baby fat

10/11/2024

TW: discussion of disordered eating

i haven't thought i was skinny since...well ever. i don't remember learning the meaning of 'skinny' or 'fat,' i just somehow knew that one was good and one was bad. it's always come naturally to me to think of myself as fat. it’s honestly easier to hate my body sometimes. at least it’s consistent that way because when you start to like it, and something happens to make you think about your flaws again, the heartbreak is just too gut-wrenching. my body feels hollow. then i hate it again.

not a day has gone by since i was 12 where i don't body check. i suck in, i release, i contract, i suck in again. i feel every rib and follow the contour of my desired waist, pulling my skin back to imagine what could be. i check the status of my hip bones when i think no one's looking and when i lie in bed, making sure they're protruding or at least that the skin is thin enough to feel them. this is a new trick since i've lost a bit of weight. my weight has been fluctuating since high school and i've been slowly getting smaller since last school year.

i don't have to be saying any of this. i could live in bliss as a conventionally attractive, conventionally fit blonde 21-year old. i could be living a perfect, short dresses and cocktails life. and i'm not, but i bet i could let people think that if i really wanted to. but i have this inexplicable urge to shout from the rooftops that i am not the person i appear to be. i feel icky when i get a compliment on something i've worked hard to like, or still have a complicated relationship with. my walk that i’ve practice to myself in the mirror; my curly hair that i burnt to a crisp for years. i need people to know that i've felt like an outcast my whole life so complimenting me is futile and fake. it's almost as if i won't let myself be happy. i am not meant to be one of the happy ones just as i thought at one point that i was not meant to be skinny and i was not meant to be cool or pretty or all the things that make up a girl that people love. turned out it was just baby fat.

i've been telling myself the same thing since high school: i need to stop treating my body like an accessory. it's been years and i have yet to cement it in my goddamn brain and follow through. 'this top would look better with a smaller waist' 'this dress would look better if i had a flat stomach' 'i would look prettier if i was skinnier' the way people imagine what they would do if they won the lottery, i imagine the first things i would do if i was skinnier. i think about all the dresses, crop tops, bikinis, and general hot people clothes i would wear. but the problem with this is it will never be enough. i have this idea in my head of the perfect body for myself (this can change depending on what i'm wearing, but often involves your typical small waist and curved hips, everything in perfect proportion), but even then i'd still be unhappy with my height. i have this idea that i was supposed to look different. i have the coolness of a taller woman, i have the fashion taste of a skinnier woman, i was supposed to have bigger lips and smaller arms in order to truly be the charming, pretty girl i always thought i could be. even lately, realizing new unprecedented changes to my body, i find myself trying on clothes and being disappointed when they don't look good, but really they just don't look like the idealized version i had in my head. i'm disappointed when a dress i love doesn't make me taller or skinnier.

you will always be sickly skinny or disgustingly fat to someone. in some ways, it’s comforting to think this is no different from anything or anyone else you might encounter. one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and one man’s skinny is another man’s not skinny enough.

i thought i would be happy when i became smaller and i definitely thought i would notice it, but it snuck up on me. i didn't notice it because it's never enough. rather, i should say there's always too much. no matter what the scale says and no matter what shape my body takes i've always reverted to some sort of unhappiness with it. either disgust or complete indifference. but lately, maybe due to stress and living off a college girl's shoestring budget or maybe because i'm finally growing into my adult form, i can tell i'm smaller than i was just a few months ago. this makes me fall into a thinking i've tried to fight for a long time. it makes me want to think: how far can i go?

i am a failed high school anorexic. it started with binge eating freshman year and dieting as far back as 11. for about a month freshman year of high school i chewed and spit every solid food when no one was watching, that one was weird and i don't know where i came up with that. something clicked in my last year of high school. maybe i was sick of feeling chubby, maybe i was sick of eating, maybe i wanted attention. but i just stopped. during lunch i went home, went on my phone and went back to school. sometimes i would get a kid's meal from some chain restaurant, or just a muffin from dunkin, or just something to drink, and sometimes the only food i had was the dinner my mother served me. once i even set a stopwatch on my phone to see how long i could go. eventually i got my period and gave into the depths of my cupboard and piled everything i had been dreaming about onto a plate. when the last crumb was swallowed i dragged my fleshy, heavy stomach upstairs, closed the bathroom door, and tried to throw up. i stuck my fingers so far down i could feel where my intestines started and when i had almost given up my body released my little indulgence. i stared back at the pile, shocked and unsure what to do next. i had surprised myself. it looked like the vanilla cupcakes i ate only mashed up and foamy, floating serenely in the confines of my toilet. it surprised me, maybe scared me a little, at how quickly i could get rid of it. the next day i was sick (naturally) and almost fainted while running during dance team practice. i tried to purge my dinner before almost every football game that season, but to no avail. (i have a thing i guess i just can't throw up) i failed at having an eating disorder. i didn't even lose any weight, i just had a puffy face and a stomach with a twisted sense of humor. and i thought i was over all that until early freshman year of college when once again there was a little voice in my head telling me to be smaller.

and we could try to analyze the sources for this desire all day. was it dance? did staring myself in the mirror in a leotard every day do the damage? is it wanting to appeal to boys and societal pressure in general? no matter the reason, it happened. i used to think i needed to know the answer in order to solve the problem, but maybe instead i should be asking myself why should i like myself instead of trying to figure out why i hate myself.

