A few weeks ago, I visited a friend I had not seen for quite some time. As she greeted me, one of the first things out of her mouth was: "You've gained weight, haven't you? You didn't have that chubby face last time."
As you no doubt have guessed from some of my previous posts, I am an avid self-love advocate and completely against accepting these kinds of comments without pushback - but this one left me in doubt.
I know that comments about one's body (especially from women to other women) are many things: they are normalized, often negative, and often intended to make the receiver police themselves in a way they may not have before. They also make the receiver feel like crap.
And indeed, regardless of how much time I've spent learning about better body image and thinking up responses to these unsolicited comments, I could only find myself sputtering some sort of refrain and going quiet. The worst part came later, when I started questioning. Am I really heavier? Does that mean I've become less healthy than before? And the best one: does this mean I have to forfeit the self-love and get back on track?
These meta-questions are all about that self-policing that is so encouraged by these words. It takes you out of your body and tells you that you need to justify what you're doing or change it. It's what sends people into fad diets and fat-shaming, into repeating the cycle of denial and guilt around tasty food, and into the impossible journey of trying to be "perfect."
So how do we stop it?
