WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
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as I grew up I saw my little brothers go from pudgy pre-teens to having super muscular bodies and I thought to myself
WHAT THE FUCK?
was I not playing in dirt enough?
did I miss some genetic lottery in which my brothers could just one day stop being chubby as fuck and gain a six pack seemingly overnight?
and it didn’t stop there, the older I got the more I wondered if my fat was something I’d ~snap out of~
that if I just waited, I would one day ~transform~
and then when waiting didn’t work - I tried dieting and pills and all types of shit that just doesn’t work and actually fucks with the health you’re told is already fucked up by being a fat person.
THIS.
My little brother is a super fucken ripped, football-scholarship-toting, dudebro jock extreme - and he was chubbers when he was younger.
I went through puberty and moved to college before he even went to middle school, so we’re ages apart…it’s just weird how body image issues don’t translate in the same ways. At all.
My bro is always like “I’m so glad I don’t have anxiety and migraines and skin issues like you do” (always leaving out the “fat” aspect, though of course I know he’s thinking it) - it just makes me so goddamn angry.
My sister and I both struggle with this shit, and he never has. He’s had everything handed to him on a goddamn silver platter. Though I will admit, he does work his ass off and totally excels as an athlete…It’s just that when I was an athlete, I could never lose enough weight. I was “never good enough” because of my size. And I was a girl, so, you know.
I DON’T KNOW I just totally feel you and wanted to say as much, okay? okay. <3
This will be a thing that I read when I have my off-days, because my love affair with my marks is eternal, but sometimes my brain forgets that.
I love when it gets warm outside because I can wear shorts and dresses and jiggle my thighs around, which is one of my favorite feelings.
I don’t know, I was curious.
If you’re ever feeling desperately low, like your brains could seep out of your ears from the pressure of your thoughts and you’re thoroughly sick of yourself, seek inspiration in the things you love. Avert your attention. Transform something in your appearance - anything - just to be able to look at yourself differently.
Get creative and imagine yourself as someone else, even if it means pain-stakingly painting your eyes with liquid liner whilst sitting cross-legged on your bed listening to Sonic Youth at 1 in the morning.
It helped me. Maybe it will help you.
Whenever anything or anyone ever asks me about my “fitness regimen”, I am quick to say it doesn’t exist.
But, in a way, it does.
This past week, I technically worked out a number of times; It consisted of dancing (by myself) in sporadic bursts of time. Hot, sweaty, and smiling.
I went on a couple of walks, too.
I spent most of my evenings stretching, painting my nails, doing light yoga and exercises while watching whatever, and smoking cigarettes if I felt like it. (For some reason, I haven’t been smoking much lately. Today I’ve had two.)
Somewhere in there I did some strength-training and pilates that I made up along the way, which escalated into testing myself to see how long I could keep my legs lifted, parallel to the ground, with my back to the floor.
The answer was: not long. But I kept lifting them up again anyway, and my muscles became warm and happy for it.
One week can not accurately encompass all of my life habits, but as an average: I’d say it’s about right.
The anxiety I live with every day is dense within my body. It saturates my muscles and nerve-endings so much that it seems I can feel it surge and recede like jolts of electricity.
Sometimes, my body is sore from anxiety’s effect. My muscles twitch, sting, and ache due to internal forces rather than outward physical exertion.
The burn of physical movement and the ache of anxious muscles, together, is bittersweet.
So I focus on that feeling, on myself, when I move my body to music. I feel how my fat sways and gives way as I bend, jump, and stretch - and it empowers me to move more. I test my flexibility and feel as the tension dissipates. I am aware.
I am so aware and in touch with myself in these moments of radical self worth and solitary movement that I actually forget what “fitness” is.
I don’t need a set of rules to tell me how I should or shouldn’t be moving my body in a healthful way.
I know that whatever I am doing is what is right for me because I have learned how to listen to my body’s cues - and we’ve decided to set our own goddamn rules.
Yeah, I’ll say it - this universal call to action for women of the world to “love themselves” is overrated.
Strive for self contentment, be kind to yourself, be critical of media, remain vigilant in seeking empowerment and positivity when you can, form a relationship with your body, live well by your own standards, and by all means - love yourself, if that is within your grasp.
But if you can not find self love, for whatever reason and however long, know that you are not part of the problem.
You have been affected.
Unlearning the hate is hard work, but once we learn how to dismantle the inner-workings of a society and culture that permeates and surrounds our very existence, we can stand a chance of knocking it down.