one summer, when i was 19 and riding high on my new college girl lifestyle, i was seeing a personal trainer and eating for fuel in hopes of showing muscle. eventually the calories and the portions got smaller. it just felt like the natural order, like some sort of instinct to become smaller. in this instance it wasn't just the instinct that influenced me to cut my portions. every summer my family and our herd of family friends stay at our cabin. what was intended to be a fun-filled getaway haunted me for weeks leading up to it. for years this trip meant being seen in a swimsuit, tormented by gravity, raw skin without the safety and trickery of clothing exposed to people (specifically boys) that will take in what they see and assess where i fall on the scale. fat and ugly (low value) or small, figured, and hot (high value). but this year was going to be different. i felt strong, confident, pretty, happy. rookie mistake. i was sitting in a plastic chair circle, talking with old friends. these boys that i've known since childhood start talking about some girls we both know. not their quality, their bodies. these girls i consider beautiful, with curves to die for and stunning smiles, were being called fat. right in front of my face. suddenly i'm 12 again and can see every lump and every clump of cellulite on my unsightly flesh. with that generalization, despite it falling upon other girls that had nothing to do with me, once again i was fat. as much as i tried to push through the next few days, excited to put on my cute new swimsuits and fun little outfits to hang out at my favorite place (it's the lake for christ's sake! just have fun!) every time i caught my reflection all i could see was my chubby tummy peeking out, and my broad shoulders made so apparent by my big flappy arms. i had to choke back my tears every time my well-meaning friend showed me a video she captured of me. it's moments like these when i'm made painfully aware of the value of a body again. i became hyper-aware of every molecule that was out of place. all i could see was my pudgy stomach, my broad shoulders and the pockets of fat under them, not my smile or the new bikini i was so excited about. i let my lust for life fade quicker than it took to make a cup of yogurt and granola.

everyone loves an it girl. and they love their it girl to be beautiful without knowing she’s beautiful and thin while eating cheeseburgers because she’s just like us. but what the it girl doesn’t show us is the army of invisible it girls behind her. you will never be the it girl because she’s a fantasy created by a corporation. she wasn’t quite bred in a lab, but her supplements were. we used to get our it girls monthly with a subscription, nowadays they’re available to us 24/7 thanks to social media, creating pseudo-girls-next-door who just bought that bag that you can’t afford with your views. society will keep fattening us up with it girls, and as long as we try to be them, buying all the clothes, listening to all the music, going to all the bars, we stay distracted from developing our own taste and, much more importantly, getting in touch with the things that matter in life. how often does the it girl go camping? how often does she volunteer at a homeless shelter? how often does she wear guizio skirts that she didn’t pay for?

i lost a bit of weight after that relapse, but eventually gained it back after months of a sorority house food diet. friends tried to help me through when my obsession with weight and body image became apparent. 'you seem really obsessed with body image, people really don't care about that' 'you're literally conventionally attractive' both from friends who have been there. and they're both right it seems. i'm slowly learning that i'm not fat, and that maybe i never was. i no longer question my beauty, and only question my social competence an average amount. so what is it about my damn skin suit that i just can't seem to let go of? the self-hatred is slowly becoming an afterthought the skinnier i become and yet i'm still obsessed with my body and wanting to be smaller. for one thing, i can't comprehend thinking any other way. self-hatred is the default. and for another, i just genuinely don't know what to do with myself. it's always come so naturally and instinctually to think of myself as chubby and cover myself up. i learned something recently, that there might be a reason behind my ample adolescence. while it makes increasingly less sense to consider myself chubby now, the reason this is so instinctual is because i always was a chubbier kid. i'm familiar with the days of too tight pants and a thick, rounded belly, being able to hold the flesh around my ribs and feeling hindered by my own body. i was about seven years old the first time i looked at myself and didn't like what i saw.

i found a few articles on why some people hold onto fat in adolescence and slim down in early adulthood. they said how kids might gain weight during adolescence due to hormonal changes and that the fat actually protects the immune system. the reason i held onto weight despite dancing 5 days a week and always had a belly was simply because i was a kid? i just had to wait a few years after i had a period for my body to figure itself out. all those tears and mental torment and all those years of wishing i could take a knife to myself and carve out a prettier me was actually fine?

i'm not the girl i was 5 years ago, but at the same time i've always been the same. it's like the roots have always been there--my humor, my sensibility, my laugh--but i just needed time to grow my blossoms around them, now all people will see is the flowers and i'm the only one who knows what the roots looked like. it feels wrong to just let people think what they want about me, i want all my flaws and all the bad moments on display. i'm so caught up in my past life that i almost didn't realize the life i have and the things i accomplished were all shaped by me. i've worked and i've failed at different ways to be, whether it was wanting to be smaller or overworking myself and letting everything slip through the cracks, but no matter what i was determined to stay true to myself. i could feel the buds of a beautiful life peeking through, i couldn't fight it off. what if i really am the party girl people say i am? what if i'm not an outcast pretending to be beauty queen and people actually just enjoy my company?

i'm scared that wanting to love myself now will be temporary and that if i gain weight again i’ll fall back into the trap of self-hate. this sounds like a brag, and maybe in some ways it is to all the people that didn't believe in me, but i’m aiming for introspection. my life has changed so completely in such a short amount of time and it's like i'm finally catching up with it. it's just taking me a while to realize that while i haven’t necessarily changed, my body and my circumstances have. but it’s this same body that has led me to the life i have now. i’m ashamed to admit it but i like when i look skinny. as much as i try not to care, i do. but not as much as i like getting compliments on my writing. you can see my body, you can’t see my intellect. when you get a compliment on that, that’s the purest form of praise. shame and obsession with thinness keeps us chained to the rhythm of consumerism and bikini-body summers. i want to read books and not low-calorie recipes. i want to change and be a better person, not change the number on the scale. i want to go to the gym and not be afraid, maybe even a little excited, of the calorie burner counter growing higher. my body is just a vessel to get me to more museums, my best friends' houses, hold my eyes to read more books, and steady hands to write in my journal. i’d like to keep it that way.

xoxo