SAME! WOW, and there was something so POWERFUL about reading what I feel we all think: we will always want to be a little thinner than we are, but as you said, sometimes it's just impossible and extremely unhealthy. But it's like - admitting this takes some of the pain away. This really was brilliant and I'll be thinking about it for days to come!
Oh gosh. I had so many feelings reading this. My body image stuff is now clashing with age stuff, so that’s new. 🫤 I’ve done some deep work re: how much space I would have in my brain if I just stopped considering how my body has is received, by me and others, and I’ve come to the realization that I’m always going to be aware of it.
My therapist gave me a few guidelines that have been helpful. 1. Don’t wait until you feel an “acceptable” weight to do something. Life is too short to wait for joy. 2. Wear clothes that fit the body that you’re in, and that make you feel good. 3. Take a break from tracking everything (steps, calories, rings, standing, etc).
Thank you for your work, there are so many of us in the same boat (young Gen X here 🙋🏻♀️ and I inherited my issues from my mother and grandmother)
Fantastic article! Something else to consider is longevity. We'll live much longer than our grandparents, and I doubt anyone would want to be bed-ridden and sick at 80, knowing that living until nearly 100 is a reality. That's 20 years of poor quality living! Science suggests if you start working our for long-term realistic goals, you'll get better quality of life. sure, it's not about having a 6-pack, but it's about being able to lift something from the ground, or walking upstairs, getting up from a bed without aid. It's a mental shift that is making me workout because the expectation is not to 'lose weight and be liked', it's looking after my future self
The first thing I thought of when I read this was those flashback episodes of Friends where Monica, back in the day, was fat. It's honestly so odd to think about her fatness being a joke itself, but this is what we grew up with!! And having stuff like that constantly fed to you daily really does take its toll.
I remember when I lost weight after a breakup, I was the 'thinnest' I'd been since I was a teen, and my Mum said good job, and then said I just had half a stone to go. Half a stone still to go!!! I never lost that half-stone, I gained it back instead. But there's always that thing of, no matter if I did lose weight, there would always still be that extra half-stone hanging over my head. Tbh now I am quite at peace with my body, but I agree, the 2000s were a nasty time for body-image and it continues in certain ways today.
What you write was something i heard from women long ago, but what I have witnessed is the spread of this body obsession in young men. My nephews are obsessed with their physique in a creepy way, and they are not gay. It is unnerving for me to hear. Instead of fixing this problem with women, it spread to men. I am a huge fat man, but it terrifies me that the worst aspects of female mental health have now spread to men, and they still have male problems like rage and substance abuse.
This resonates with me so much! I’ve “recovered” from my disorder eating into a larger body. Do I sometimes wish I was smaller again? Yes. Does that means I’m willing to go to extremes to get back to where I was before? Heck no.
Do I acknowledge my worth is separate from my own body and my feelings towards it - yes.
It’s like you said, the growth is in the awareness and in the changed actions, not in the absence of discomfort or dislike towards our body. I no longer restrict entire food groups, or weigh all of my food on my food plan, for example. My actions and response to those thoughts has changed for a far healthier relationship with myself. My focus has shifted away from weight obsession towards more “health promoting habits” (like regular movement that I enjoy rather than a punishment, sleep, mindfulness exercises like Breathwork, drinking water, social relationships etc)
At the same time, it’s hard not to admit that life was easier in certain ways when I was conventionally attractive (I.e. young, white, slim). People were generally nicer to me, men were more helpful, I got more attention online which helped my business… but the extremes to maintain that weight, the skincare and makeup routines to appear so young and up keeping my wardrobe etc were just too tiresome. I’ve made a similar tradeoff to you - being a little bigger than I want, so I can have a more comfortable lifestyle.
another amazing essay, so many pieces i want to point to and discuss!!! i love the illuminating thought that one of the most lasting impacts of the “body positivity” era is that we still want to be thin, but we’ve added the new layer of shaming ourselves for wanting that. there’s always more shame to add to the equation! lol
i also especially love that tumblr screenshot at the end. i agree that there was far too much focus on people finding bigger bodies beautiful and desirable, rather than worthy of respect and autonomy. being seen as sexually attractive to others is not a human right, but being seen as a human being who deserves respect is!
