I want to talk about our preconceptions about our bodies. How it affects our daily lives, relationships and is underhandedly, ruining our lives.
Growing up, to me I always dreamed of being skinny, like when I was a kid. Because to me, to be skinny is to:
Be happy
Be popular
Have no problems
Not be criticized or bullied
To have an easy life
To get everything you want
To be accepted no matter what
Easy, you can eat anything you want
I want to talk about the first time this preconception about skinny was challenged. Her name was Carla. Thin doesn't quite cut it, Carla was the personification of beauty, 0% body fat, skin like a china doll, perfect flowing hair, make up and a wicked fashion sense. When I first met her I made those judgement that you make. Shes pretty, much better than me. I bet shes born that skinny, i bet shes really bitchy. She clearly doesn't like me because I am fat. I bet everything is handed to her. I bet she can eat anything that she wants.
They are built into us, these weird and rude preconceptions about people. It took me a while to warm up to her because these preconceptions made me so distant and to be honest, weirdly hateful. I don't hate very often but my negativity towards her wasn't outwardly apparently but it was still there, buried under the surface. Affecting every interaction with her and keeping myself distant because she made me feel insecure and unworthy because my body didn't look like hers.
After a while, I warmed up to her and then I learned somethings that blew my mind.
Carla told me she was severely socially anxious and that's why she is quiet. Shes stressed and that is why she rarely smiles because her mental health was suffering.
And the thing that really blew me away.
She was bullied in school for being bulimic even when she wasn't.
She is also just built to be thin and she eats whole foods, healthy with the occasional snack.
This is what I mean. Carla wasn't immune to bullying, she didn't eat nothing but shit and stay skinny, she didn't have an easy life and she wasn't free from mental health issues.
My preconceptions stopped me making a real friend because her body type was different to mine. Body shaming goes both ways. This threw me sideways because everything I believed, was a lie. I believed that if I was skinny, I would have an easy life, be taken care of, be popular and liked and I could be accepted. But this conversation made me take bodies out of the equation.
Because skinny or fat you are always going to be bullied or shamed, life is always going to be hard and no matter what and being accepted and popular is a choice. It is all a choice. You can choose who you hang out with, you choose to listen to someone body shaming you or not, you choose what you eat, you choose to have problems because of something else you do.
All of the things I thought being skinny could solve, they couldn't. The only thing that could give me those things I wanted was to change my attitude. To create a life where I felt accepted by myself, have friends who made me feel wanted, eat whatever I wanted and say no to the haters.
My Body Type Had Nothing To Do With It.
The stupidest part is, we are the ones that are the problem. We harbor these preconceptions based on hate and they affect how we treat other people because we judge them to be better than or less than us. Just purely based on their body type. We don't even bother to get to know the soul underneath. We just see skinny and we think Bitch or we see fat and we think Lazy. Because the media, our parents, Hollywood, society has told us that these are the preconceptions we must have. If you are skinny, you will be more desirable to a mate right? Because apparently we all live in the 1800s. I don't know about you but I have never caught feelings for someone based on their physical appearance alone. You gotta have one hell of a funny hustle to make me stumble.
My friend Clare says "Be kind because you have no idea what battles people are fighting underneath."
I think a way for us to honor this is to challenge our preconceptions about bodies in general. The idea that our bodies are connected to our self worth, it needs to stop. We need to stop comparing what our body looks like to how much we are valued as a person because we are So Much More than just a meat sack. Our bodies don't decide to run into burning buildings to save kittens, we do. Our bodies don't create amazing physical feats without the mind choosing too. Our bodies don't throw ourselves under horses for Womens Rights, our hearts do.
Our bodies are tools, the patty flippers of adventure. We need to start viewing our own bodies like a separate entity, like a child and treat it like you would treat a child. Feed it healthy, give it treats, make sure it exercises and most importantly, love it unconditionally.
We aren't just a body to be judged good or bad by others because we are more than that. If we are going to be judged, let us be judged by our actions. Do you think God thinks when he's letting people into heaven goes, "I mean she did save like 1000 people from dying on the streets but she liked the chocolate buttons a little too much so Buh Bye Y'all! Enjoy Hell ya fat fuck." Our action perceive our worth and we CHOOSE our actions and we can decide that we are worthy of love, acceptance and cake. Everything in our heads is a choice. It doesn't feel it, hell I know it doesn't because these preconceptions are buried so deep into our psyche we didn't even know they were there until someone blew out little tootsies off by saying, "oh hey, I suffer too".
Saying that, our preconceptions do not come from nowhere. We see a body type, more than once, doing something we don’t approve of and there we make the assumption that all people with this body type and lifestyle are the same. It is simple analytics and math to the brain. We see skinny women with big boobs on social media, living a happy, easy breezy life and we associate that body type with an easy breezy life. We want life to be breezy for like 5 minutes! WHY CAN’T LIFE BE BREEZY! So we take that information and we apply it like a template to all future assumptions of people. But the template doesn’t apply because not every skinny woman with big boobs lives in Bali, poses on a tree and supposedly eats like a horse. But it sticks and our preconceptions build. Like you once met an overweight person and they don’t move, stay inside and were depressed. So you associated being overweight with anti social depression and apply that template to all overweight people. And when it doesn’t fit, they are the exception that proves the rule you say. Classic Jolene. She dresses revealing therefore she must be a harlot. And so we use this to bolster our ego or torture ourselves. I am better than so and so because they are over weight and therefore depressed and anti social, I am not as over weight and therefore, I am better. Or. So and So is much prettier than I am, therefore I will never have a easy breezy life and be loved. These are the preconceptions you need to be challenging and they come from alllll over the place and they are bad. But don’t beat yo self up for it! We all have these negative preconceptions but now, I am giving you the best tool I can give you, the one that Carla gave to me. Awareness. You now Know.
This is all in your hands now, you have read this and you are now being faced with a choice. Face those preconceptions about what skinny means to you or what fat means to you. Ask yourself what it means and how it actually isn't relevant to your self worth and safety. Be warned, in making this shift you will be challenged because not everyone thinks this way, people will try and reinforce those values that they buried in your so long ago. People will fight you as you move away from the idea that your body is a reflection of your life and not of your self worth. To be fat or to be thin isn't to be shamed and not something we should shame other people for. Its their lives and their choices. Thin, Fat, Fit, Insanely Hench, Three Limbs. It is their choice to look like that (maybe not the bodies with less limbs) and judging them by their bodies through your hate driven preconceptions, you are only create a bigger divide between new connections. Life is all about connection, we all want to be loved and we all don't want to be lonely.
If you want that, here is a great place to start.