In the meantime, don’t force it - stop blaming yourself for not “loving your body” enough.
You can not possibly be at fault, when the oppressive culture we live in is the main offender.
At least two personal friends e-mailed me last week with a link to this interview. I just listened to it and now I can really see why. Laurie Edwards talks about her life with a rare disease. She shares her perspectives as well as some insights into what it’s like to live with a chronic condition. She talks about a number of things that I know many of my readers will be able to relate to, including:
- financial issues
- fatigue
- struggles with pregnancy and childbirth
- being in pain but still wanting to do “normal” things like hold a job and go to school
- stigmas and prejudice she’s felt as a woman with pain (being dismissed as “overly emotional”)
- how amazing it is that we can connect to other people with chronic conditions and illnesses through the internet
- when to tell someone you’re dating about your condition
- and tons more
This quote particularly struck me:
“What’s really hard about it is…it’s a diagnosis of exclusion. You can’t just get a blood a test and you can’t just get a scan and get an answer, and I think that ambiguity can cause a lot of problems”
That’s exactly what I’m going through right now - how do you diagnose something like EDS? You need to find a doctor who knows what it is, first of all - that can be a challenge all on its own. And she’s right - you can’t just get your answers from a blood test or brain scan. There’s all kinds of nuance within genetics, symptoms, etc. etc. and it can take a lot of time, and even more energy.
The interview is just about half an hour long, but definitely take some time to listen to it.
I am a gay woman of colour. I have studied Gender and Sexuality for four years, am getting my Masters in the same, have acted for many years in drag, and want to eventually write a book about Drag and Gendered Performance.
And here is what unnerves me a little about the androgyny on Tumblr. I feel alienated by it. For the simple reason that my body/mind/sexuality is left out. Androgyny is an aesthetic. But it is also gender performance, an intellectual perspective and a sexual identity. I am androgynous. Not by aesthetic always. My clothing may reflect it sometimes. I spend a lot of time in drag, and my gender identity encompasses every breast-bind, every change of shadow on my face. But it is not my only body. And I have many bodies, and many mental states, and many bedroom moves – and they are androgynous.
Don’t get me wrong. Aesthetically androgynous women are GORGEOUS. Aesthetic androgyny is GLORIOUS. I am uber attracted to androgynous ladies. Have dated quite a few. But it is not the only androgyny. And sometimes, I want people to remember me. To recognize that you don’t need to know me to consider the possibility of a particular identity. To remember that this identity lies in my stride, in my gender performance, in my mind. To know that I can bend my gender to match you, to contrast to yours, and to fit my will. And all of it is authentic, is genuine, is mine.
I use my makeup to gloss my mouth and shade my eyes sometimes, and to texture my facial hair and draw on a mustache sometimes. The same tools on the same body. The same mind in the same body. A combination of masculine and feminine in the same body.
See me. I can be anything from femme to super butch to quite a motherfucking sexy drag king. I’m not going to wax Foucauldian about gender identities, because I want to break it down to this – androgyny is more than its popular representation. It is something that is visceral, and I do not want it underrepresented. And I am nervous because I don’t want to encroach on the aesthetically androgynous groups, but I want to make myself heard. ANDROGYNY IS OF THE MIND. Beyond all else.
Sometimes it looks like me. Like this.
This is important; also I’m posting this because god damn, this person is fine.
Thank you. I’ve always felt I am androgynous but I would take too much to achieve that mainstream white androg look. But what about me and my internal? Respect that as what it is too. Too much emphasis on appearance when discussing gender
yesyesyes
I am taking my fiancé’s name for a number of reasons.
First of all, my own last name is descendant from a man who started a family with my Great Grandmother when she was 19 and left her in the dead of night with a newborn (my grandfather) and a toddler (my great uncle) in the midst of a harsh Detroit snowstorm, parting with the most cliche of last words - “I’ll be back, I’m going to the corner for cigarettes.”
He went on to do all manner of things I’d rather not speak about, but most importantly - he never came back, although his name remained.
My grandfather once even entertained the idea of changing our family name, due to my great grandfather’s past transgressions. I think it ultimately became more trouble than it was worth, and he decided against it.
So you see, I really feel no particular affinity for it. Sure, it is part of my identity and my family’s history, but identities change. Lives transform. You become connected to others and start to think about leaving behind your own legacy - and the possibility of a fresh start with the person you love most in this world begins to sound more and more appealing.
In a way, I kind of wish my fiancé (Jamie) and I could make up our own last name. When prompted to make one up, he immediately came up with “The Boopingtons” - not an entirely unworthy option.
