Body, by me (part 1 of ?)
A, now disgraced, poet once said;
“You like a bitch wit no ass, you ain’t got shit”.
Have truer words ever been spoken?
Hi, I’m Gigi- a bitch wit no ass.
I don’t have hips either.
I don’t like my body.
That sounds…bad. I do love my body for how it works and for being alive but overall, I cannot say that I love how it looks.
Once, as a preteen, I saw a picture of myself from behind. I was distraught. This is what people see when they see me????? And from that moment on, I never wanted anyone behind me. I always thought they were going to laugh at me or talk about how I look.
I have a wide back and rolls. and belly(ies). So much fat but none of it seems to go to the right places. The “right” places would be my hip and butt areas. It may sound odd, but fat doesn’t equal ugly to me. I think fat is pretty and soft. I just hate the way MY fat is distributed. To be more precise, all my fat areas would be okay, IF I had the bottom to match the upper.
This blog post isn’t about my life as a fat person, but I can’t talk about this topic without adding that to the mix. It is more acceptable to be fat if you have an hourglass shape or a pear shape. I am not only a victim of this societal norm but a perpetrator of it because all I want in life is to be a pear shape. Instead, I am an apple. I am all belly. I’ve lost about 40 pounds since the pandemic started. I haven’t been trying hard, I’ve just been gluten-free so it happened. The effort that I’m putting into my diet is due to feeling better when I don’t eat gluten but also in the hopes of losing weight in the “right” places so my body becomes more proportionate.
There is another aspect of my experience that contributes to my ass despair: I’m Black.
Being Black, there is an expectation that you should look a certain way. There’s a standard “Black” woman’s body that lots of us feel we should have. That standard is to be “curvy”, to have a small waist, big hips, big butt, and thick thighs.
This “standard” has affected the fats and the slims. There are those of us who fall on opposite sides of this distribution. Some of us have too much, and some too little to fit this mold. I don’t speak for everyone, but it makes ME feel kind of inadequate compared to those who do meet the standard. It makes me feel just like that poet said as if I ain’t got shit. Sometimes, I get pretty depressed about it. God really dropped me off on earth as a Black girl with no ass? Tuh. And in the south to boot.
The internet has given us access to more people and more images to compare ourselves to. It has played a big role in my body shape issues. I have a saved folder on Instagram entitled “why not me Lord?”. Seriously. When I come across an account of someone who makes me particularly sad and jealous, I save a picture of them in there.
Why do I do that? To emotionally cut myself later.
Why do I want to emotionally cut myself? I can’t answer all these questions! I have to leave some things for the therapist to sort out (when I get one…)
So that you can visualize what I want and understand my plight; here are some Instagram accounts from the aforementioned folder:
And while we’re discussing the Internet, can we talk about these online challenges??? Why so many challenges? Most recently, was the “buss it” challenge and the silhouette challenge. Will someone please think of the ass challenged? These things hurt my feelings. How am I supposed to lie to myself and say “my booty getting bigger” even if it ain’t, when I can’t peruse the internet without being bombarded by actual booties?
I’m pretty vocal about my ass struggles. I constantly complain to anyone who will listen. And this is what I hear from the outside world when I voice my pain:
· “Lil booties matter” TO WHO????? Stop patronizing me. I don’t care if they matter, I just want a fat ass.
· “Do squats” Maaaaan get the fuck outta here! There’s no fat back there. I just want a fat ass.
· “Get a BBL” Here’s an actual solution. I like the idea of this. I mean, it’s MY fat and I should decide where it goes.
So many Black women are getting these nowadays. It must stem at least a little bit from the same brand of self-criticism that I suffer from. There’s a girl I follow on social media for hair and lifestyle stuff. She has a body that I would love to have. So, imagine my shock when she announced that she is getting a BBL. I keep wondering, ‘WHYYY?’. I feel like there’s so much pressure on everyone to have “the look”. Or maybe BBLs have just become a trend? A status thing? Kind of like holding money to your ear or getting a Tesla. I’m not sure, but that announcement made me a little sad for her, for all of us who feel not quite adequate. I think about getting the procedure, but surgery scares me. Also, I am very particular about looking “natural”. I’d want people to wonder if I had gotten it but not immediately just know. And truthfully there’s a part of me that thinks it’s not THAT big of a deal to just suffer through having this apple shape. I’ll just be sad and cry a little every day. No biggie.
One of my friends knows about my despair (everyone who knows me, knows). She found an app that can edit and morph your body and face in pictures. She took an old pic from my Instagram, “fixed” it, showed it to me, and said, “I can edit your pictures before you post them next time- see?”
I damn sure did see. It was the me that I always wanted to be. I tell you, I wanted to take the actual picture I have up there down and replace it with the edited one immediately! That picture made me soooo happy for a moment. Then I was deeply sad because that’s NOT how I look in real life. It was so wild… kind of like a twisted mind game. I loved it but I hated it too. In the years to come, I think there will be in depth studies done about the effects of the internet on our perception of ourselves, mental health, and body image.
I had planned to declare; “there’s a thin line between what you want and what you’ve been conditioned to want”. But now, I wonder if there is a line at all. I want a fat ass. I’m not the only one. But where did the displeasure for how I look come from? Is it embedded in us? At some point, we’ve heard about women’s wide hips being an evolutionary signal to men for fertility or being well suited for child-birth. Maybe that’s where it all comes from? I certainly feel like a woman and feminine. But not as feminine as I would if I were more shapely.
I remember being a little girl and white women in movies and t.v shows didn’t want big butts. They thought they were nasty, they associated them with being fat, and being fat was terrible. It seems that has changed now. So, maybe it’s not a biology thing but a cultural, conditional thing? It must be conditional because, it wasn’t always a problem for me. I was in middle school when I realized I was ass-deficient. I’m pretty sure that’s when a lot of girls start to grow insecurities.
You can call me delusional, but I know in my heart that my life would be better if I had a butt. I would be much more confident. I would have a better job. I would have a better life. I would have more money. I would have a better dating pool.
I don’t have any encouraging or hopeful words to leave you with in case you were looking for me to say “I realized it doesn’t matter that I don’t have an ass!”- I haven’t gotten there yet. I decided not to post the picture my friend “fixed” for me and I’m not going to post any pictures where my body is edited. Because I don’t want to contribute more bad feelings from myself about myself. Plus, my whole vibe is dedicated to being free and unrestrained so I’m going to continue to work on living as a person who’s free of societal oppression.
I heard somewhere that there is a word that means ‘staring in the mirror and critiquing your body’. I don’t remember what the word is, but I know I do that a lot. Lately, I’ve been standing in the mirror trying to find more love for my body. I may never fully have that. I have love for some body parts and for the things my body can do. I’m happy for my health, I am grateful that I can jump and dance and ride a bike and swim. I used to even feel strong prior to my car accident.
Before the new mirror thing, to help myself feel better about my body, I invented “assfirmations” (affirmations…for your ass). I wasn’t consistent with repeating them and they were half-hearted because I- say it with me folks, “Just! Want! A! Fat! Ass!”
Thaaaat’s right.
This was a “part 1 of ?” because I gots a lot to unpack.
*Intrusive question alert* buuuut …do you like your butt? …Body image issues anyone??
Tell me about yourself in the comments, if you’re willing to share.