ISSUES
: Body Confidence
Chapter 1: Body Image
27
scolded like children. Having that
awkward, babyish word dragging
on you every day of your life,
from childhood into maturity, well,
maybe it’s no wonder I prefer hot
chocolate to whisky and substitute
Harry Potter audiobooks for
therapy.
Every cell in my body would rather
be “fat” than “big”. Grown-ups
speak the truth.
Over time, the knowledge that I
was too big made my life smaller
and smaller. I insisted that shoes
and accessories were just “my
thing”, because my friends didn’t
realise I couldn’t shop for clothes
at regular shops and I was too
mortified to explain it to them.
I backed out of dinner plans if I
remembered the restaurant had
particularly narrow aisles or rickety
chairs. I ordered salad even if
everyone else was having fish and
chips. I pretended to hate skiing
because my giant men’s ski pants
made me look like a chimney and
I was terrified my bulk would tip
me off the chairlift. I stayed home
as my friends went hiking, biking,
sailing, climbing, diving, exploring
– I was sure I couldn’t keep up,
and what if we got into a scrape?
They couldn’t boost me up a cliff or
lower me down an embankment or
squeeze me through a tight fissure
or hoist me from the hot jaws of
a bear. I never revealed a single
crush, convinced that the idea of
my disgusting body as a sexual
being would send people – even
people who loved me – into fits of
projectile vomiting (or worse, pity).
I didn’t go swimming for a decade.
As I imperceptibly rounded the
corner into adulthood – 14, 15, 16,
17 – I watched my friends elongate
and arch into these effortless,
exquisite things. I waited. I
remained a stump. I wasn’t jealous,
exactly; I loved them, but I felt
cheated.
We each get just a few years to be
perfect. To be young and smooth
and decorative and collectible.
That’s what I’d been sold. I was
missing my window, I could feel it
pulling at my navel (my obsessively
hidden, hated navel), and I
scrabbled, desperate and frantic.
Deep down, in my honest places,
I knew it was already gone – I had
stretch marks and cellulite long
before 20 – but they tell you that,
if you hate yourself hard enough,
you can grab a tail feather or two
of perfection. Chasing perfection
was your duty and your birthright,
as a woman, and I would never
know what it was like – this thing,
this most important thing for girls.
I missed it. I failed. I wasn’t a
woman. You only get one life. I
missed it.
Society’s monomaniacal fixation
on female thinness isn’t a distant
abstraction, something to be pulled
apart by academics in women’s
studies classrooms or leveraged
for traffic in shallow ‘body-positive’
listicles (‘Check Out These 11 Fat
Chicks [...] No 7 Is Almost Like a
Regular Woman!”’. It is a constant,
pervasive taint that warps every
woman’s life. And, by extension,
it is in the amniotic fluid of every
major cultural shift.
Women matter. Women are half
of us. When you raise women to
believe that we are insignificant,
that we are broken, that we are
sick, that the only cure is starvation
and restraint and smallness;
when you pit women against one
another, keep us shackled by
shame and hunger, obsessing over
our flaws, rather than our power
and potential; when you leverage
all of that to sap our money and our
time – that moves the rudder of the
world. It steers humanity toward
conservatism and walls and the
narrow interests of men, and it
keeps us adrift in waters where
women’s safety and humanity are
secondary to men’s pleasure and
convenience.
I watched my friends become
slender and beautiful, I watched
them get picked and wear J Crew
and step into small boats without
fear, but I also watched them
starve and harm themselves, get
lost and sink. They were picked
by bad people, people who hurt
them on purpose, eroded their
confidence and kept them trapped
in an endless chase. The real scam
is that being bones isn’t enough,
either. The game is rigged. There is
no perfection.
I listened to Howard Stern
every morning in college on his
eponymous 90s’ radio show.
The Howard Stern Show
was
