Validation Taught Me To Love My Fat Body
As an overweight woman, I could sit here and tell you that magazines, celebrities, and television are the reason I have body image issues.
I could shift the blame to our society’s shitty misrepresentation of women’s bodies.
Yes, it’s a huge problem; but I found that my interpersonal relationships had the most lasting impact on shaping the relationship I have with my body, both positive and negative.
It was 2002 — I was 14-years-old, in middle school, and all of my friends had started to pair off with “boyfriends.” I’d catch my friends making out with boys in between class periods, and they’d hold hands back to class after the teachers or school security would break up their inexperienced kissing and necking.
I was lonely and I was jealous. Why couldn’t I have a boyfriend? Why are all of my friends developing love interests and I couldn’t even get one boy to talk to me? The majority of them had no problem reminding me why: I had a big gut, small tits, and a fat ass — who would want to be with that?
Their words, not mine.
My home life wasn’t much better, either. My body was invaluable to the men in my family — I was perfect material for fat jokes! And when they weren’t laughing at me, they were criticizing my eating habits, what I chose to wear, and my hair.
My mother didn’t have a positive relationship with her body either. I imagine that it was because her body was also the subject of criticism. The message was coming in loud and clear: my body is bad. Not one person in my life could say to me that I was beautiful or worth something regardless of being fat.
In all honesty, I didn’t have a positive relationship with my body until I met my husband. There haven’t been many days in our nine-year relationship where he hasn’t told me how beautiful I was. He’s invited me many times to celebrate my body with him — because, in his eyes, it’s perfect.
A few years into our relationship, I found myself starting to look in the mirror and admire what I saw. Now, I regularly say things like “My butt looks amazing today!” or other equivalent self-praises or, as I like to call them, “love notes to my body.”
The body positive community has also had a lasting impact on how I look at my figure. To see so many beautiful body positive warriors posting selfies of themselves in their underwear with their flabby bellies out, totally and completely loving themselves for all of the world to see, has inspired an awakening within me. They’re gorgeous, breathtaking, ravishing, and they’re all of those things with chubby bellies, thighs, and curves. Why couldn’t I be? They offered me the validation I needed to love myself when I didn’t know how.
Now when I look back, I’m sometimes regretful that it took being validated by someone else to see the beauty and value that my body has. But in my defense, I’ve been told my whole life that it’s terrible. How else am I supposed to view my body other than how I learned to view it in my developmental years? It’s okay to feel validated by people other than yourself. I’ve found what matters moving forward is the work you put in to the relationship with your body.
So I’m taking a good hard look in the mirror these days, honoring every roll and every stretch mark. I’m having gentler conversations with myself and I’m choosing to see all the good my body can do now. Not in a hypothetical six months from now, when I might lose 40 lbs — right now. I’m committed to giving myself permission to live my life regardless of the number on the scale.
The work is always ongoing — I’ve found that being body positive isn’t about being happy with your body 100% of the time; it’s about being able to challenge that “bully in your head” and seeing your value past the negative thoughts.
All relationships require work, and I believe this includes the relationship you have with your body. And if no one’s ever told you, I’m telling you now: your body is amazing, it’s beautiful, and it’s worthy of your love. ♡ All bodies are good bodies.
