if I’d not tried to prevent the inevitable?
Spoiler alert folks, fatness happened anyway. No matter how hard I tried; the gimmicks, products and systems didn’t “work” (or perhaps they did, because they didn’t) and I was left to pick up the emotional pieces of my body image and confidence over and over again.
Well, it turned out, my body was never the problem.
It still isn’t.
Diet culture is the problem, and the diet industry wouldn’t be worth quite so much if diets worked* And by ‘worked’ I mean long term, lasting results for folks in larger bodies. The promise they continue to fall short of time and time again.
There are no, I repeat NO, long term “solutions” to fatness. Maybe it’s because we are not an equation to be solved, we’re not a work-in-progress, nor is there a thin person within.
We wouldn’t need to “go back to {insert diet here}” because it would have worked the first time.
They wouldn’t need to create silly little names for calories, or challenge the most basic facts about nutrition.
Like so many of you, I’ve tried almost everything, and one day, a few years ago I decided I was done. I didn’t want to spend any more of my life at battle with my body, and I wanted to make sure I ended the generational impact of diet culture within my family.
When I started The Culture Of It All, my intention was to share more personal stories. Truthfully? I got scared, worried I’d be too much for people or worse, learn that I was on my own with these experiences. But my fears are nothing compared to the state of the world right now.
The Culture Of It All! Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
As I watch my friends across the Atlantic have their rights stripped away repeatedly, and lose access to the most basic forms of support and care – now is not the time for us to be silent.
During these times we need to create, collaborate and build communities to support one another. We can rely on each other's voices and creativity, so that when one of us rests, we still keep fighting for autonomy, diversity, equality and equity.
And darling, I know that skinny is fashionable again. It feels like we’ve time travelled back to the late 90s… but here’s the thing we didn’t have back then, a way to connect globally. Back then, I was alone in my purple room, sitting in my bubble chair, reading a copy of Seventeen whilst Backstreet Boys played on my stereo. I was alone with my thoughts, feelings and questions. Now we have one another.
Staying fat is an act of rebellion, it’s political and challenges the belief systems of millions of people. We will see an ongoing rise in diet and wellness trends, a hard push from trainers and coaches who make their profit from your insecurities. Why? Because when the world is a dumpster fire, things fall apart and seem out of our control. They will prey on that, use willpower and motivation, the desire for personal responsibility to distract you from using your voice.
We cannot fight when we are tired, hungry, overwhelmed and distracted. Now is not the time to lose weight, when we are losing our rights.
Our next season is (fingers crossed) coming out on April 8th, in the meantime follow the show on socials:
Instagram
TikTok
Thanks for reading The Culture Of It All! Podcast! This post is public so feel free to share it.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cultureofitallpod.substack.com/subscribe
