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I’m about to write a big thread on body positivity as someone who used to be extremely fat. My goal here is not to say body positivity is bad but to help understand at least why people struggle with promoting “body positivity” sometimes.
(Me then vs now)
(Me then vs now)
Before I get into this I understand that some people have reasons they have medical they can’t lose weight. I know that. But much like a blind person would probably not wish for you to be blind out of spite I don’t think that is a reason to just say “well fuck it for all of us”
The first part I want to talk about is how there are things that are objectively shitty. How tired you feel. How hard it is to do dumb shit like clip your toenails. How bad your knees hurt if you kneel to do something. There’s so many things that physically fucking suck ass.
It’s also totally okay to work on your weight for vain reasons. Most of the girls I’ve ever been into are not into huge guys. Asking that someone else take care of themselves while I don’t will never sit right with me.
Taking pride in the things that being overweight included never made sense to me. They were all just reminders of my addiction to food that was used for anxiety coping and self-harming. There was nothing beautiful about it.
Another thing people will hate to hear is I found value in the pressure society puts on us. I got sucked into body positivity in the beginning but realized I was just using it as a bastion to not address my issues with food or that I was unhappy being fat.
The body positive movement basically told me that the bad feelings associated with being fat were something I just programmed into by society and weren’t the result of myriads of reasons being fat really sucks.
I also know how easy it is to make yourself believe things. I was 100000% convinced that I actually didn’t wanna do a lot in life. I didn’t want to hike or I didn’t care about pretty girls thinking I’m gross. I didn’t want care about my body. I could just live online.
I’ll just end with this thought I had a few months ago. I had COVID and a few times i almost called 911 because of my breathing. What would’ve happened if I was still 110lbs heavier?
I have no problem with the idea we should not devalue people because of their weight but I also am just not interested in ever encouraging people to be fat or to stay fat because it really sucks.
This will probably upset some people but I’m okay with that. I’m just kinda exhausted with the idea that even if society handles weight poorly it doesn’t mean we should swing completely the other way. That’s not caring about people. It’s enabling.
