Culture

Uh, in case you haven’t noticed, the body acceptance movement has a bit of a body rejection problem. Namely, anyone who isn’t a thin, white, able-bodied, straight, middle class, cisgender woman gets left out of the movement altogether — which, in my opinion, isn’t very accepting.

As a mom I've had days of frustration and annoyance. Some days it can be really hard to be a parent. Since my daughter is 2, any situation at any time can go from joyful to stressful (and sometimes dangerous) in a heartbeat.

Before you had kids you were all, "I am going to be SUCH a good parent. I am never going to do what my parents did. Never. TV destroys the developing brain. There will be none of that nonsense."

I want to talk about invisible illness. I want to talk about thin privilege. I want to talk about chronic illness and self-image and society’s perceptions and how all of these things intersect.

My husband and I are absolutely, madly in love. Yes. We have sex. We have it a lot. It is good. I am bigger than him but that doesn't matter.

So you’re on a diet, and you’re really pumped about it. You truly, honestly believe that you’re—say—“getting your body back” post-partum (that’s a harmful concept) or improving your fitness a la the latest technological tracking device (that’s also a harmful concept). And while I think we need to throw a lot of these ideas in the trash, I’m also understanding of how diet culture makes you believe that these are good things – things, in fact, to brag about.

Going into a McDonald’s and ordering one of my favourite meals is never a fun experience. Why? Because I’m fat. Every time I go in there, I feel like I’m being judged. I feel like the staff and other customers there could be looking at my protruding belly and assuming that I don’t look after myself, that McDonalds is all I eat, and that I am capable of eating three to four meals’ worth of the stuff in one sitting.

This is fancy talk for “holy shit, I cannot make peace with my body today or ever, because this body is telling the world I’m a woman when I’m actually not.”