Skinny: an everyday resolution
By: Emile Shen - WGEN Contributor
Time and time again, losing weight and getting healthier are the top New Year’s resolutions. The New Year’s surge of people at the Pulse and the subsequent disdain and groans from the regulars about newbies crowding up the gym is a predictable result. My concern is not with the plethora of benefits that these physical activities bring, but with the societal pressure to lose weight for aesthetic purposes.
My relationships with food and body image have been my longest lasting and by far most complicated. Others had told me since before I started grade school that being skinny made me a better person and would grant me better treatment. When you’re little, it is cute and acceptable to be chubby. When I got to Grade 3, my classmates started commenting about the roundness of my stomach and face. By age 10, I was told by classmates to stop eating so I could stop being so fat. I tried to brush it off, but still felt hurt by the words that were hurled at me.
As such, these New Year’s resolutions are neither simple nor methodical for me. Deeply ingrained in me through my peers and through my mother is that thin meant good and it meant being likable.
Fast forward a decade and a half and I am considered to be an average, “healthy” weight. I unequivocally celebrate body positivity in other women. But I have a difficult time rationalizing acceptance of others to the problematic pride I feel for myself when I manage to eat skimpy meals and feel the outline of my bones more sharply.
I don't know if it is more comforting or disturbing that I was not alone in these thoughts.
The defiant ways my curves grew and my weight surged in undergrad felt as out of control as the weakening of my mental health and the lack of a grasp I had on my identity. Was this a moral error? Why couldn’t I just do the things that I know mean healthy and active living and fitness and clean eating? Why was it so hard for me? Why was there such a mental barrier? McMaster’s services to help with these questions are suitable, but simply cannot compete with such a large amount of seemingly unfixable societal pressure.
I don’t know if it is more comforting or disturbing that I was not alone in these thoughts. Dr. Linda Smolak, a specialist in the psychology of eating disorders, found that by age six, girls start to express worry about their body appearance and 40 to 60 per cent of elementary school girls are concerned about becoming too fat. Individual experiences vary substantially along the spectrum, but this concern of weight gain follows most women throughout their lives.
It stresses me out when my friends count calories or talk about how many pounds they have lost since working out more regularly. And although logically, I know that others’ choices regarding eating and exercise have nothing to do with me, it still remains a paralyzing force. I don’t understand how society is simultaneously so individualistic but judgmental about what bodies are deemed appropriate or not. The amount of space a body takes up should not dictate how a person is treated.