Seriously… Fuck flattering.

Looking back, I spent every moment since growing boobs, trying to wear the most flattering and “slimming” outfits and shirts. (I wear a bra size G, thankyouverymuch.)

Can’t wear a big shirt! I’ll look pregnant!

Must accentuate my waist without making my boobs look too big!

Must fool the world into thinking I am tinier than I am!

MUST LOOK as tiny as can be!

GOD FORBID I look ‘frumpy’!

God forbid I show the world I have a body that is anything but tiny tiny tiny and controlled and desirable and hirable and ingenue and acceptablllllle!

Must. Be. Flattering. At. All. TIMES!

Even after going on the Fuck It Diet, I still held onto this culturally ingrained “flattering” mentality.

It’s time to accept my body! I’ll let my body do whatever it needs to do! And I will jsut wear clothes that flatter it. (Read: Make it look as slim as possible)

Do not give me the benefit of the doubt. My definition of “flattering” didn’t mean “accentuating my natural curves and flattering the wonderful bigness”. It didn’t mean “taking up the space I deserve to take up, in all of my glory! Look at me stand here, wearing clothes I love and breathing into my stomach instead of sucking in!”.

No. It meant: I will wear clothes that make me look at tiny as possible.

This is not body positive. This is not accepting yourself in any form.

This is still fat-phobic.

This is still anti-body and very limiting.

Because in a world where we all feel like we should wear clothes that make us look as small as possible, what are we saying?

We are saying that we still aren’t good enough. We still have to be controlled. The way our bodies look need to be kept in CHECK.

This was a hard habit to break. I developed a talent for finding clothes that are “flattering” (read: slimming). I developed that skill based on what the world told women they needed to do with their clothes: be smaller looking. Which meant certain clothes stressed me out. Certain clothes were things I “couldn’t wear”.

So I have had to spend the last few years reminding myself that that is not actually something I have to do…

I don’t have to look as skinny as possible, just like I don’t need to eat the smallest amount possible.

I can wear clothes just because I like them. Or they are comfortable. Or they ‘flatter’ something else, besides our rampant obsession with being tinier than we actually are.

Let me also remind you that the actual word flattering is completely arbitrary… it’s only our fat phobic society that has made flattering mean “tinier”.

What if looking round was what we collectively decided was flattering?

So I encourage you to bring on the clothes that make you look pregnant, or rounder, or bigger, or whatever.

Your clothes don’t need to make you look more acceptable.

Your clothes can just be clothes that you like wearing, without fulfilling some sort of illusionary effect.

Your clothes don’t have to make you look smaller.

i reject all your rules

i reject your shoulds, your structure, your guilt,

i reject all the things that made me feel like I wasn’t ‘doing life right’.

my freedom came when I realized that success is not what i thought it was.

prestige is hollow.

success isn’t praise or fame,

it is peace and space and joy.

so i reject all your rules.

i reject all your steps to happiness.

i reject your shoulds, your fake smiles, your martyrdom,

i reject the rat race.

i reject it all.

i have depleted myself for too long.

and i will not play your game anymore.

We think that the cause of our issues with food is the actual food.

It’s not.

We think we are either food addicts – or orthorexics – or binge eaters – or compulsive – or have no will power, etc, etc, etc.

That’s not the cause of any of it.

The root of our food issues is actually body issues.

The root is actually our belief that our body is wrong and ugly and needs to be changed.

And the root of our body issues – for the most part – is cultural.

What have we learned about our bodies from the media, advertising campaigns, a 20 billion dollar diet industry, and a biased health care system that is very often funded by drug and diet companies? What have those deeply ingrained systems, that count on your insecurity in order to profit, what have they taught your mothers and grandmothers? What have they taught your friends? What have your grandmothers and mothers and friends and doctors taught you?

We are taught to be deeply fat-phobic – and based on lots of fear mongering and fallacies.

Most of us don’t even know we are fat-phobic – it just is. It feels like a fact that weight and fat is bad and ugly.

It is not a fact. It is learned, and it needs to be unlearned.

Ideally we unlearn it as a society, but that starts with us, individually.

This is why trying to heal your food issues without tackling your extreme feelings about your body will fall short. You must change the way you see weight, fat, and beauty, or you will be stuck in an insecure hell with funky and reactive eating for the rest of your life.

You can’t completely heal your food issues without becoming body positive, and healing your body image.

That is what is underneath the food stuff: Body Stuff. Cultural Body Stuff.

Our moms and grandmoms and friends know not what they do, but we have to be the ones to stop it.