everyone's losing weight. and i don't know how to talk about it

at the end of the day, do we all really just want to be skinny?

TW: fatphobia, weight loss drugs, drugs in general, brief mention of racism

Okay, when I say “we all,” I don’t mean you. Or me.

Or your thin friend who “feels fat”. Or the therapist who suggested that you just need to accept that you want to lose weight (true story). Or that body positive influencer you loved who now hocks weight-loss drugs and walking pads. Or that fitness guru who touts intentional weight loss as true self-love (because really, how could you be self-loving and let yourself stay looking like that?) Or that TikTok star who used to be fat and isn’t anymore and just thinks certain clothes look better on certain bodies and it’s not a big deal and why is everyone so mad at him for just telling it like it is.

*Deep breath in*

Or your neighbour who lost 100 lbs. last year and wants to celebrate his hard work and determination and just wishes everyone else could DIG DEEP and LET OUT THEIR INNER THIN PERSON because if he can do it, anyone can. Or that internet troll who wants you to know they just “care about your health” and “don’t hate fat people” after calling you a whale and prescribing you a cocaine addiction. Or that Karen at the grocery store eyeing the chips — then your body, then your chips, then your body — in your shopping cart. Or that person on the street who cheered “you’ll get there!” while you were just minding your business jogging because some science told you it was good for your menty h.

I could go on, but I don’t want to bury the lede anymore so here it goes, with the giant caveat that I’m speaking about ~society~ and in massive generalizations (don’t yell at me):

• No one wants to admit that they wish they were smaller

• Almost all the famous fat people and influencers you know were just waiting for the moment that trying to be thin wouldn’t get them cancelled

• We all want the relief of it being okay to lose weight

  • Because it is a relief

  • Because living in a fat body (and being a fat person who accepts their body is another kind of hell) is hard in many ways and wanting a life that isn’t hard makes. fucking. sense.

I know it’s hard and I’m not even that big. On the fatness spectrum, I’m considered a small fat at roughly a size 16/18 or 1X/2X, depending on the brand. I’ve always been able to fit into seats, though some have left bruises on my hips and most are uncomfortable at best. I’ve never had to ask for a seatbelt extender (every flight I clock how much closer I am to it), though I do it for my friends who are embarrassed to ask for themselves because a) I love them and b) I also love attention and proving to people that I don’t care what they think of me. An important piece of this is that I’m white, and being a fat white person is very different from being a racialized fat person. Also, I have a fat ass and luckily a nice face (something a man actually told me once before putting his dingaling inside of me), which is part of being a palatably fat person. But I also have a belly and basically no waist, so that kind of negates the fat ass. If you’re into that, I’m single and emotionally available every second business day if I had enough protein at breakfast.

I recently went on a trip to Cuba with two beautiful pals and was smacked in the face by how much my body had changed in the last few years. My belly hung a bit lower. My thighs chafed a bit worse. My arms rippled, stretched against the fat accumulated beneath my skin. My face, once one that gave me the illusion of being thin from the neck up, was rounder and more plump and sat atop a double chin and deepening neck roll. Skin touched skin in ways I hadn’t noticed before. I tried to fight how I felt because to many I’m the only one they know who doesn’t actively hate their body, but truthfully I spent a week mostly wishing I could just be, as my best friend puts it, a brain in a jar. No decisions on what to wear. No reflection to see. No body to fight. Just mushy-brain-suspended-in-liquid vibes. The trip was amazing, but I came back with an unwanted desire to be smaller the next time I went away. Like a phantom limb, I’d thought I’d chipped away at all of this want to be smaller, but there it was — an invisible pain that I had to publicly pretend didn’t exist.

Everyone’s losing weight

I remember when I first saw THAT PHOTO of Adele in May 2020. It was a photo shared to commemorate her birthday and thank first responders for their work during the Covid pandemic. I’m not sure if Adele knew it would send shockwaves through the body positive community because up until then, we didn’t really know how far her weight loss had gone. Adele was, whether she signed up for it or not, a beacon of hope that fat women could be successful, glamorous, talented. That maybe Hollywood was moving away from the expectation that to be celebrated as a woman you first had to be fuckable by most men’s standards. I remember when I saw it and how I felt — betrayed, hurt, left behind. Like the bubble burst. Like my body was wrong and had to be changed too.

Adele didn’t start a celebrity weight-loss trend, but things began to change from that point on. When rumours spread that both Mindy Kaling and Kim Kardashian were taking weight-loss drugs, it seemed like a floodgate opened and everyone was jumping at the chance to get their hands on the new It Girl of the pharmaceutical world: Ozempic (or the less sexy name, semaglitude), traditionally used to treat Type 2 diabetes.

