When I was younger I remember a moment I had with my mother. We were talking about something I ate and I mentioned that I loved food. She told me to be careful with that sentiment. And in many words and many actions, all throughout my childhood I was taught that being small was good and being fat was bad. That food was a friend and a foe. That lesson got reiterated over and over again and it sure made an impression on me.
All the women I looked up to, spoke about their bodies in negative ways. They tried on clothes and hated how they fit. They turned in the mirror and asked how they looked. And no matter the kind things you said, they would frown and summarize that the problem was in fact how fat they were. They tried the diets: SlimFast, NutriSystem, and WeightWatchers (although that was more of a lifestyle than a diet per the meetings.) I happily ate the low calorie snacks and enjoyed many of the meals (they were good!). I listened as they talked about the weight they lost and what they did and didn’t like about their bodies. There were things they liked about their bodies, but in many ways my smallness was a success amongst a family of women that were curvy, big boned, and overweight. My love of vegetables (a love that is still present) was so well received. I was allowed to eventually have curves but I always had to be careful, I always had to look at the women around me and see what I shouldn’t become. As my mother told me:
“Be Careful.”
This became the first of many conflicts in my head concerning body image and food. Because to me the women in my family looked nice in their clothes. I wished for the curves they all complained about as I sat in my middle school classes and heard the boys talking about the girls who filled out their Apple Bottom Jeans and wondered (aloud I may add) why I even had a pair of those jeans. I didn't understand why I couldn’t love food, when the reason I looked forward to the holidays was for my mother’s cooking and not the gifts. I much preferred home cooking over the nuggets and fries at fast food restaurants. Being someone who loves savory flavors over sweets, my black upbringing showed me the beauty of flavor at a young age. In fact, a joke amongst my family was that I would hum in pleasure when I had a good plate of food and everyone hated that I ate so slowly because I wanted the food to last as long as possible. I also had a small appetite so that probably added to the eating slowly. By the way, I still hum as I eat a good ass plate of food.
To be frank, every woman I knew disliked her body. And despite me being tiny, I started to follow their lead in small ways. First it was how small my breasts were, but I got over that quick. Once I heard about the back pain that big breasts came accompanied with and realized I could wear any top I wanted, logic came in and saved the day. But some things stuck, like my dislike of my stomach and my desire for a flat stomach. As the years went on and I got older, I learned quickly that I would become very good at disliking my body because, after all I had a playbook of tried and true tested methods. I also had young teenage girls around me who were drinking only liquids 10 days leading up to prom in order to fit into dresses. I saw for the first time what an eating disorder looked like. I learned that it was a common thing to dislike your body. When I was eating too many cinnamon butter bagels in boarding school because I missed the home cooking, I was reprimanded for not being careful. I lost that extra weight by the time spring semester of my freshman year came along. And I was oh so proud of the fact that the freshman 15 never hit me…but if I look back at that time, I can see that I was barely eating enough due to the stress of starting college.
When I left New York City in 2019, I was roughly around 130 lbs. I easily cleared 10k+ steps a day and was working out to clear my head from the chaos of life and a toxic ass job. Finally the curves I coveted were present. I was curvy in the right places and my hips caught the attention of men and women. My family praised my weight gain, but told me to be careful. I already was scared of wearing crop tops because my stomach wasn’t as flat as my peers, but overall I was pretty okay with my body. I knew I was still tiny and that this weight was okay. But then I moved and the pandemic hit. The once very active life New York City gave me quickly left. And when I came home for the first time in almost a year, my weight gain was stark to those I knew. It was only about 10 lbs, but I wasn’t careful and I was reprimanded. The thing is, I already was reprimanding myself for the candy I snacked on during the height of the pandemic. For the cupcakes I ate, and for all the takeout I ordered when I got lazy of cooking. So when I came home, noticing the extra pounds felt like confirmation that I wasn’t careful. That I let myself go. And in the two years since the pandemic started I have only gone up in weight, and my anxiety has risen with each extra pound. Don’t worry, I don’t check my weight often and do not own a scale, but I do go to the doctor and they insist on giving me a print out that has my weight right there.
I felt like I failed. Like the constant lesson of being careful did not actually change my habits. Because I still loved food. I watched the food shows my uncle brought me up on and I cooked my little ass off. I observed the food my Mexican roommate made and I learned how to make Indian food and Chinese food. Despite my growing dislike of my body and fear of getting fat, my love of food never faded. In fact it intensified, and throughout the years I wanted to learn more about it. Why was food more accessible in certain areas and not in others? Why did certain cultures cook with this one ingredient?
This dichotomy of loving food and hating my body has reached its peak at this moment in my life. I am nearing my 30s and everyone has noticed how curvy I’ve become and while they praise it, behind closed doors I do the things I was taught at a young age. I look at clothes and hate how they fit. I hear the kind words and determine that the problem with the outfit is the fat that has become attached to my body. I think about my likes and dislikes of my body consistently and I think about what I am not doing well. While I am disappointed in this thought process, I have to admit that a part of me deep down thinks my growing body deserves the critique.
However, while I am really good at hating my body at this season in my life, because its learned behavior, I have something the women in my life did not have. I have access to so many different opinions about body image. While the fad diets and the gym ads are coming hard right now, I have women in my life who have sat with me and taught me about fat phobia, I have social media accounts that are trying to go against the grain, I have my love of reading to help me realize how being afraid of fatness is a taught behavior. And that if we go deeper, it’s of course notions of white supremacy and anti-blackness that have us thinking that being skinny is the norm. I’ve learned that many industries are dependent on people hating their bodies. This allows me to see that the women I was raised around were indoctrinated to hate their bodies. That they only taught me what they knew. While the comments can be hurtful, I realized that often times its projection of their own dislike of fatness and the idea that it is associated with a lack of control. But also in an odd way, they don’t want me to dislike myself like they do. This dislike I have now, is exactly what was supposed to be prevented. Funny how love works, right?
Like I mentioned, my love for food has never faded. That love has saved me from going off the deep end, because I am never giving up bread or potatoes, I don’t care what y’all say. I am never giving up cooking food that makes me feel good and I am never going to eat brown rice, bland ass chicken, and broccoli to get a six pack. I am never calorie counting, going keto, eating low carb, or only drinking juice for a prolonged amount of time. Not saying that if you do that it’s bad, but the moment I do those things, food will become a foe to me. Food has always been a friend to me, never a foe. Food in many ways and most recently, in a big way, has helped me stay sane. I never feel more present than when cooking or baking. I never feel more useful than when feeding people.
So yeah, I am not a big fan of my body these days. But I am hopeful because I think I can turn this dislike around. I know it will take a very very long time to unlearn all I was taught, but that seems to be a running theme in my life these days: unlearning. I am weight lifting and very in awe of how strong my body is, and I am walking more as a nod to my days wandering around my hometown. I am continuing to bake and cooking every week. I am taking this day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Right now, I am gonna eat the jambalaya I made the other day.
I know that all this work will allow me to help the next generation love their bodies, because I want my kids to have no idea what it means to dislike their bodies. I want to create the world I wish my family and I had. I want the same thing my family wanted, for their kids to not dislike themselves, but I am just going to go about it in a much healthier way. Wish me luck.