A lot of parenting support blogs say something I find increasingly applicable to my every day life: Two things can be true at the same time. I can love my child and still be mad at them. I can miss my child and still need alone time.
I also look back and see how this applies to a lot more that parenting. One was during a car ride, on a completely unimportant day. I remember feeling deep empathy for my friend but also thinking that what she was saying didn’t sit right with me.
1. It’s hard to be thin.
I had a conversation with a friend about the hardships of being thin a few years ago. It was pre-covid, and we were driving at the time, lamenting on some of the hardships of motherhood. It eventually led to talk about weight. My friend was truly struggling to gain weight, which was affecting her health, and I felt for her.
It wasn’t until later I was able to reflect on the conversation and understand why I couldn’t let go of it.
“I can’t gain the weight that I need, and part of that is just not feeling good enough to eat,” she said. “It’s so hard when you are losing weight, desperately trying to gain it back, and people come up to you and tell you how good you look. I just want to smack them and tell them I don’t want to look like this. But I can’t, can I?” She gestured wildly with her hands, as if throwing them around could ward off the hurt. “Because everyone wants to be thin and says how good you look when you are thin. But then they turn around and complain about how thin you are, especially the older generation, saying you need to eat more. All while you suffer in silence because no one can possibly want to be less thin. How is that fair?”
I nodded, not truly able to sympathize, but knowing weight was a tricky subject. I agreed: “Yeah. You just can’t win. If you’re large, they don’t care how healthy you are, you just have to lose weight.” I had just been given a blanket suggestion by my doctor to lose a few pounds to have an easier time getting pregnant. “And it doesn’t help that doctors completely ignore body shape in their calculations. You can’t tell me BMI is accurate. Just look at all the different bra cup sizes,” I said, looking pointedly at my own, large chest. “Cup size varies, and cup size isn’t based on height, so how can you possibly expect to standardize a weight based on height?”
“True,” she laughed, then focused on the road. A little more earnestly, she added, “And you hear a lot about how hard it is to be fat, but it’s just as hard to be skinny, in a different way, you know?” She glanced over, her eyes pleading for understanding and agreement. “People judge you either way.”
I nodded, wanting to give her that solidarity, but I wasn’t sure how to respond. I didn’t think I agreed completely, but I am not someone who thinks well on their feet. I couldn’t quite parse together why I felt that was wrong. I didn’t want to be insensitive to her plight, since I did feel for her struggles to gain weight. I certainly understood how hard it is to have a body that just doesn’t want to cooperate. A body that is judged. I let it go. I steered our conversation away from my unexpected confusion.
Three years later, I’m reading House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas. She is a wildly famous contemporary author in the fantasy romance genre–something I recently discovered I love. HOEAB is the first in her most recent series venturing into the adult fantasy genre, different from her other YA and NA series. It is not my favorite series by her, but it is still pretty good. I read this looking for an escape into another rich world of magic and monster killing and romance. It delivered. I didn’t really expect to be doing much self reflection. But, as you might guess with this post’s topic, I ended up mired in the mess of self-image.
There is some debate about the main character’s body type. The book describes Bryce as “generously curved,” so I think it depends on your interpretation of that. Some are adamant she is plus size. Some say she can’t be because of how much she works out.
This was the first book I had ever read where the MC is described as something other than thin or petite or small. I thought that was great! I was so excited to read a book about an MC who was active and capable of doing things and was not thin. I saw fan art of plus sized and curvy Bryce to wide-hipped and small-shouldered Bryce, mixed in with the tinner versions of her. I had this feeling of awe that an MC could look like this and be so bad ass.
The only other canonically plus sized protagonist I had ever read was Nina from Six of Crows. But as much as I loved Nina, she is just one of many viewpoints and not necessarily the main protagonist. Plus, something happens in the end of the first book, and another event in the second book, that changes her body type. (I won’t mention it specifically because A, I don’t want to spoil it, and B, you should totally go read that book–it’s amazing.) At best, every other book I’ve read vaguely alludes to or completely omits body type. This means it’s open to interpretation, but context usually suggests you should assume a smaller frame. And I didn’t realize how ingrained thinness was in my mind until I came across Bryce.
