Body shaming stays with you
I started getting fat shamed at the age of ten. A family member I admired told me to “watch what you’re eating, you’re getting fat.” It didn’t take me long to realize that it was ‘bad’ to be fat. I came to this conclusion not only because of the fat shaming, but also because I constantly heard the word ‘fat’ being used in a negative way.
I remember being fourteen when I went to McDonald’s one weekend. I went with my tall and thin female friend and the boy she was dating. She ordered a large Quarter Pounder combo with a chocolate shake and an apple pie to eat afterwards. I remember her boyfriend smiling at her and saying “I love me a girl that can eat.”
I had already noticed that some people seemed to like girls like this — girls who looked like models but could eat like well-built rugby players. They were perceived as adorable and sexy.
I still remember her boyfriend scrunching his face up at me with a look of disgust after I told him that I was going to order a McChicken hunger buster.
“Um no offense Nina… but do you ever think about how much crap you eat?”
Despite being starving, I passed on my combo and ordered a cheeseburger instead. Here’s the thing: I was overweight and also had the ability to eat like a well-built rugby player. But instead of being praised, I was the subject of shame, humiliation and mockery from random strangers to close family members to acquaintances.
Later on, as they were busy eating their combos, I sat there with my head bowed down and my eyes fixated on the yellow wrapping for my cheeseburger.
I remember looking up at them and seeing that my friend’s eyes were shaped in a way that screamed pity. “Are you sure you don’t want anything else? You didn’t get much.”
I shrugged it off — like I always did. “Oh, nah, I’m fine. I really need to diet.”
Everytime I think back to these times, my heart sinks and my face gets warm. I thought I deserved to be fat shamed.
That memory has been in my mind a lot recently. Why is it considered sexy and adorable when a thin girl overeats, but if a fat girl overeats it’s considered disgusting and careless?
The answer is pretty obvious — It’s not about health, it’s really about society’s bias against fat people and all the ways it presents itself. What bothered me the most as a fat girl were the assumptions. The assumptions that the way I ate one day at lunch was the way I ate all the time. The assumptions that I had a terrible diet, merely because of how I looked. The assumptions from people that they could say whatever they liked to me. Here’s an idea: let’s stop creating a culture of guilt and shame around food and our bodies.
Since my early teen years my insecurities have lessened considerably. I started to recover five years ago, when I learned that I didn’t deserve to be fat shamed. For so long I thought badly about myself because I wasn’t able to meet society’s expectations. However, as I realised that fat didn’t = ‘worthless’, I began to accept myself.
Having said that, I sometimes still hear people close to me fat shaming, and there is this unsettling feeling that they secretly talk about me behind my back. I know that I’m not overweight anymore. However, because of my upbringing, I see myself as being much bigger than I am. I look in the mirror and scrutinize myself before sucking in my already flat belly.
It just makes me realise that we need to be extra careful about body shaming, especially around our children. Body shaming stays with you, especially when you experience it during your developing years. My parents never fat shamed me as I grew up. They’ve always known how important body image is and as my mum was fat shamed as a child, she never wanted me to go through something similar. But the responsibility doesn’t just lay with parents; it also lays with siblings, aunties, uncles, grandparents, teachers and everyone in between.
