When I think about my transness, one thing that I believe is inherently intertwined with that aspect of my identity is my fatness. I find there to be power in the body. But the combination of being trans and fat, particularly due to the lack of representation of fat bodies in trans spaces, is something that has always bothered me.
It’s one reason I really enjoyed this article (https://medium.com/@sbearbergman/please-come-and-be-fat-cc04ed4d8772) that I found online some years ago. It really spoke to me as someone who struggled to pursue top surgery due to being fat. I had to pay out of pocket for this life changing surgery because the only surgeon in the state that accepted my insurance had a BMI limit; which, if you did not know, BMI is an outdated practice – a BMI limit for top surgery instead shows a lack of effort on the surgeon’s part to learn to work with fat patients, a problem which would be solved with more representation – more patients, more outreach, more effort.
Top surgery was monumental in my journey to loving my body. It saddens me so incredibly much to hear other fat trans folks talking about the lack of representation in our community, because I’ve also seen how much we get talked over by our thin counterparts. Even within the trans community, the lack of representation of fat bodies has lead to many thin trans individuals not understanding the unique struggles that come with being a fat trans person.
I love my fat, trans body, and I want everyone with the same experience to be able to say that.
Who am I? I, I’m my thoughts, My dreams, My aspirations. I’m my name, My looks, My imagination. That’s what I see, When I stare, Into my reflection.
My reflection, Ripples in the river of life, The shallow, Shallow river of life. To the world, I am my reflection: I am only what the world sees, Only what the world decides I am. My body is but a vessel; Why must the world ignore me, But acknowledge the vessel?!
Books, merely objects Are still judged By only their covers, So who am I to demand They not judge me By only what they can see. The inside of a book Is where the value lies But most people don’t bother; It’s easier to judge From the outside
My body is a part of me, It embodies my soul My personality, But it is not all I am. I am not my scars, My disability, I am me, A completely separate entity. I, Me, Not just what you see
trigger warnings: body dysmorphia, suicide, mentions of disordered eating, illness
If you remember what your body looks like, I think you’re one of the lucky ones. If you don’t, then I’m not so glad this is what we have in common. Coming from an older West Indian family, my body was always a discussion. No matter how many soccer practices I showed up to, salads I ate, nor how well I did in P.E. class, whenever an aunt approached me it was always “You’ve gotten bigger!” Even throughout my adulthood my body has gotten bigger. I know I’m big, but I wish they knew that I didn’t need to be reminded every second of my life.
I think it’s important to note that I wasn’t always fat, but I still struggled with food and dieting at a young age. Having to deal with cholesterol issues during elementary school was the start of my long, relentless relationship with food. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office with my uncle, his eyes glazed over, listening to every word my pediatrician said. My relationship with food not only originates in this moment, but also with my family’s history of heart disease, diabetes, and many other debilitating diseases. By the time I reached high school, my uncle had a coronary angioplasty, stent insertion, triple bypass heart surgery, and several other surgeries for various kinds of cancer. He never wanted me to suffer like he did.
For as long as I can remember, my uncle micro-managed everything that graced my plate. There were even times we fought at the dinner table so he could see whatever takeout I’d brought home. The stress of bringing home any form of food that he would scrutinize started to transfer into other aspects of my life. In middle school I discovered how uncomfortable it made me feel to eat in public spaces. In high school I even went as far as to become the library aide so I could escape the daunting task of consuming food in the adolescent-filled cafeteria and tried my best to retreat back to the library every lunch break. The library was my safe haven, a place of structure for the moments where I felt the most vulnerable. This is still a habit I have today, I always look for security.
It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I started my first romantic relationship. He was beautiful, smart, and even had a piercing on one ear that was the jackpot of my teenage girl fantasies. Being with him was the first time someone told me I was pretty. For someone that had only dreamed of having a boyfriend, that meant the world to me. I naively thought that feeling would last forever. As the pandemic raged on, and quarantine forced us into our isolated nests, there became an evident strain on our relationship. Still, we continued to stay with each other. I never noticed when his demeanor changed or that I couldn’t fit into half of my jeans anymore, or even that I was getting bigger than him. I made a huge mistake. You know that horrible mistake people make when they get lost in a relationship because they already have constant bodily validation? Yeah, that one. I gained the “happy weight”, I let myself go. People hate happy weight because being fat makes you feel empty and alone after a relationship. Nobody thinks that you’re attractive anymore and it feels like now there’s this huge responsibility that you have to get back to when you were skinnier. I fucked up.
Coming out of that relationship I became extremely depressed. I moved back in with my family, back to a space I never felt secure in. Endless nights spent scrolling through Tinder, a space where your body is always being perceived, felt completely invalidating. I was a completely different person. And I didn’t feel that way because I had loved and learned valuable lessons about navigating relationships, but it was because I was fat. Everytime I looked into the mirror, a devil appeared on my shoulder pointing out every flaw on my now monstrous body. It’s like my ego had turned against me.
