Nora
I was almost driven to anorexia in my teens. I dropped from about 130 lbs to about 110 in 6 months when I was 16 (5’8″, just for perspective), only to be rudely told by friends of my parents that I’m too thin. In my 20s, I was constantly unsatisfied with my body, fluctuating between 135 and 150 and always aiming to “get the weight off” At 30 I got a wakeup call, and realized that my body’s perfectly healthy and wonderful the way it is. Now I’m 33, 145 lbs, pretty active, and never once does it cross my mind that I should lose weight. However, when I mentioned to a fellow musician last week, a woman my age and a little bit thinner than me, that I was trying to eat healthy, she instantly started telling me how I needed to track all my calories and do sports every day and watch the carbs in order to lose weight. I was stunned. I told her, I don’t aim to lose weight. She looked at me blankly and said “really?” I’m ashsmed to even say it, but I’ve felt fat ever since she said that. I can’t shake it. I feel every ounce of fat on my body, which until then had felt sexy, now feels like an unwanted blanket. For some reason this comment has affected me deeply. There is something inherently wrong with a society that looks at a healthy body and thinks of it as a problem needing to be solved. (And by healthy body I don’t just mean mine, I mean others who are heavier than average but happy at their size too)