hi! thank you for reading my essay! i never thought i’d write so publicly about this, but here we are, and i’m still terrified that it’s out there but also excited because i think we need to talk more openly about sex and bodies. this is going to be a short (i hope) thread.

i write a substack and very hastily wrote a short follow-up to the essay. https://iloveyouegg.substack.com/p/i-wrote-about-virginity-and-purity

but what i really wanted to come on here and say is — this got cut from the final piece, but i think it’s important to note that i’m 5’8”. i don’t remember how much i weighed at my biggest, just that i was over 200 pounds, and i’m constantly left wondering, “how big was i?”

(i have a memory like a sieve, so i don’t remember a lot of things, and there are very, very few photos that exist of me from those years.)

i feel like this is important to point out bc (1) korean beauty standards are truly, truly fucked up; (2) body dysmorphia is a terrifying, very real monster; and (3) there’s a lot of privilege in who gets to talk about bodies and who doesn’t.

lol i was going to go on explaining this, but i actually wrote a long IG post about this recently. i swear i’m not trying to plug my social media; i just hate repeating myself. https://www.instagram.com/p/CBvzxMMg3v-/?igshid=18ox5o0yga4o2

this thread failed, but there’s so much i could say about body shaming because it completely obliterated me, and the only reason i can write about it now is that i’ve been able to piece myself together over the past few years. i’ve also moved past the anger.

that said, even with all the shit in the world, there is nothing that pisses me off more than mothers putting their daughters down for their bodies and defending that with “i say this because i love you, because i want to protect you from the world.”