no i agree!! because as a midsize girl, when i think about feeling bad about myself & i say "i'm beautiful" i literally feel nothing!! because i've been like learning more about beauty and i think the focus being on beauty is a little bit boring sometimes. i wish i guess i felt like how i think other people feel like soo sure about their beauty. i think i'm cute tho but it doesn't really mean that much to until it starts to feel like i'm ugly😭
also as a slightly unrelated side note, i’m curious what your take is on taylor swift removing the scale that says “fat” from her music video after backlash (re: the mission mag article you linked). i’ve got plenty of things that i think taylor swift should be criticized about, but personally i don’t think that music video was one of them. she’s a person who has dealt with eating disorders and body shaming, so yeah, her biggest fear at points in her life WAS being fat. that’s how it goes when your life revolves around being thin. the whole “your biggest fear is my reality, so this is insensitive” didn’t strike me as a very compelling argument for why that was wrong of her
youre such an amazing writer/thinker mikala!!!! I am an elder gen z and spent a LOT of time between the ages of 10-14 on the pro ana side of tumblr, plus being taller and 'big boned' growing up next to all my tiny friends didn't help matters. But like you said, I don't want to dedicate the time to being super skinny, i dont want to NOT enjoy myself. It's not an interest of mine and thats OKAY!!!! when i was a UK size 4 i was miserable!!!!! and still felt uncomfortable in my body!!!! now im happy where i am!!! (most of the time!!!) The point about feeling guility for wanting to be skinner is so accurate!!! when im feeling low self esteem and want to be skinnier i feel so BAD for wanting it. I think i am better than that. All very interesting to look at. Can't wait for ur book still!!!
I’m a zillenial that missed a lot of the most damaging cultural messages from the early aughts and was raised in the body-positive internet mediascape you describe, but this still resonates with me so much.
I follow Mary Claire Haver for info on nutrition and exercise for menopausal women. Her answers to two questions recently impressed me. The first: she was asked what advise she’d give to her earlier self, and she said ‘eat to be strong, not thin.’ She admitted she had dieted all her life in an effort to stay thin (which menopause overturned, leading her to learn about eating to be strong). She wished she had focused instead on just her body’s needs. Second, someone asked her how she’s so thin, and she said ‘Genes.’ Those two pieces of advice are everything. I’ve always wanted to be taller, but I never *expected* myself to be. But for some reason I thought my body should look completely unlike the relatives I clearly inherited from. So foolish.
This is a powerful article and clearly needed as one of the commenters below mentioned that she never knew others felt this way. However, the piece I want to push back on is that the people doing serious and intense work in the body liberation space never said anything about needing to stop wanting to be thin. Anyone whose work I've read and respected or worked with always acknowleged the duality of two things being true, that this desire would likely never go away and as you've done, the better thing to do was to choose whether you would act on this desire or not. Perhaps this article is meant as a critique of the larger way that body positivity was co-opted and watered down to one right way to be by the mainstream media, but the ethos of "just love your body or you're a bad feminist" was certainly not held by everyone.
Yes, Dacy, you're right -- I know that not everyone in these spaces feels "just love your body or you're bad"; what I take issue with is how there's a flattening of the message in mainstream media/many online spaces, where the duality is eliminated in favor of one easy "solution" (just love yourself, as if that's so easy). Thank you for the thoughtful comment!
Here’s what I find crazy about this. I am a 35-year-old woman who identified with everything that you wrote and was shocked that I’m not the only one that feels this way. I think it’s an equally messed up part of our generation is to think that we are the only person feeling bad about ourselves. Thanks for posting this and making me feel a whole lot better about the body image ghosts that haunt me.
I don't think slender will stop being a cultural ideal until we start to face a famine. Then being well-rounded will return to being sexy as it has been for most of human history.
"Here’s the God’s honest truth: I think I’ll always want to be a little thinner than I am, most of the time. I’ve only not felt that way when I weighed around 15 pounds less than I do right now, which is a state of being that requires me to be working out intensely most days of the week and eating nutrient-dense food 98 percent of the time — no alcohol, no processed sugar, no fun. I don’t always want to live that way, so I don’t, and in exchange I’m a little fatter than I want to be. That’s the exchange I’ve learned to live with."
