It’s becos we’ve copied western rhetorics of beauty & enforced it in our minds, forgetting that the two realities are not the same. Skinny bodies are the beauty standard for them, but it isn’t the same here. Our culture doesn’t exalt skinniness so I don’t get the constant denial. https://twitter.com/unekwuojojimmy/status/1246220961877315585

I’ve been called “dry”, “sick”, “bony”, forced to eat more for being skinny. Going to my village is the absolute worst. Aunties will call me to the side to ask me if everything is okay. “Are you sick?” “Is anyone maltreating you?” Because to them, I look starved. I just cry.

During my JAMB days, I had a childhood friend who set up an accountability partnership with me just so we could gain weight. Her sister would mock her in front of everyone and tell her that the only time her body type will be acknowledged is if she leaves the country.

And that Nigerian men like “meat” so she should put on some flesh. She, still slightly drowning in patriarchy and desirous for male validation, believed her. I believed her too. Then we went on fat supplements. All it did was make me throw up. And it made her sick.

She literally missed her JAMB exam because she experienced severe side effects and had to be admitted. Hers was way worse than mine because she was struggling with both skinny shaming and colourism. This girl was pretty af but there was nothing you could do to convince her.

My first experiment w contraceptives had nothing to do with sex. Hell nah, I wasn’t even sexually active then. But I was so obsessed with ingesting things that can make me put on weight that I literally started dieting on contraceptives bc weight gain was an expected side effect.

That one failed too. Gave me mood swings, fucked my cycle up, I started breaking out, feeling nauseous and sad all the time and I had to quit. I don’t want to mention all the things I did to put on weight, not because I wanted to, but because I let people’s mockery get to me.

My mum once told me about one time, a few months after her marriage, when she went for a wedding in her village with my dad, and her relatives took her to a room to ask her if my father wasn’t feeding her well or abusing her because she was still as skinny as when she left.

Then they rebuked my dad, told him to feed their daughter well and that they were going to come and carry her back if she looked the same the next time they saw her. Their sin - my mum was skinny.

I know to some people, this is nothing, but people actually battle with their body image because of the mean things you say to them. It’s depressing, it’s hurtful and it is just unnecessary. Your unsolicited remarks about people’s health and weight does nothing but harm them.

And yeah, we can pretend all we can that skinny shaming isn’t a thing or that it isn’t deep or that “skinny people want to be oppressed so bad” but you can’t take the truth away from the people who have lived through the consequences of your words and standards.