I was getting hundreds of weight-loss drug ads on social media as they quickly went from a hard-to-find commodity to seemingly available at every drug store for a price, promising, naively and hatefully by some, the end of “obesity,” fatphobia and the need for a fat-acceptance movement at all. They said that weight loss could, theoretically, no longer require will power but just a simple weekly injection, and any fat person who refused to take that opportunity was complicit in their own bodies. It’s hard not to take on this endlessly repackaged shame as my own when everyone started to disappear before my eyes. Whether they were on it or not, it was undeniable that things were changing — everyone wanted to be skinny again.

Hard conversations

It’s hard to talk about this, about other peoples’ bodies and choices, without sounding like an asshole or, worse, jealous. It’s hard to talk about because it goes against my belief that we shouldn’t really be talking about anyone’s bodies at all, and yet these feelings are important and need somewhere to go because I’m not the only one who feels this way. Because the betrayal is not really about them no longer being fat. It’s about how their new bodies often signify what’s to come: A cut-and-run from the world that brought them part of their success in the first place. People who were once our allies no longer feel obligated to be. For many fat folks, these people were safe spaces. Now maybe we shouldn’t make safe spaces out of celebrities, influencers and public figures at all, but it happens. How do we reconcile how we feel about it when they go away?

I almost immediately cried after taking this photo with Ally, after which we decided we’d prefer just being brains in jars.

Truly believing in everyone’s right to bodily autonomy, even if that meant choosing intentional weight loss, was the final hurdle I had to throw myself over before I could truly approach a peaceful relationship with my body and tackle my own internalized fatphobia. Everyone should be able to lose weight if they want to, just like everyone has the right to accept and feel wonderful in their fatness, like I’m trying to do. I spent a lot of time believing that intentional weight loss was inherently fatphobic, and I sort of still think it is, but that leaves very little room for conversations like this.

It feels juvenile to admit how much it stings when my favourite people lose weight. It feels like they finally admitted to themselves and the world that fatness is wrong, and therefore I’m wrong too. If I’m not careful, I’m immediately down the rabbit hole of seeking to change my body as well — with lists, recipes, workout plans, gym memberships, buying and returning body scales, research, calorie-counting apps.

The weight of having a body that reads as rebellious, lazy, stubborn, offensive, unhealthy is heavy; the relief of acquiescing to crafting a body the world likes to look at is so, so tempting.

Will power

But I don’t want to be thin, really. I want to exist in a world that doesn’t see my body, and therefore me, as a failure. I want to be able to go on dating apps and not be bombarded by messages from men WHO DO NOT KNOW ME fetishizing my body instead of caring about who I am. I want to stop being a placeholder until potential romantic partners find someone better. I want to stop being the secret; the person they ask for nudes from via Instagram DM while publicly and exclusively dating thin women. I want to let go of this baggage too — to stop feeling like all of these things are because of my body and not just indicative of a severely unwell dating culture.

Maybe that therapist I mentioned earlier was right. Maybe part of the healing is in the honesty of admitting a younger, less-healed version of me still wishes to be smaller, and holding that truth. But it doesn’t have to become the truth of our lives. We can be stronger than that; the conditioning that beauty is weighed in pounds and not in delicious meals and laughter and spontaneous adventures and horror movie nights and getting the shits with your best friends in a Cuban hotel room with one toilet.

And on the days I wish I could snap my fingers and be thin, I don’t blame myself. I blame the world that constantly reminds me it’s what I should want. Late last year, in the terrible throes of celibacy and feeling shitty about my body, I got an ad for Ozempic from Felix, an online prescription service. I clicked it. I went through the entire questionnaire to determine my eligibility for the drug, but cancelled the session before I could be connected with a doctor. My answers still live there somewhere, saved in the ether. My willpower won.

---

things I can’t STFU about this week:

• This GoFundMe to get Karam’s family out of Gaza safely. The fundraiser is very close to reaching its goal. Please consider donating and sharing the link. Every amount helps. I understand it can feel paralyzing to know you cannot help everyone, but that is the reality — we cannot help everyone, but we can help someone and, in this case, an entire family.

• The Netflix show Black Summer. It’s a true horror zombie apocalypse TV show. Unrelenting action. Lots of gore, blood splatter, death, destruction, hopelessness, survival, human nature, exhaustion, loooong epic one-shot fight scenes. It’s how a zombie apocalypse would probably actually go, not romanticized like The Walking Dead or The Last of Us (love you, Papi Pedro). Sadly it was cancelled after two seasons, but it’s a GOOD two seasons.

• Charli XCX’s latest drop “360” and her Boiler Room set (ft. Julia Fox). I am an OG Myspace-era Charli lover, and this track reinvigorated my love for her. Like “666 with a princess streak,” are you joking???

• The book “Just Kids” by Patti Smith. Literally the most beautiful love story that makes me nostalgic for an era I never experienced. It made me sad that we live our lives through our phones and don’t really meet people like that anymore. Boo hoo.

• Nicola Coughlan. That’s all.

---

up next: late blooming and taking the scenic route