I want to talk about body weight and body image. I know, I know, a far cry from the moaning musings on illness and the witticisms my boyfriend comes out with, but bear with me.
In the past two years, I have put on a stone. I went from seven stone to eight stone. I know, I know, this is not of any importance, I don’t often think about it, except that I look better, and you can hate me, but in a way, that is what this blog post is about.
I don’t look any larger and I wear the same clothes, but my body has changed. It has filled in the gaps. My ribs no longer show. Behind my clavicles no longer doubles up as a place to keep things. When I smile you can’t see the facial muscles in my temples moving. Small things. Things that aren’t really noticeable, but the overall effect is that I look a lot more healthy.
For a brief period, I was actually six and a half stone. This was when I was at my most ill, rock bottom, can’t-digest-things spleen-is-enlarged blood-isn’t-working ill. But I am not really talking about that time.
My entire adult life I was seven stone. From my teens to when I was about 24. I was not on a diet. I had absolutely no idea about how to lose weight. I was a grazer. I would gloat that I could eat however much chocolate I liked, and people probably thought I was lying. But it was true: I just wasn’t really very good at meals, though, because I was full from all the snacks.
When I got ill four years ago, a few things changed at once. I was, obviously, a lot less active. And, for six months, I wasn’t actually able to get myself any snacks, so I naturally started eating more at mealtimes. Because I had no energy, I was starving, and because of this symptom I started experimenting with my diet. As you are probably aware, I gave up gluten and dairy and I also tried to eat “well”, whatever that means (vegetables, right?), and so I had to find a way to be full without those foods in my diet. I knew nothing about food – I actually thought gluten was a type of sugar – but after about six months on this diet I had lists in my head of what was gluten-free and what wasn’t, down to which brands of baked beans were safe.
And so I started eating in a different way. I didn’t want to snack, because pretty much the only lovely gluten-free, dairy-free snack is Haribo and I had no interest in eating that every day, and so I stated eating bigger meals, doing less, and put on weight.
I put on the weight in about a year, and every body has said I look better for it. I haven’t put on any more, but I have maintained the same weight, despite reintroducing dairy after seven months and gluten after two years back into my diet.
Now, I don’t know if it’s to do with being ill, but I’ve had a lot of people chipping in with their views on my miniscule weight gain. I am used to the unsolicited attention my body gets, receiving at least one “you look tired around the eyes,” and one “you’re looking really well” each day. This in particular is definitely to do with my health, because people who don’t know I have been sick don’t do it.
But I have also been told a number of people thought I was anorexic when I deferred my post-graduate course because of glandular fever. And that a group of friends used to speculate about it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that being too thin and eating a poor diet played a part in getting ill. But I think they were a small part, because for the last three years I’ve eaten a really good diet and weighed a normal amount and I’ve still had horribly ill periods. And, while I say I was a grazer, I did eat meals, three of them a day, and I am only eight stone now so a large part of it is due to genetics, I am sure.
But it was the following exchange that made me want to write this blog post.
“I’m so glad you’ve been able to start your career,” an anonymous person said to me.
I smiled, straightening a picture frame on the wall.
“Thanks,” I said. It was summer. Barbecue smoke drifted in on the breeze through the open window.
“You’re much stronger now.”
I watched a fly lazily bumping into the walls and settling on the blind. I made a non-committal noise. For there have been many, many times when I have been strong and then suddenly weak again, like a balloon suddenly popped, needing to be slowly inflated from the beginning again. And there have been times when outsiders – more objective people – have been right; I am strong, and unable to see it. “Maybe,” I said.
“After all,” the anonymous person said, “you’re eating now.”
I KNOW, RIGHT?
I confess I didn’t defend myself. I didn’t demand to know what they meant. I didn’t get on my soap box and tell them off. I probably wrinkled my nose, but I didn’t say anything.
And, like most instances of covert sexism, it only really started to anger me after the event. Because, like in an interview for a lawyer job I once had (and didn’t get) where I was constantly mistaken for a secretary (because… why? Because I am young? Because I wear glasses?), this happened to me because I am a woman.
And I think it goes further than that. What this person – who was a man, yes – was saying was not informed by a broad and sympathetic view of anorexia as an awful, gripping mental and physical illness, but, he was saying, now you have stopped being vain and stupid have started “eating now” (as if it would be just that simple for an anorexic to do so) you are going to be healthy and, also, what was wrong with you was a simple problem of nutrition which I diagnosed, not being a doctor, but by looking at how skinny your wrists were, and, what you have said about what’s wrong with you and all the moaning you have done and all the tests results you have had and all the meals I have seen you eat is a lie.
And the reason I think people think it is okay to make these assumption is because of the media; in particular, women’s magazines.
Women’s bodies, in these publications, are a product in a way men’s bodies are not. They are both used to sell things, yes, but women’s bodies partake in some sort of free-for-all where the magazine editor thinks it’s acceptable to point out that a celebrity in her forties with three kids has got cellulite with utter glee. And we read them. And we, too, enjoy to look at the cellulite (and how too-thin another sleb’s legs are).
But the worst part is we embrace their stupid advice. Curves are in and skinny is out. That is the ostensible message they portray, despite what their little red circles of horror highlight. But, even if that was really the message they are sending, that should not be the message. Because, when that is the message, people like me – naturally skinny people – are out of fashion and in the wrong. And if that’s not the message and skinny is in, curves are out. Nobody wins. Either way, someone’s body type is the wrong body type according to the media,which, when you think about it, is a little bit like circling all the women with brown eyes (and how MUCH browner they are at this unflattering angle) and laughing about them and how careless they’ve been while championing blue eyes, and then doing the exact opposite on the next issue page. And, before you know it, someone you’ve known all your life thinks you’ve been anorexic for four years.
I hear conversations about cabbage soup diets and Weight Watchers and low glycaemic index diets and all sorts, all the time. Conversations that I am not allowed, really, to be privy to, because I am too thin. But, ladies, the media have made me hate my flat arse, my skinny elbows, my slightly bowed legs, too.
Championing skinny is wrong.
Championing curves is wrong.
Women, we need a new message.
