Dear Prudence,
I consider myself a feminist and well-educated on fatphobia, and I do my best to be understanding, body-positive, and a champion of health at every size. But I feel like I can apply these principles to everyone I see except for myself. I tell myself all the time that being fat is morally neutral and not bad, not a measure of inherent worth or even necessarily health, etc., but I just can’t stop myself from feeling discouraged and self-loathing every time I feel the way my love handles rest on my thighs. I know my obesity is just a fact of how my body carries weight, likely genetic, and not my fault, but I still can’t help blaming myself and feeling guilty whenever I’m made aware of how fat I am, thinking that if only I had the self-control and discipline to diet and exercise better (even though both those things make me want to figuratively hurl myself off a cliff), I wouldn’t be like this—that my body is a physical reflection of me being lazy and worthless.
I can scroll through “body positive” tags on social media and appreciate the plus-size bodies of the people who post their photos there, but I can’t extend the same appreciation or compassion towards my own body when I look at it in the mirror. Basically, I can believe every body is beautiful … except my own! And it adds an extra layer of bad feelings—the initial “oh god, I’m such a fat lard whom no one will ever love” PLUS the guilt of “and I’m a bad person for feeling this way because it’s bad praxis and I clearly don’t believe in real fat liberation or leftist politics enough”!
This has always been a bit of an issue for me, but it’s skyrocketed after a particularly difficult (and, as a result, sedentary) summer for me in a personal sense. The worse I feel from this guilt-shame spiral, the LESS motivated I feel to actually do something about either my weight or my beliefs about my weight (and, therefore, the worse my obesity gets, to the point where it’s starting to pose a legitimate health risk; my mom is seriously advocating for me to get breast-reduction surgery and Ozempic). But I don’t know what’s stopping me or how to remedy this. Any advice?
—Body Positivity’s Exception