I’ve never been thin or small in general. I played softball, and I had muscles under a soft, comfortable layer of fat. Add a cup (or two or three) larger than most of my peers, and you can see how I did not fit standard beauty measures. While I was always conscious about my size for a few reasons, I was lucky not to be raised in a house or family where dieting was a main focus or my body type was criticized. I may have worried about what others thought, but I had a rule to never use a scale. If I looked in a mirror, was I happy? A scale could never tell me that, and I am forever grateful that I never believed a number could measure my worth. So I thought.
As I read about Bryce, even knowing that a large portion of readers saw her as plus-sized, even wanting to believe she was plus-sized (or at least not thin) myself, it wasn’t enough. I found I was fighting a war in my head. A thin, curvy body was all that I could conjure. Because, how could she be fit if she didn’t have a tiny waist? How could the love interest, an incredible hot and muscled guy, possibly be attracted to her if she had any fat on her? How could she be worthy of being the main character if she didn’t fit an industry standard for beauty? I found that desperately wanting a MC like me wasn’t enough to convince myself that anyone like me could be worthy of a love or a story like that.
This book showed me prejudices I held against myself that I wasn’t ready to admit. And this book wasn’t even about that kind of self-realization.
As a mother of a one year old who still doesn’t sleep and a three year old who never stops, I have not gotten thinner. I have been through a total of eighteen months growing another life inside me. I have given birth twice to large children. My feet have swollen so much that when they went back down, they were never the same; I had to throw out all my shoes for the next size up. I am stressed and exhausted and lonely and surrounded by dishes with no one to help.
My situation is not uncommon. Many women are mothers of active toddlers, or have been at some point. Those are the women with the most stress on their plate, the ones we say are quiet heroes. And they have little to no representation in fiction. That lack trickles down to our children, who look up to these women and see and love them, and think they are wonderful… but maybe they could lose some weight. How messed up is that? All those other wonderful qualities dismissed with a “but.”
This book made me realize what had happened in the car ride with an my friend. I had finally realized what part of the conversation wasn’t sitting right with me: “It’s just as hard to be skinny, in a different way.” Having never been thin, I can’t pretend to know what it’s like. But, while some people might shame thinness and complain that someone needs to eat more–which is completely not okay– that isn’t the majority. Someone thin is likely to be assumed fit, while someone fat is likely to be assumed lazy. Someone thin is likely to be assumed “put-togther,” while someone fat is likely to be assumed a mess or a slob. There may be pressure to stay thin, but it’s not pressure to become something that may be biologically impossible. It’s different, but I don’t think it’s equal kinds of prejudice.
2. Thin privilege is real.
I feel incredibly blessed to be living in a time that we are actively trying to do away with body shaming. I know that slowly, being something other than a size 0 is becoming acceptable. That it is being recognized that a size 0 isn’t bad, and neither is a size 14. In fact, both are completely normal. But that doesn’t undo years of reading and watching characters who are glorified for being thin. It doesn’t undo years of authors writing characters vaguely enough that fat shamers can’t point and criticize and say that this character is definitively “fat” (read: normal) and how gross that is. And apparently, I am part of that problem, even though I never thought I would be.
I read scenes with Bryce and had to convince myself every time that, yes, someone with some fat can kill demons, and yes, someone who isn’t small can be wanted, and yes, someone with curves can be worthy of having their story told.
This is an ongoing challenge I find myself revisiting much more frequently now that I am trying to raise good humans in the world. I want to shape their views of food in healthy, not co-dependent ways. To raise them to believe that their bodies are for living and not a measure of their worth. And slowly healing myself in the process.
We have come far and still have a long ways to go.
Falling through the Pages 