As it is, we don’t have the luxury of becoming Mr. and Mrs. Boopington. I could keep my name and Jamie could keep his, I could take his, OR accept a hyphenated mash-up of the two.
On the surface it appears to be a pretty simple decision to make. And at first, I felt pretty confident about it.
When I told Jamie I’d like to take his name, his reaction was not unexpected.
“Don’t you want to keep your name?”
My argument against this was also quite simple - “I am going to be with you for the rest of my life and I want to share a name with you. I want our children to share our name and I want us to be a unit, a force to be reckoned with. I want your name to be OUR name.”
This exchange would start a discussion between us that lasted for months. Just when I thought I’d finally made a decision, I’d start to feel like maybe Jamie wasn’t on board with it. For some reason, he seemed to care more about the preservation of my surname than I did.
We even thought for a while about the possibility of Jamie taking my name. I brought this up at Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, to which my dad replied (in Jamie’s absence), “You may as well chop his dick off.”
Because his name…Is in his dick?
Turns out that for a lot of reasons (mostly due to the fact we are applying for a fiance visa so that he can finally move to the states) Jamie is stuck with his name. But that still leaves my own name to contend with - and a decision that is mine alone to make.
There is a part of me that is wary of being perceived as a “bad feminist”, surrendering myself to the very patriarchy that I’m meant to be fighting against - but that’s not how it feels, to me.
We are both feminists. We both understand the implications that come with sharing a name or not sharing a name.
It doesn’t make me any more or less dedicated as a wife or a partner. It doesn’t mean that I would begrudge any other woman the right to keep her name, or that what I decide on is the best option for everyone.
The bottom line is, I know that Jamie doesn’t view me as his “property” and taking his name doesn’t make me “his”. It makes us “us” in a more obvious way than if we had two different surnames. It’s about what’s right for US. And that is all.
I realize that I am in the majority. Even now that we’ve had the option not to for quite some time, the bride still prefers to take the groom’s surname 90% of the time.
I still feel that this is something that deserves to be challenged, for those of us who feel a particular affinity for our surnames - but I am not one of those women. So I don’t feel particularly empowered to take it on as a personal issue.
The truth is, I quite look forward to changing my name and starting a new chapter alongside my husband.
While my name may change on paper, I can still bring it back as I please. I may even continue to use my maiden name situationally, especially as it is so engrained in the history of my work as a designer, activist, and writer.
So, does taking my husband’s name make me a hypocrite? Have I lost my right to be critical of patriarchal traditions because I’ve chosen to go along with one, for my own reasons? Do I really care? What’s in a name, anyway?
I am totally with Haley, even though when I get married I have no intention of changing my name, and told my partner this in no uncertain terms (to which he replied “duuuh”), I don’t think it is at all anti-feminist to take your husband’s name. There are many circumstances (like Haley’s, or say if they woman’s family or origin is abusive) where taking your husband’s name is in fact a feminist decision. As long as it is a freely-made, conscious choice to either keep your name or take your husbands, then either choice is completely consistent with being a feminist, in my opinion. I think feminism is fighting for the freedom for women to make the choices in her life, not dictating what those choices should be.
I found this blog at the beginning of the semester, through a link at xojane, and it really really hit home. I realized that I need to make a concerted effort to work on loving myself (even though society tells me not to)- not through diet and exercise and self flagellation, but through acceptance. This project was an attempt at that. I researched fertility figures, and the ones that I liked best were the ones with round hips and large heavy breasts. The ones that resembled me. It reminds me that this obsession with size 0 is a recent trend. There have been times throughout history where we have been revered as the standard of beauty. So not only is this figure a reach into the past, but it is also a self portrait.
She has two faces, one forward and one back- and when I have some time, I will be setting a stone on either side- a moonstone for the Maiden aspect and a Labradorite for the Crone.
Thank you for giving me the courage to explore this. I still have some really bad, triggering days, but I hope that my new totem can help me remember that the clamoring of the media is not the truth of the world. I am a fat woman and that is ok.
tw: disordered eating, food tracking (calorie counting)…
So as some may or may not know, I’ve been having a shitty time with food anxiety and eating habits lately. But I’m finally finding my way out.
I’ve been using My Fitness Pal to track my food. Not as an aid to lose weight or even to keep track my weight (I haven’t weighed myself since Christmas) but just to simply keep a record of the food I eat and the ways that I move my body every day.