I didn’t want to live in my body anymore. I thought I was nothing without the comfort of another person telling me I was good enough. I can’t say that I never feel that way today, but I’ve worked on it. I’m not about to go on a spiel about how much it matters to love yourself, nor about how self-love is a journey and not a destination… but would love really be worth it if it meant that I had to be skinny, athletic, or fit any of the aesthetic qualities guys on dating apps wanted? Probably not. But I want to be better, because I know that the moments in between these feelings of doubt and despair are much more important than these superficial views of my body. Though, how I never saw myself changing is still a phenomena to me.
In the end, I’m still trying to upward spiral out of this feeling called body dysmorphia.
Fashion – and by extension, clothing – is created for skinny people.
Our world is built on the assumption that everyone is a certain size (that size being small) and that while some variety is allowable, the range of “acceptable” is even smaller than the jeans they expect us to fit into. Social media influencers flood their pages with images of them in a variety of outfits made by a variety of fashion sponsors, but the question posed here is simple: is the “Look” actually cute, or do we just view smaller bodies as more pleasing?
A recent TikTok trend involves users taking photos of fashion influencers and celebrities and styling themselves in similar outfits to try to answer this question. One note on this: While I have purposefully chosen a video of someone who is not skinny doing this challenge, I also found a lot of videos made by users who could be argued are skinny themselves, just not as skinny as an 18-year-old runway model.
The commonly-reached conclusion most creators have come to is two-fold. First, that the outfits themselves are often excruciatingly basic and boring. They lack color, interesting silhouettes and texture. The majority of these outfits are a pair of jeans or athletic pants and a t-shirt or sweatshirt – the sort of outfit that is typically classified as athleisure or “going to the grocery store.” The people wearing them look good, certainly, but they are not breaking new ground in the realm of fashion and won’t be found on the runways of New York fashion week. The commentary on these photos typically ignores the lack of originality, or even fails to notice it; the comments sections are flooded with people praising them for their beauty and their outfits.
Second, these outfits only look good because the person wearing them is skinny. When placed on a larger body they often look absurd. It’s worth noting that the absurdity is created largely because the challenger is not modifying the outfit or silhouette to more aesthetically suit their body type, as one would typically do when actually buying clothes or creating outfits for themselves; they are purposefully taking the outfit in its original form and simply scaling it up, precisely like modern-day jeans manufacturers. This conclusion only serves to enhance the first one: if the outfit itself is boring or even straight-up bad, why are we applauding anyone for wearing it?
The answer I, and many TikTok users, have come to is that skinny bodies are put on a pedestal of beauty. They are seen as the original, the default, and the gold-standard. They are afforded privilege that larger bodies are denied. They are given beauty labels that are unattainable for those around them, and in some cases like this, may also be completely inaccurate. Even worse, skinny bodies are also seen as the standard in medicine, which can leave massive gaps and inadequate care for those in larger bodies.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and I’m not here to reach any conclusions for you on whether or not you think these influencers and their outfits are pretty, but I would have you start to ask yourself this question every time you see yet another model wearing the same thing your dad wears to mow the lawn: Is it a fit, or are they just skinny?
Nowadays, we often find ourselves letting society define what is acceptable/not acceptable, or what is beautiful/ugly, e.t.c. So a while ago I was speaking with my friend and she tells me that she wants to go for a swim, but that she can’t go because of the fact that she has a lot of stretch marks on her thighs and stomach. She is not the first person that I have come across that talks about how they feel ashamed and ugly because they have stretch marks. I have also come to realize that this thought process is often associated with women.
In my opinion, this is absolutely nonsense/absurd, just like scars I find stretch marks to be rather beautiful and I feel like it’s one of the things that defines you as a person. This to me also shows our cultural differences because in my country (Nigeria), a woman having stretch marks is actually celebrated. To Nigerians it’s a sign of wealth and healthy living. Society (mostly men) needs to do a better job in giving people the opportunity to be themselves. No one should be insulted/attacked/harassed for having stretch marks because if anything, stretch marks enhances a persons beauty.
In almost all of the video games I play, especially role-playing games (rpg) and action adventure games, there are almost no fat people. Even in games where you can create your own character, there are very limited options. But, these fat bodies are still rather “fit.” They’re just big and beefy if they’re male or big and curvy if they’re female. While these bodies do deviate a little from idealized Western bodies, they are still acceptable. In other words, they are larger bodies that “normal” people could still find attractive. In addition, most games that have fat people in them, like The Sims and Saints Row IV, cast those characters, as ugly and/or comical. In all of these cases, fatness is not something to be desired.Continue reading →
Unruly Bodies 