Last month, I wrote a post about why it sucks when you won’t date a trans person. and got an angry reader who hypothesized my allyship for the trans community was based on my own fat-induced low self-esteem.
Yoga ain’t got nothing on that stretch, but okay.
Obviously this person and I aren’t ever going to high-five each others’ awesomeness.
Cool. Cool. Cool.
However, I’m continually baffled that people always assume my fatness is based in self-hate. The truth is, regardless of how much I weigh, I know who I am and whose I am.
Am I really supposed to believe that a positive self-image is what drives 100% of lean people to be lean? And that 100% of fat people are just self-loathing potatoes?
At one point, I was nearly 100 pounds smaller than I am now. But striving to make my body what it “should” look like had me out of balance and miserable. I’ve been chronically ill for the last two years and I’ve never felt more grateful and purposefully-driven. I’m simply happier when I focus on what my body can do rather than what it looks like.
My relationship with my weight may be illogical and/or unhealthy to some. But I stand wiggly-jiggly firm in my assessment that my body-image comes from a place of positivity, confidence, and strength.
I want people to be whatever body shape or size makes them happy. I cherish my soft round parts. And I have zero fucks about working towards someone else’s aesthetic expectation for my body.
SIDENOTE: A quick IP search for 137.150.160.81, revealed that my fan mail from Mr./Mrs. “Can’t say your sane” hangs their saddle of superiority in the Office of the Chancellor at CSUNET-NW – California State University.
Know someone in the University who might not want a cowardly, hateful, transphobic, able-ist, fat-shaming troll being able to negatively impact marginalized students? Feel free to share this post. I wrote a vague email to the campus’ LGBT group, but never got a response.
