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Monday, October 10, 2011

I Don't Need a Celebrity to Tell Me How To Feel About My Body

This isn't me, but it is a similar body type. I am five foot seven-ish. I weigh 295 pounds. I do not have any pressing health issues. According to our sizeist society, I should hardly be able to move and should have one foot in the grave thanks to my Death Fat. 

In an IVillage article, various "celebrities" spoke about body flaws. A commenter named Lisa said that if she was pulling $80 million a year, she wouldn't care about cellulite either in response to Kim Kardashian's earth-shattering confession that she has the dreaded (gasp!) cellulite.
What Lisa said. I don't need Kim KarTRASHian or any other celebutante's opinion to tell me how to feel about my body. I spent a lot of years hating my body. I learned to be at peace with it because other people's opinions don't matter. As long as I'm healthy, that's all that matters. Being hateful to one another over what our bodies look like is ugly, and it needs to stop.
BTW, I am certainly not down on Kim for the shape of her body. What I dislike about her is the fact that she is someone who has absolutely everything and gives back nothing. $30,000 alligator skin purse, anyone? In an economy where people are struggling just to keep their homes and unemployment is at an all time high. Ugh!

Why is it that when I look at my body, which is similar to this one in a mirror, my automatic reaction is to think "ugh, I'm so fat and ugly" but when I see the woman in the picture, I think she's beautiful. How dare society tell us to hate our bodies? How dare people say snarky things about fat people?

I have a back injury which makes movement harder some days than others, but it had nothing to do with my size and a hell of a lot to do with the type of work I do. I work in a hospital. I help weak and injured patients move. Sometimes its harder than others. And I've gotten hurt a few times. Last winter I exacerbated things by falling down the back porch steps. This had nothing to do with my size and a whole lot to with low visibility and ice. I was on temporary disability for 6 weeks.
I became very depressed because I couldn't work and felt useless. If the stereotypes were true, I should have been thrilled to stay home and eat buckets of fried chicken and boxes of bonbons. Instead, I could hardly eat because I was so depressed.

I'm 47 years old, I'm fat, and I've been married for 9 years to a man who eats about the same amount that I do and remains rail-thin. He is not a "fat fetishist," he dated women of various sizes before ending up with me. I consider myself extremely lucky to have him! Not because he's thin, but because he's an amazing, loving, considerate, kind, funny, intelligent human being.
The sad thing is, if I hadn't been able to find a man, (and I certainly kissed a few toads before I did) I'm sure I would have blamed my body, as we are conditioned to do. How wrong is this? How sad and how awful to go through life hating ourselves.
This is why size acceptance is necessary!

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