glittergloss99

(((((content warning: discussion of body weight, body image, disordered eating)))). I'm new to writing content warnings outside of tumblr tags so I welcome feedback. Body image and weight will continue to come up as I explore the topics of femininity and beauty standards through a feminist lens this summer but I'm going to avoid using explicit numbers as much as possible. I know it's a common trigger and frankly I don't find them useful anyways.

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I've been reading What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety by Cole Kazdin and I want to share my thoughts so far and some facts I learned. I feel like I'm grading myself as I write this and I'm trying so hard to release myself from that right now. This isn't for my professors this is for me What's Eating Us: Women, Food and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety (chapters 1 & 2) First, some facts I'd like to highlight (p.5):

• Teenage girls from low-income families are 153% more likely to be bulimic than girls from wealthy families!
• Women with physical disabilities are more likely to develop eating disorders than able-bodied women
• Transgender young adults are more likely to develop eating disorders than cisgender young adults

Kazdin suggests that stress from constant surveillance of our figures and food choices may be more detrimental to our health than occasionally consuming food with less nutritionally rich foods with people who you love. Stress is a killer. I do not want to be 70 years old stressed about my figure. I do not want to celebrate cancer making me skinny like my grandmother does. It breaks my heart to see women and gender expansive people carry body shame for their entire lives. Earlier this year, my grandmother lost track of how many dogs she had at the time but she recognizes that she is thin and that thin = good. Thin is something she's strived for her entire life. The obsession with weight is drilled into our brains so aggressively that dementia may take away the name of your pet dog and leave the belief that thin = beautiful = good. Maybe I should be happy for her that she's finally happy with her body weight, but its painful to watch someone I love celebrate the deterioration of her body.

By age 65, women who are healthy and overweight tend to live longer than women who are a "normal-weight" and healthy, however the normal-weight women tend to have more healthy years.¹ But being thin isn't a guarantee of health. If we are fortunate enough to make it to old age, we will all become disabled. When researchers say women of "normal-weights" have more healthy years, are we factoring in disordered eating? If we consider mental health as important as or inseparable from physical health, who is actually healthier? Who is happier? I'm not sure, but I do know that my healthiest, happiest vision of myself in old age is a woman who learned to love herself completely in her natural state. I've floated back and forth along the spectrum of a little overweight to obese since I was about 8. I'm built like my grandmother was before cancer and I came to the realization a few years ago that without medical intervention or serious illness I will probably never be the weight recommended for my height and I'm okay with that.

You are deserving of love, confidence, and comfort in your body right now.