Google eating disorders and you’ll see a bunch of skinny girls looking in the mirror and seeing someone who’s not. But if someone chubby looks into a mirror the disorder is their body. Body dysmorphic disorder is serious, but there are at least people telling you that you have a problem and that you aren’t the problem.
I’m overweight so you won’t take my eating disorder seriously. When it’s 11 PM and I mention I haven’t eaten all day you say “congratulations” or “that’s really good”. I start associating being hungry with being successful. When people ask how I’m doing, someone often interjects “look at how much weight she’s lost, she’s doing great!”, “she’s so happy now can’t you see it”.
I made my health/fitness progress public and I started off wanting to improve my health but now every few minutes all I can think about is my weight.
I think about that number every few minutes. Binge watching Netflix makes me want to binge eat when my body becomes a punch line. Friends does it almost every episode, “fat Monica” is almost an additional character, but not really cause she’s basically a caricature. Whenever they remind her she was 200 pounds it’s followed by a laugh track.
I overhear many people saying it’s a good idea to keep fat shaming, it pushes people who are overweight to “get their life together”, every time I see fat shaming it just makes me want to eat. Anorexia is serious. Bulimia is serious. But flip flopping between binge eating, not eating much at all, hating my body and you telling me I should is serious. You feel entitled to ask me what I’m doing when you see me eating pasta or eating a cookie, that’s the first thing I’ve eaten today and now it could be the last because god I am so embarrassed. There is no support system for people who are viewed as a problem for taking up too much space. It’s never the health problems that come with being overweight/obese that you hate, it’s how it looks. Google the detrimental effects of being obese and the first thing that pops up is “your chances of being employed aren’t as great”. You hate my very existence unless you see I’m “improving myself” by taking up less space, and you hate it even more when I’m content as I am. You consider it apathy when I’m not actively trying to change my body.
You don’t want to look at me, when you do you don’t see me.
So no, it’s not the same thing when someone says “you need to eat a hamburger”. Skinny shaming is not a thing, just like meninism is not a thing and racism against white people is not a f**king thing. There’s a difference between a rude comment and someone enforcing the systemic societal belief that you don’t deserve to be here. Eating disorders affect 8 million people, there should be more than one depiction of what that looks like- please stop limiting that to underweight women with body dysmorphia- it affects men and women who are both under and overweight.
I want to learn to eat well and exercise often, I want to inspire you to also, but doing that when fatphobia is running rampant makes it infinitely harder than it needs to be. To be healthy you need to believe you deserve to be, so let me.
Sincerely,
Someone you know
@happyhealthyhans on Instagram