I’ve been pretty good at not paying attention to the calorie counting aspect of the app (I always seem to come up short of my “limit” anyway), but I can’t stop feeling guilty every time the numbers go into the ~red~ for sugar, carbs, and/or fat.
It’s never outrageous, at least. I haven’t been binging - but I haven’t been restricting, either. Because when I full-out restrict, shit gets dicey and I take it to an extreme.
So it’s everything in moderation. Finding a healthy balance between neurotic restriction and the impulsion to binge. Trying to place myself safely at a point between the two.
I just need to look at the angry red numbers and tell them that they don’t really matter. That I can eat less sugar on another day if I want to. That I am still eating intuitively and being as mindful as I can, so maybe I should be a little easier on myself.
I am usually against this sort of food tracking. I know it can be triggering for many people with eating disorders to think about food in this way. It used to do the same thing for me, until recently.
Now, I am capable of using it differently. I am able to view what I’ve been eating over the past few weeks and feel better, more empowered by my choices. Because when my thoughts become irrational and I think “I’ve been eating too much of this or that lately and oh my god I’m going to die” or whatever else it is that plagues my mind when I become anxious about food, I can look back and see I’m wrong. I have solid, rational proof. It helps.
I’ve also been buying food in new ways (via food delivery boxes with organic produce and snacks), so the whole novelty of that along with feeling empowered for the first time in ages has leveled me out quite nicely, to a point where I feel almost normal about food again. And it’s really nice.
I just needed to talk out some things. I hope that’s okay.
[TW: eating disorders, suicide]
Dear Doctor-I-Went-To-When-I-Was-a-Teenager,
I came to you because I was getting a yearly physical for the upcoming season of cheerleading I had ahead of me. You asked what sorts of things I did with the squad with a weird look on your face, and I told you that I do what cheerleaders do: I cheer, I jump, I use my voice a lot, too! For some reason, you didn’t believe me. You still had that weird look on your face.
You continued on to tell me that my weight was out of the range for my age, height, and sex. You continued on to tell me that by the time that I was in my early 20s, I’d be so fat that I wouldn’t be able to move. You continued on to tell me that I would gain 50-100 pounds a year if I continued my ‘habits’. You told me that I would die. I thought this was weird because you were a woman, and you weren’t thin like people on tv. I didn’t understand why you were saying these things to me. I cried. I was roughly 200 pounds.
Then, you went on to ask me about my sexual experiences and you didn’t believe me when I told you that I’d never had sex. I told you that my periods were uncomfortable, heavy, and annoying—like any teenage girl would say. You told me that the best thing to do would be to give me a pap, right there. I felt violated by the simple thought of it, I didn’t know anything about pap smears, no one had ever touched me there, I was terrified. I cried. I wanted my mom.
You calmed me down as much as you could, and then went on with getting my blood pressure and blood work. I was confused as to why you were just now doing these things, after you’d told me how unhealthy I was already. You had a surprised look on your face when I was in the normal “healthy” range for my blood pressure, yet you still told me that I was unhealthy based on the measurement that the scale took of me. I was an active girl. I was a cheerleader which meant I had practice about twice a week and then two games on the weekends. You said the blood-work would most likely show a thyroid condition, and that would be an explanation for my weight problem. You told me that once we got that fixed, I’d be thin. (I have no thyroid problem)
I left your office that day feeling horrible. I felt like I had somehow lied to you, that you were a doctor and you knew what was best and maybe I just didn’t realize what I’d been doing all my life. Maybe I did have sex with someone and I didn’t know it. Hell, maybe my diet did need some work— and it did, but I didn’t know what healthy was because no one taught me. To me, healthy was being happy and loving the people around me and grasping onto them with all that I had. To me, comfort was food because when my dad died people gave us food. To me, comfort was food because when my sister died people gave us food. I was happy sometimes, sometimes my OCD roared its ugly head up. It had been a few years since my last bout of eating practically nothing in order to lose weight, and I thought I’d gotten better because I could eat again without feeling like I was going to throw up. I thought I’d gotten better because I didn’t need the anti-nausea medication anymore. I thought I’d gotten better because I didn’t want to kill myself anymore.
I left your office that day feeling ashamed of myself. I was a smart girl, I got good grades, people loved me, but I was fat. How could I have done that to myself? I walked out to my mother who was in the waiting room and told her we were leaving. I was starting to tear up again, and my mom put her hand on my shoulder and we left. We walked out of your office. I couldn’t tell my mom everything, but I told her some of what you said. I felt stupid, I cried the whole way home. To this day, I’ve probably been to the doctor a handful of times since this instance. You made me want to stay clear of doctors, you made me terrified of doctors, which in turn made me less healthy. I’m still terrified of going to the doctor and what they might say to me. Luckily, I never get sick.