What a clear, relatable, cut-to-the-quick way of describing my exact mindset over the last year. In terms of activity and diet (and maybe mindset too, at least some of the time), I'm probably my healthiest ever...and I'm still just a little fatter than I want to be. Mikala, I just think you've hit the nail on the head. I get whiplash (or would, if I cared enough to follow), trying to figure out how I'm allowed to feel about my body as a 38-year-old woman. Honestly? I'm grateful every day to be basically healthy and strong. I'm grateful that I pushed four kids out. I'm grateful my husband wants me. And I wish I were thinner. And I don't think that'll ever go away. And maybe THAT'S okay too!
(Side note: I ran into a 90-year-old woman from the town I used to live in, and the first thing she said to me -- this college-educated, professional [until she retired], still-lives-on-her-own, BADASS woman -- was, "I've lost 35 pounds!" And...I'm sorry [not sorry?], but there's something so refreshing about her earnest enthusiasm about this genuinely exciting thing that we're all supposed to be so over.)
i dont think those of us who grew up seeing the waif figure idolised as THE body to have will ever be able to get rid of that inner voice. thanks Mikala. this is a really truthful post
I hope we can feel that it's diminished, or be better able to ignore it/not take it seriously, but yes, I think it's a tall order to get rid of it entirely. <3
“We are disappointed in ourselves for not being thin but are also disappointed in ourselves for wanting to be.”
So painfully accurate😩
I felt this in my bones!!
SAME! WOW, and there was something so POWERFUL about reading what I feel we all think: we will always want to be a little thinner than we are, but as you said, sometimes it's just impossible and extremely unhealthy. But it's like - admitting this takes some of the pain away. This really was brilliant and I'll be thinking about it for days to come!
right?!
Yes same!!!
As a millennial woman who’s never been the right size despite being so many different sizes over the years, this is great.
Oh gosh. I had so many feelings reading this. My body image stuff is now clashing with age stuff, so that’s new. 🫤 I’ve done some deep work re: how much space I would have in my brain if I just stopped considering how my body has is received, by me and others, and I’ve come to the realization that I’m always going to be aware of it.
My therapist gave me a few guidelines that have been helpful. 1. Don’t wait until you feel an “acceptable” weight to do something. Life is too short to wait for joy. 2. Wear clothes that fit the body that you’re in, and that make you feel good. 3. Take a break from tracking everything (steps, calories, rings, standing, etc).
Thank you for your work, there are so many of us in the same boat (young Gen X here 🙋🏻♀️ and I inherited my issues from my mother and grandmother)
Fantastic article! Something else to consider is longevity. We'll live much longer than our grandparents, and I doubt anyone would want to be bed-ridden and sick at 80, knowing that living until nearly 100 is a reality. That's 20 years of poor quality living! Science suggests if you start working our for long-term realistic goals, you'll get better quality of life. sure, it's not about having a 6-pack, but it's about being able to lift something from the ground, or walking upstairs, getting up from a bed without aid. It's a mental shift that is making me workout because the expectation is not to 'lose weight and be liked', it's looking after my future self
Completely agree Barbs!
The first thing I thought of when I read this was those flashback episodes of Friends where Monica, back in the day, was fat. It's honestly so odd to think about her fatness being a joke itself, but this is what we grew up with!! And having stuff like that constantly fed to you daily really does take its toll.
I remember when I lost weight after a breakup, I was the 'thinnest' I'd been since I was a teen, and my Mum said good job, and then said I just had half a stone to go. Half a stone still to go!!! I never lost that half-stone, I gained it back instead. But there's always that thing of, no matter if I did lose weight, there would always still be that extra half-stone hanging over my head. Tbh now I am quite at peace with my body, but I agree, the 2000s were a nasty time for body-image and it continues in certain ways today.
Even though I’m Gen X, I resonate with this article so much.
