Bodies

When we don't allow fat girls access to age-appropriate clothing, we're sending one terrible, chilling message: You're too big to deserve a childhood.

Femme, as it’s expected, isn’t easy for me. It seems to demand from me labor I’m increasingly less willing or less able to undertake as a mentally ill person who likes to think they give zero fucks.

Obviously, now from my elder perch, I realize it’s best to withhold judgment, especially contempt for actions that bring personal joy at life stages you haven’t reached yet. (Though I’m still not married and get cranky that women are taking their husband’s last names more so than twenty years ago.)

I have seen the same tropes of fat people for the entirety of my life. Personally, I am so ready for a remake on what fat people are capable of doing and being.

I grew up in a fatphobic household — one that was created by my mother’s fear of getting and staying fat.

What happens when you suggest diet behavior to a kid who’s about to grow a foot? How do you affect their growth? How to you affect their health? This is fat-shaming kids!

Is everyone so deeply entrenched in diet culture that we don’t even hear ourselves anymore?

My sad little girl brain remembers exactly what it feels like to risk everything and get rejected. It happened so many times for me during childhood and then later in my early dating years. I’ve created elaborate systems of avoidance, emotional self-control and pre-emptive rejection. And frankly, girl, I’m tired of it. It’s a lot of goddamn work.