The first time I remember wanting to be thinner, I was three.

It was on the playground. We had this big wooden castle at my preschool. Remember the kind you would run on and get splinters? The kind that was probably dangerous because it was rotten in some places and slippery when it rained. The kind of sprawling wooden playground that made you feel on top of the world. It was your castle, your spaceship, and your pretend office building. When you were three, it held infinite possibilities.

I remember one of the older girls at my school did gymnastics. She was so cool. She knew how to do a backbend AND swing on the bar. These were big-ticket items for preschool popularity. Like good Montessori fangirls, we’d line up every day at recess and wait for her to teach us to be acrobats. It was a pretty simple process. She would lift us up, help us hang onto the swinging bar, and catch us on the way down. It was awesome.

Or, I think it would have been. I remember standing in that line, staring at the shorter girls around me, and realizing that I was too big. I would not be able to have fun the same way they were. This was the first time I remember wishing to be smaller. I didn’t know how to tie my shoes, but I knew I was too big.

I mean big in all of the ways. Not only was I one of the tallest kids in the elementary school, but I also definitely weighed the most of all the girls in the line. I was a big kid. A big girl. The one who got sent to the furthest back row in group pictures. If you want to feel like a mutant, I recommend standing head AND shoulders above everyone in your fourth-grade class photo. A hulking monster in the world of smaller “cuter” girls all around me.

Body image is tricky. As far as I can tell (in my almost 21 years of experience feeling ‘wrong’) it seems to pop up the first time you realize that you are not quite meeting the ideal in some way. For me, this was standing in that line nervously twisting my Limited-Too dress between my grubby three-year-old hands.

And I want to acknowledge just how much privilege I held as I STILL didn’t feel good enough. I was a white cis-girl then and I am now a white cis-woman. I have been lucky to escape food insecurity thus far. I also have a quote-on-quote “athletic” body type, so I am thin (though that REALLY depends on who you ask). With all this privilege, I should have felt close to the beauty standard, but I didn’t. I stared at the girls in the magazines, dreaming of looking just like them, while my body grew too fast to always be in the cool clothes.

My insecurity landed at my feet. Literally. They were growing entirely too much. While all the other girls were in their cute Disney Princess plastic heels, my toes slipped out the front, and my heels fell off the back. As a five-year-old, I concluded that this meant I would go on to be an Ugly Stepsister. In middle school, I cringed when the salespeople at shoe stores would suggest I buy men’s sneakers since they had a better size range. I purposely bought shoes that were too small to try to will my feet to shrink. I even considered foot-binding. Anything to be smaller. Dramatic, I know, but I was desperate not to be a mammoth.

I hit 5’ 11” when I was 11, and I began to gradually accept that I would not be shrinking vertically for many years. But if I couldn’t be shorter, I could be thinner, right? I couldn’t shave off inches from my bones, but my skin and muscles were malleable….right?

Well, let me save you some time. DO NOT consult Instagram for diet ideas. DO NOT attempt to lose a pound a week. And, God forbid PLEASE be so so so careful with (trigger warning) “My Fitness Pal”. It’s going to be messy in the long run.

Because here’s the thing. Yes, I shrank myself, but at my smallest, I still thought I needed to go (and this is the honest-to-goodness truth) to a weight loss camp. The absolute ridiculousness of that idea is not lost on me. But how was I to have known that in 2016? I had grown up in a world that told me that if I was smaller—if I was less—that I would mean more.

I’ve crammed my body into clothes that didn’t fit because I was hoping I could shape-shift. I even started a D1 sport for the purpose of staving off the freshman fifteen, only to gain more in muscle (to which my doctor responded, “You’re overweight; you should work out more,” never mind that I did three hours of cardio a day and that “weight” really was muscle—but I digress).

Share

I’ve wasted decades PLURAL, hoping to be less than I am. I’ve wasted wishes on stars for smaller thighs and a flatter rib cage. I went to Paris with my grandmother when I was 16, and almost every word in the journal I kept is about how many calories were in each croissant.

And, this doesn’t even really meet the criteria for an official issue because “isn’t that just how teenaged girls are?”. Pardon my French (sorry, I needed some levity), but how FUCKING stupid is that? All that potential within me at 3, 11, 16, or 23, and the most pressing issue the world handed me was how my stomach looked when I sat down. I wonder what I could have done with all that time I wasted. I’m trying not to waste much more, but it’s hard.

It’s hard to walk into a world where I will be a head taller than most other women. It’s hard to know I will never be a “pretty, dainty little girl”. That’s what the world tells women to be, isn’t it?

But we aren’t just supposed to be small in size. We as women are also supposed to shrink the presence of our words right along with our waistlines. I’ve sent texts to my friends proclaiming the “new me” who talks less and blends into the background. This always “worked” for all of 5 seconds until I had the next thought I just needed to share! I think I will ALWAYS say five too many words. I will never be the mysterious, cool girl because I will be too busy giggling and will care too much to not jump into the conversation.

But, I am learning that how big I am in size and syllables is not the death sentence I once believed it was. Yes, I’m tall and have muscles but didn’t that allow me to decide to just begin a D1 sport in college? Don’t I love that I talk enough that I can usually set most anyone at ease in a few minutes by making them smile? Would I really give up so many things that made me exceptional just so I could be SMALLER?

I’ve spent the better part of 20 years attempting to shrink. That’s my life’s work up until this point. I desperately hope my life’s work will be bigger in the next 20 years. I hope that by 43, my life’s work will be learning to speak up, to take up space with my words, and to enjoy that I have been lucky to have a body that has let me do so much of what I love. I’d really like for my next 20 years to not have anything to do with my size at all, frankly.

I’d really like not to wish to be less than I am.

That’s all from me!

Thanks for once more watching Becky as she Sweats the Small Stuff.