Body stuff is so messy that I'm sure it could resonate with people from all age groups. We're all in it together <3
What you write was something i heard from women long ago, but what I have witnessed is the spread of this body obsession in young men. My nephews are obsessed with their physique in a creepy way, and they are not gay. It is unnerving for me to hear. Instead of fixing this problem with women, it spread to men. I am a huge fat man, but it terrifies me that the worst aspects of female mental health have now spread to men, and they still have male problems like rage and substance abuse.
Is it too late to ban social media?
Same. I turn 58 this year and I still battle my weight/size, and also my desire to be a different weight/size. Ughhh.
When will we find peace?
This resonates with me so much! I’ve “recovered” from my disorder eating into a larger body. Do I sometimes wish I was smaller again? Yes. Does that means I’m willing to go to extremes to get back to where I was before? Heck no.
Do I acknowledge my worth is separate from my own body and my feelings towards it - yes.
It’s like you said, the growth is in the awareness and in the changed actions, not in the absence of discomfort or dislike towards our body. I no longer restrict entire food groups, or weigh all of my food on my food plan, for example. My actions and response to those thoughts has changed for a far healthier relationship with myself. My focus has shifted away from weight obsession towards more “health promoting habits” (like regular movement that I enjoy rather than a punishment, sleep, mindfulness exercises like Breathwork, drinking water, social relationships etc)
At the same time, it’s hard not to admit that life was easier in certain ways when I was conventionally attractive (I.e. young, white, slim). People were generally nicer to me, men were more helpful, I got more attention online which helped my business… but the extremes to maintain that weight, the skincare and makeup routines to appear so young and up keeping my wardrobe etc were just too tiresome. I’ve made a similar tradeoff to you - being a little bigger than I want, so I can have a more comfortable lifestyle.
Same.
another amazing essay, so many pieces i want to point to and discuss!!! i love the illuminating thought that one of the most lasting impacts of the “body positivity” era is that we still want to be thin, but we’ve added the new layer of shaming ourselves for wanting that. there’s always more shame to add to the equation! lol
i also especially love that tumblr screenshot at the end. i agree that there was far too much focus on people finding bigger bodies beautiful and desirable, rather than worthy of respect and autonomy. being seen as sexually attractive to others is not a human right, but being seen as a human being who deserves respect is!
no i agree!! because as a midsize girl, when i think about feeling bad about myself & i say "i'm beautiful" i literally feel nothing!! because i've been like learning more about beauty and i think the focus being on beauty is a little bit boring sometimes. i wish i guess i felt like how i think other people feel like soo sure about their beauty. i think i'm cute tho but it doesn't really mean that much to until it starts to feel like i'm ugly😭
also as a slightly unrelated side note, i’m curious what your take is on taylor swift removing the scale that says “fat” from her music video after backlash (re: the mission mag article you linked). i’ve got plenty of things that i think taylor swift should be criticized about, but personally i don’t think that music video was one of them. she’s a person who has dealt with eating disorders and body shaming, so yeah, her biggest fear at points in her life WAS being fat. that’s how it goes when your life revolves around being thin. the whole “your biggest fear is my reality, so this is insensitive” didn’t strike me as a very compelling argument for why that was wrong of her
I wrote about that at the time! https://bodytype.substack.com/p/on-taylor-swifts-scalegate
I think removing "fat" is ridiculous and as an artist I don't think she should have caved to the pressure
youre such an amazing writer/thinker mikala!!!! I am an elder gen z and spent a LOT of time between the ages of 10-14 on the pro ana side of tumblr, plus being taller and 'big boned' growing up next to all my tiny friends didn't help matters. But like you said, I don't want to dedicate the time to being super skinny, i dont want to NOT enjoy myself. It's not an interest of mine and thats OKAY!!!! when i was a UK size 4 i was miserable!!!!! and still felt uncomfortable in my body!!!! now im happy where i am!!! (most of the time!!!) The point about feeling guility for wanting to be skinner is so accurate!!! when im feeling low self esteem and want to be skinnier i feel so BAD for wanting it. I think i am better than that. All very interesting to look at. Can't wait for ur book still!!!
Thank you Isabelle! So sweet.
