I think that as long as I can still remember what it was like to be thinner, to look in the mirror and see someone who, while still fat, was also undeniably fit (and had the deltoids and biceps to prove it), I’ll always be someone who thinks in somedays.
From Utne Reader’s Love Your Fat Self comes an especially relevant quote as I once again do battle with the scale and my own skewed ideas about self-improvement:
“Our all-or-nothing nation is built on foundations of fantasy. Our imaginations are harnessed to America’s favorite adolescent fantasy: how much prettier, thinner, richer, and more successful we will be one day. This perpetual American daydream is written in the language of ‘somedays.’ Someday whispers us to sleep at night, gets us through a boring workday, makes our little lives bearable. The hundreds of ads the average American sees every day brainwash us into believing that we need more shiny, new things and, of course, food—glorious piles of chocolate chip cookies, decadent ice cream, burgers the size of elephants. ‘Someday’ soothes insecurities, numbs discomfort, and keeps perfect girls running obediently in the hamster wheel of preoccupation with their weight. Someday we will be thin. Translation: Someday we will be happy, loved, and powerful.”
But that someday didn’t make me happier, nor did it make me measurably better. It provided temporary satisfaction that I could buy clothes in straight-size stores, and it gave me satisfaction whenever I looked in a mirror and could see the muscle definition everywhere without even flexing, but down deep I was still deeply unsatisfied because I wasn’t getting thinner. I was dissatisfied with my personal life, my professional life, and my seeming inability to do anything right. I realize now that it was the depression talking, that until I did the work on my own self-worth and acceptance that no matter if I was a straight size 12-14 (*sigh*) or the size 22 I am now, that I would always be the primary impediment to my own mental health.
India.Arie said she was not her hair; perhaps I should start singing “I am not my dress size.”
(Utne article via Feministing.)