Little did you know, I went on to have more intense disordered eating. I counted every last calorie I ate—including gum, I got an estimate for how many calories my body burned by just existing, and I worked my hardest to make it so that I would be burning so many calories each day to lose a pound in two days. I still ate crappy foods, but counted them into my calories. I worked out, I had a personal trainer at the gym that I worked at, and if I didn’t work out one day, I just wouldn’t eat anything. I didn’t know what healthy was, I just knew that I needed to be thin.
If it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be roughly 300 pounds today. Your shame against my body made me hate my body the way you hated my body, and I treated it terribly. I tried counting calories, I did Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, I even fainted at a cheerleading practice because of how unhealthy I was. But you know what? I was still fat. I still never got below 200 pounds. I had this dream number, you know? I so badly wanted to be 160 pounds. I had a journal online that was dedicated to tracking my calorie intake and outtake, and I was in a community with other people who wanted to lose weight by any means possible. This group was an anorexia group. I figured they knew how to do it because they were the thin ones. But I got confused when I was doing the same things that they were and I still looked like me.
Food has been a constant friend to me, even when it was the enemy. It was something I feared, something I yearned for, something I could have when I was skinny. Now, I sometimes still go a day without eating and remember how happy I used to be when I felt the hunger growling up inside me. Now, I sometimes binge eat, because I don’t know what the feeling of full is because of how fucked up my eating habits have been in my lifetime. I can blog day in and day out, I can do research on fat/body politics, I can read Health at Every Size cover to cover and go on websites dedicated to it, and I still have disordered eating. You are one of the reasons. I hope you’re happy.
I’m still alive. I’m at the peak of my life, and it’s only getting better. If it wasn’t for people like you, I wouldn’t be researching what I’m researching, I wouldn’t be going to grad school, I wouldn’t be talking about body-positivity, I wouldn’t have gotten to lecture in classes at my college, I wouldn’t have gotten to do anything that I’m doing right now. I am the person I am today because of people like you.
Instead of telling your patients how terrible they are and how they’re going to die (which is a lie), tell them how to be healthier. Tell them that being active can be fun, not a chore and not only to lose weight. Tell them that fad diets don’t work. Put the energy of love into your patients, not hate. You don’t care about something that you hate.
xo Cortnie
I am chapped skin, gaping pores,
Angry spots and red welts.
I am a child of anxiety subjected
To states of over-everything.
Over-productive sebum,
Over-zealous picking,
Over-sensitive reactions,
Over-and-out.
I am stubborn coarse hairs
In “unladylike” places,
Self-inflicted scars from
Conditions so imposed
To wax and wane
Beyond my control.
I am good enough.
“Beauty” is elusive,
And I am happy to own “ugly”
When my lips form the words
So naturally.
This is what happens when the antibiotics stop working and your eczema gets infected.
I look like i have chicken pox.
The doctor was very unclear as to what is wrong exactly. He just said it was an infection and gave me more antibiotics (so now i’m on two different ones), more emollient, some painkillers and a different (much much better) antihistamine.
it still just keeps getting worse though. The pain in unbearable. I had very little sleep last night and the sleep i did have was only because i sedated myself with co-codomal and marijuana.
If it’s worse tomorrow i don’t know what the fuck i’m going to do.
I was just skimming some tags and came across your post. I just wanted to say that I hope you feel better soon. And that you are beautiful.
- Haley
Feeling “small.”
I can feel hurt and vulnerable all I want but “small” is not an option. And by small I mean weak and childish and invisible and scared and unimportant, but summed up specifically by the term small. I could use those words, but the term “small” hits the nail on the head for me. it encompasses all my feelings in one word, yet it doesn’t fit me. Thin women can feel small without ever having to think about how their physique may not match what they’re feeling inside. I can’t say I feel like curling up into a tiny ball without facing some ridicule because my body is not tiny.
I don’t have the luxury of claiming fragility because no matter my emotional climate, my body looks too unlike fragile, more like the protective insulation to prevent breakage more so than something like glass.
My emotions involving weakness and vulnerability and fear and triviality are more subject to invalidation and mockery based upon the size of my body and it’s bullshit. I’m expected to match my size with a big personality filled with gusto and sass.
I may be big, but I am not always powerful. I feel really fucking small today, I do.