I’m just going to say it: I love pasta. Food of all sorts, really. And I am certainly not going to give up the things I enjoy just to try to placate something that no one should have to adhere to/care about. I am not as thin as a famous person. I have had my fair share of anxieties about my weight and my body in general. But alas, no more! (Or so I tell myself — the goal is to get there one day.)
There is a lot of stigma surrounding the word “fat.” It used to be seen as an insult, something you say to hurt others’ feelings. Now, people are taking that word back. Roxane Gay addresses fatphobia and the use of “fat” in her book, “Hunger.” In it she explores our obsession with appearance — something that is not the same as being healthy. Gay implores that we take back our fat and just let it be. We do not think of fat the way in which we think of tall or short, or blonde or brunette; but we should — it should not be a word that we stigmatize in the manner we do.
The whole societal construct surrounding weight and body image is a deeply ingrained thing nowadays. My whole life, I have seen representation of smaller people in media. I do not know how it came to be this way, but here we are. The fashion industry is one that admires smaller figures; women of an average size — which is 16 in the United States, according to a 2016 article from Today — are usually deemed plus-sized models. They are simply a size, no plus about it.
The average size of a woman in the United States is a 16, so why does society see an average as something that should not be celebrated? You can not work out and be skinny. You can work out and be fat. Your weight doesn’t always correlate to how healthy you are — some people are just bigger. It’s not that big of a deal! We should love our bodies, no matter the size. Whether we are fat, skinny or somewhere in the middle, we should be grateful for what we have. Our body is a haven — treat it well.
In line with treating our bodies as a haven, Jameela Jamil is a voice for every person of every shape and size. She developed I Weigh, an organization dedicated to promoting body positivity and loving our bodies as they are. Jamil has worked to diminish the stigma surrounding imperfections, doing so by both criticizing the Khloé Kardashian for promoting unhealthy workout toxins and even refusing to be airbrushed — among other things.
The point is: I am trying to not give a hoot about what the “acceptable standard” for beauty is. I think that we as a society are doing what we can to end the stigma surrounding weight, but there is a lot of fatphobia out there, as there has been for years. Not only so, but we can often criticize people for being too skinny. There’s also a weird space for those who are “in the middle.” We aren’t happy no matter what, essentially. A lot of this type of thinking can be internalized for a lot of individuals. It might not be that people are telling us we don’t look good, but there may be something aligned deeper in all of us regarding our own body image.
Enjoy your damn pasta.