potatoes, or a cartoon cow
tw: serious body dysmorphia/fatphobia warning! plus there's a piece of fetish art at the end.
[editor's note: i wrote this post on july 30th and left it in the drafts for a while (hi from mid-august). i am currently feeling less haunted by these thoughts but wanted them to be read anyway. it might’ve been the writing that helped it soften. i highly recommend journaling!!!!]
my biggest fear, or at least the one that hits the hardest on a daily level, is that everyone is talking about me behind my back going “does she know she got fat?????”
i know. i know so acutely that no one else ever actually has to notice ever again. you’re not doing me a favor by noticing. you don’t have to keep tabs. i’m keeping tabs.
and don’t worry! in addition to not being oblivious, i’m also not incredibly shallow and conceited. my fears around how my body is perceived come from a place of primal safety & self-preservation. my therapist says that it would be almost impossible, with my life experiences, not to develop body dysmorphia. i just remembered the point i was going to make yesterday. the goal whenever i write or make something is that someone out there will see it and think “oh my god! i’ve never been able to put that into words before. thank you for reflecting my inner world back at me, i feel seen and connected” and then i’ll feel less alone and they’ll feel less alone. i feel that way about this too. how many other people are suffering like me? if i talk about it, will i say things they can’t? will i give them a voice? when i made that painted poem about my struggles with having a body, several women reached out to say versions of that^, and it was wonderful.
i know that this disgust and horror draws directly from systemic misogyny and that a white woman babbling about her body isn’t going to solve any of those problems, but you can’t just go “hating myself is a consequence of the patriarchy so therefore i don’t,” you have to start where the feelings are and grind them down. i’m picturing sinking my hands into a grainy muck. the problem is when you get stuck in the feelings, which i am.
there are many personal-level reasons why i feel these things. when my aunt started gaining weight it was all anyone in the family wanted to talk about. they listed to me every single thing she had gotten from the hospital vending machine while my grandfather recovered from knee surgery, as well as how many times she had gone down to the cafeteria or said “i’m hungry.” they couched these observations in a thick pretense of worry, as if they were going to “solve” the “problem” of my aunt’s weight gain by gossiping about it in my grandparents’ kitchen. as far as i know, no one asked her why she was suddenly so hungry, or gave her a big hug, or made her a nutritious meal so she didn’t have to fill up on vending machine snacks. no one approached her as a person, they just discussed her as an embarrassment. something gone haywire. like a cancer. i knew that this approach was wrong and mean and lacking empathy, but i was young and thin and beautiful, so there was a layer of remove. “at least it’s not me,” i thought. “and it never will be, because it can’t it can’t it can’t it can’t it can’t it can’t it can’t it can't.” that was at least ten years ago. and guess what happened.
my parents came to visit last month, and the first thing i did was ask them separately how their trip was going, and the first thing both of them said, with obvious approval, was that my aunt had lost weight. apparently that’s way more important than the fact she was wearing a xenophobic t-shirt when they saw her, or that she seems to have devoted her life to trying to suck donald trump's dick. i want to tell them that every time i’m getting dressed or packing to go see anyone in my family, i look in the mirror with each outfit change and imagine whether it will make them whisper “did you see how much weight she’s gained?” as soon as i leave. the answer is always yes, so i just grit my teeth and pray for a time when this will not be the case.
anyway, here's what i see when i look in the mirror.
^me getting gussied up to go to work
^me thinking i look cute at work
this one’s the most accurate 🙃