Shame At Every Size
How women are turning on each other in the war on weight, and why it needs to change.
Imagine this - you’re a woman, and you feel good about your body every single day. That’s it. That’s what I want you to imagine.
How sad that this is a feeling we can only dream of, one that never feels within our reach.
And it seems that, maybe now more than ever, women are shaming each other’s bodies - I see us trending towards not health, but shame at every size.
Let’s examine this in the context of celebrity role models.
Adele, a singer known for her unmatched vocals, is a multi-award winning artist, including multiple Grammys for Album and Song of the Year. In 2020, the superstar was berated by the media and fans when she stunned the world with her 100lb weight loss - she noted that “some fans felt betrayed” by her slimmer figure. While to Adele, her health journey was never about losing weight but about getting stronger and dealing with panic attacks, she also acknowledged to Oprah in an interview that her “body has been objectified my entire career. I’m too big, I’m too small, I’m hot or I’m not.” And how must it feel to someone so talented and decorated and celebrated (or anyone for that matter) to have who she is come down to what she weighs?
Pop superstar Lizzo recently started a journey to better health that involves eating nutritious food and weight lifting, resulting in a community of fat women feeling abandoned - Lizzo was such a great, body positive role model for the bigger gal. Did her weight loss journey mean that she felt like she wasn’t enough at that size and was striving for the ever skinny silhouette? Or did the shift simply mean she wanted to focus on taking better care of her body? Of course there is always society pressure, especially for celebrities, to get and stay thin - but perhaps Lizzo has a physically demanding job and she wanted more muscle and proper fuel to help her do her job and feel good doing it. Even Lizzo herself said that people “just assume that everything [she’s] doing is to be thin” and that her journey is about living a healthy lifestyle and for her mental health.
Or consider Rebel Wilson, aka Fat Amy from the blockbuster Pitch Perfect movie franchise. Struggling with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), Wilson wanted to start making moves to help her body function better so that she didn’t suffer so severely from symptoms, but was under contract to maintain her weight to match her “fat” persona until the franchise was finished. Since the series ended, she has worked hard to get to a healthy body composition and has talked openly about how that has helped her PCOS. She too acknowledged that fans felt like she had become ‘fatphobic’ after her weight loss, accusing her of distancing herself from the fat community. Again, imagine focusing on healthier eating habits and building muscle with the goal of becoming more fertile, and having it reduced to “she just wants to be skinny”?
Even someone like Taylor Swift, arguably the biggest pop star in the world, who has always been thin, can’t escape other women and the war on weight. She has recently been the brunt of memes and jokes about how small and not-curvy she is, to others about how much weight she has gained throughout her Eras Tour (which I might add grossed over two BILLION dollars, but let’s ignore that accomplishment). How can people be mad that she’s too thin and she’s gained too much weight at the same time? Or her music video for “Anti-Hero”, which depicted her getting on a scale, and the scale reading “Fat”, or at least it used to, until outrage from fans caused her to remove the word because fans said it was “fatphobic”. Except that reaction denies Swift the reality that even as a thin woman, the pressures of the media made her feel like she wasn’t thin enough.
Feeling shame about your body isn’t reserved for those women who are fat - why are we turning against each other because we think a thin woman doesn’t have the (unfortunate) right to feel bad about her body? That the only people that understand body shame are those whose bodies are the farthest away from societal beauty standards? DO WE EVEN HEAR OURSELVES?
We are angry at women who have gained confidence through their incredible talents, enough confidence to take better care of their bodies through food and movement, which in turn brings more confidence as we start to feel good in our bodies, as our systems start to function well. We are getting mad at fellow women because they are taking care of themselves.
LET THAT SINK IN.
As our confidence builds, often so does the desire to feel good physically. As we start to recognize our talents, and feel good about our accomplishments, it is a natural progression to want to feel better in other areas of our lives. You can love your body as it is now and also want to nourish it with whole foods, build muscle to get stronger and change your lifestyle to build more habits that are better for your body and your health. It’s not about weight loss, it’s not about hating the body you’re in, it’s about loving yourself enough to take good care of yourself. And you can do that at any size, any weight, but know that the more you respect and care for your body, the more it will change. That change may be fat loss, but it may be better skin, regular bowel movements, more muscle, less brain fog, more energy, better sleep, improved mental health and the holy grail, more confidence in ourselves. As our bodies start to feel better, we start to feel better about our bodies. And we should never, ever be upset with women for wanting to feel better and more confident - we should give them high fives and use them as role models, as a reminder to ourselves that taking care of our bodies is a sign of self love and self respect.
We cry fraud when a body positive role model…treats her body…with respect and positivity? How dare you feel good about yourself enough to take better care of yourself. For shame that your body started functioning better once you started prioritizing your health. This journey never has to be about weight, and it’s disempowering to assume a woman who chooses functional nutrition, building muscle and leading a lifestyle that respects the body only cares about weight loss and therefore isn’t worthy as a female role model. Like how did we get here?
Two things can be true - you can love yourself and your body and all it has done for you exactly as it is now. You can also love and respect yourself enough to take good care of yourself and your body through functional nutrition, movement and lifestyle - and this can be done at any size, without weight loss as the goal.
As a woman who has been thin and chubby and fat and all the sizes in between, I can speak to the shame I’ve felt at every size. When I was bigger I needed to lose weight and when I was thinner I needed to gain weight and when I was neither fat nor thin it depended on who you asked but my body was wrong in some way to someone. That’s the world we live in - our bodies are always wrong.
The problem here is not about who has the right to speak about body shame, but rather is the fact that no matter our shape, size, height, body type - THAT NO MATTER WHAT - ALL women are taught to feel bad about our bodies, that our bodies are never good enough, and that by association we are never good enough. We need to stop tearing each other down, because by doing so we are perpetuating the problem that the female body is never, ever allowed to just be.
I also understand that we need women of all sizes as role models, as representation, to let every woman at every size know that their size is more than ok and that they are beautiful and talented and capable of hard things and worthy of all things. But we also need to celebrate women that choose to focus on improving their health no matter what size they are or become, and to understand that all bodies change.
We need healthy whole foods, movement and COMMUNITY to minimize stress and depression, according to science. We need to stand together as women, not tear each other down. And that includes being happy for women who choose to build muscle and eat for better health - they have chosen to love and respect their bodies enough to take care of them, and that should be celebrated.
What we need is a FEMALE REVOLUTION - one that has us lifting each other up, shouting praises from the rooftops - when we choose to nourish ourselves, move ourselves, and adopt lifestyle habits that improve our bodies’ functions in ways that bring us joy and have us feeling more confident. This may look different from woman to woman, and that’s ok. The important thing is that we learn to love and respect our bodies enough to take good care of them, without judgment of what that process is for any woman.
Cheers to Adele, to Rebel Wilson, to Lizzo for striving to be stronger, healthier, and to feel better in their bodies and their minds. Eating nourishing food and building muscle fosters healthy body systems, and when your body starts to feel good, you start to feel good about your body. It’s a wonderful cycle of positive reinforcement that doesn’t need to be about losing weight, not even a little bit.
Our bodies are beautiful, even when they change.
If you like my writing, check out why I think weight is a negative motivator here.