I’m a zillenial that missed a lot of the most damaging cultural messages from the early aughts and was raised in the body-positive internet mediascape you describe, but this still resonates with me so much.
I'm so glad!
I follow Mary Claire Haver for info on nutrition and exercise for menopausal women. Her answers to two questions recently impressed me. The first: she was asked what advise she’d give to her earlier self, and she said ‘eat to be strong, not thin.’ She admitted she had dieted all her life in an effort to stay thin (which menopause overturned, leading her to learn about eating to be strong). She wished she had focused instead on just her body’s needs. Second, someone asked her how she’s so thin, and she said ‘Genes.’ Those two pieces of advice are everything. I’ve always wanted to be taller, but I never *expected* myself to be. But for some reason I thought my body should look completely unlike the relatives I clearly inherited from. So foolish.
I love the answer of "genes." That really is it for a lot of people!
This is a powerful article and clearly needed as one of the commenters below mentioned that she never knew others felt this way. However, the piece I want to push back on is that the people doing serious and intense work in the body liberation space never said anything about needing to stop wanting to be thin. Anyone whose work I've read and respected or worked with always acknowleged the duality of two things being true, that this desire would likely never go away and as you've done, the better thing to do was to choose whether you would act on this desire or not. Perhaps this article is meant as a critique of the larger way that body positivity was co-opted and watered down to one right way to be by the mainstream media, but the ethos of "just love your body or you're a bad feminist" was certainly not held by everyone.
Yes, Dacy, you're right -- I know that not everyone in these spaces feels "just love your body or you're bad"; what I take issue with is how there's a flattening of the message in mainstream media/many online spaces, where the duality is eliminated in favor of one easy "solution" (just love yourself, as if that's so easy). Thank you for the thoughtful comment!
Here’s what I find crazy about this. I am a 35-year-old woman who identified with everything that you wrote and was shocked that I’m not the only one that feels this way. I think it’s an equally messed up part of our generation is to think that we are the only person feeling bad about ourselves. Thanks for posting this and making me feel a whole lot better about the body image ghosts that haunt me.
You're definitely not alone. That's the feeling I'm trying to eradicate by writing here!
I don't think slender will stop being a cultural ideal until we start to face a famine. Then being well-rounded will return to being sexy as it has been for most of human history.
No. The whole skinniness thing is aimed at women.
"Here’s the God’s honest truth: I think I’ll always want to be a little thinner than I am, most of the time. I’ve only not felt that way when I weighed around 15 pounds less than I do right now, which is a state of being that requires me to be working out intensely most days of the week and eating nutrient-dense food 98 percent of the time — no alcohol, no processed sugar, no fun. I don’t always want to live that way, so I don’t, and in exchange I’m a little fatter than I want to be. That’s the exchange I’ve learned to live with."
What a clear, relatable, cut-to-the-quick way of describing my exact mindset over the last year. In terms of activity and diet (and maybe mindset too, at least some of the time), I'm probably my healthiest ever...and I'm still just a little fatter than I want to be. Mikala, I just think you've hit the nail on the head. I get whiplash (or would, if I cared enough to follow), trying to figure out how I'm allowed to feel about my body as a 38-year-old woman. Honestly? I'm grateful every day to be basically healthy and strong. I'm grateful that I pushed four kids out. I'm grateful my husband wants me. And I wish I were thinner. And I don't think that'll ever go away. And maybe THAT'S okay too!
(Side note: I ran into a 90-year-old woman from the town I used to live in, and the first thing she said to me -- this college-educated, professional [until she retired], still-lives-on-her-own, BADASS woman -- was, "I've lost 35 pounds!" And...I'm sorry [not sorry?], but there's something so refreshing about her earnest enthusiasm about this genuinely exciting thing that we're all supposed to be so over.)
I'm so glad this resonated with you Rosalind! I agree, two things can be true.
i dont think those of us who grew up seeing the waif figure idolised as THE body to have will ever be able to get rid of that inner voice. thanks Mikala. this is a really truthful post
I hope we can feel that it's diminished, or be better able to ignore it/not take it seriously, but yes, I think it's a tall order to get rid of it entirely. <3