the "toned at any cost" movement and why you can eat me.
The last semester I spent at my university, I took an English course with a professor that knew me well. He knew me for about a year at this point and we had a familiar relationship. As a recovering and then relapsing bulimic, he saw me gaining and losing weight over the year. Very rarely do people feel comfortable talking about fluctuations in weight, but it can become pretty obvious that someone notices.
It was one of those required courses, so he had been lecturing on the makings of a strong argument in writing. We were allowed to write about any topic we felt passionately about as long as we could argue the point coherently and effectively. Feeling bold and empowered, I decided to write about how an interest in BDSM does not imply some sort of pathology. A guy that sat directly to my left wrote about The Health at Any Size movement and how it was encouraging people to be overweight. At the end of the semester we were to give a presentation on our stance.
I was slightly uncomfortable the way anyone who has always had to fight against disordered eating (sometimes with more disordered eating) does when anyone brings up a body that isn't their idea of perfect. And I felt myself super aware of my body and how it wasn't toned and fit and this dude's ideal (for whatever reason, as he was the judge of all healthy bodies that don't look like healthy bodies in that moment.) and I felt utterly cheated.
I felt cheated because here was this self appointed advocate for the health of the world who felt it was so simple to just eat withing 1200-1500 calories so your body looks acceptable to the public eye.
And I thought about how ironic it was, this guy (with more discussion on his own eating habits, claimed to never be overweight and ate like a "normal guy" therefore it's just that easy to look average) and how he assumed things about my body and how I knew he was judging me because I didn't have a body that looked the way he thought it should when really, the whole concept was about doing what you can for the body you have. About caring for you body, whether or not it looked the way other people think it should look.
In effect, he was preaching for "toned at any cost" versus just accepting that you're a human being, a victim of circumstance and your society more than anything.
And I thought how unfair when people do take an interest in exercise and health at a larger size and get ridiculed by perfect strangers for walking in a body that is different from theirs.
I felt my professor's discomfort for me, as I sat in the front row. I felt his eyes on me. It was equally as uncomfortable as the body- bashing diatribe.
And I thought, at the time: honestly, tell me more about your fast metabolism and how you've never been marginalized because of the way you looked, young college aged male. Tell me more about how I should change my body to be more like yours, because it's funny. I probably eat half the calories you do and purge the rest of the time. And it was retroactively infuriating, really, because at the time I Thought "if he thinks I'm fat now, he should've seen me a few years ago when I was 100+lbs heavier than I am now" instead of just being happy with the body I have.
There's this assumption that comes with owning a body that isn't the aesthetic ideal that you either don't care about your body or that you're too stupid to do something about it. Really, though, ask anyone that has ever been overweight. They've probably been on a multitude of diets because A) someone who is treated poorly for the way they look doesn't want to look that way most of the time and B) a person's relationship with food is complicated and contingent on many factors.
There's this weird assumption that one's one experience is the be-all end-all. If you're doing something right without thinking about it it must be easy, right? No. Plenty of people are raised to think about food a certain way, plenty of schools don't focus on nutrition in the way it should, plenty of people use food as comfort, as something to control the same way other people use not eating as a way of maintaining control, plenty of people can't afford to eat healthily. There are a TON of scientific reasons why that Hank Green is better at articulating and more succinctly:
I mean, even if it comes down to the fact that someone is over eating and not exercising and doesn't care, why should anyone else give a fuck?
The "it's unhealthy" line is null and void, because honestly, you're not living in my body and you're not fucking it.
I understand that we are inextricably linked to that very primal aspect of our humanity that is solely focused on the fitness of their genes, and only wish to reproduce with a partner that will ensure our genes will be passed along safely. Our most basic ones are going to want to fuck the healthy looking ones over the sickly looking ones. Yes, yes, we get it. But we live in a society now that does everything in it's power to forget it's basic animal instincts. We want to forget we are animals and still eat the weaker animals because we're the stronger animals. We want to sleep and shit in separate places not because we're civilized.
We have all these artificial ways to seem physically healthy- new blush that actually makes it look like your circulation is great! Bronzer to give you that "I totally went outside in the past week for more than it took to get to work school or the store" look. 99% of my female friends have dealt with eating disorders, and it ain't because I look for friends in rehab or thinspo communities.
We have all these ways to appear like we are not the crumbling sickly, emotionally damaged things we can sometimes be, and the ideal is the appearance of health?
And why should I have burned with discomfort when people are not attracted to me, when I understand that I am a perfectly valid being with or without their approval?
I've been conditioned to be ashamed of my own body, no matter what size I have been, no matter what I'm doing to try to change. It's pretty obnoxious when all you want to do is eat healthy and you can't afford it. It's pretty obnoxious when you have an eating disorder that doesn't have obvious warning signs and people treat you like you're shit for what you look like when you are already running on fumes.
What an incredible situation- for your worth to be of your sexual appeal and attractiveness instead of your personality, intelligence, ideas and intent.
or,
Fuck you for trying to make me feel inferior, you ignorant fuck.
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