The Point of No-Return
“ Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all…”
Well, not me, that’s for sure. Have you seen my face in the morning? Why do you think I chose to nickname myself after a fantasy lake monster, hiding in a freezing pond in the middle of Scotland?
But seriously, though, I don’t recall having ever thought of myself as being anything but ugly. It’s not that I don’t like my face or my nose, my eyes or my chubby cheeks, it’s just that altogether, when I look myself in the mirror, all I see is a anxious-looking version of my mother in her youth. Is it that my deep belief in my fugliness due to the years of bullying I had to deal with at school? Or is it the unfortunate result of sexual abuse trauma speaking at my place? It might be both like it might be just an opinion. An opinion I live with for a long time and feel no particular shame about. I know what you are about to say and I don’t want to hear it. I’m good to myself, okay. I’m no longer involved in self-sabotaging behaviours like I did when I was in my twenties. I don’t have the energy to hate myself as much as I did. There is a lot of guilt, a lot of things to de-tangle — and half of it is my 4B type afro hair — but me feeling ugly is not one of them. I’m cool with that. I have other things for me that makes up for it: my curiousness, my bubbly personality, my loud voice, my FLAWLESS music tastes (I said it and you know I’m right) and my ability to sound fun in three different languages. I don’t need to be beautiful, I’m smart, educated and highly melanated. Honestly, do NOT worry for me.
Unfortunately, there are also a lot of things in my physique that are not what they used to be and that is becoming a problem. I mean, of course, your body changes with age and I can feel every muscle of my body telling me that this intense twerking into Megan Thee Stallion’s Money Good might fuck up my knee-cap if not causing me a heart attack. Welcome to your thirties, bitches!
I can also see that stretch marks are taking over all my curves when all I wanted was to see my hair getting at least forty-eight shades of gray. Not fifty, just forty-eight.
I see my arms getting bigger and bigger, so much so that I feel the need to get more tattoos on them (Promise, I’ll get new ones when I can go back to the office and earn a full-time wage again.
I see my belly looking more like a beer belly even though I stopped drinking months ago. It’s a bit disgraceful but I can’t be arsed taking a bank loan for a tummy tuck in Bulgaria or Turkey. It’s not worth it. I’m not aspiring to be a model, neither having a Halle Berry moment in the highly pebbly beach of Vanilla City nor wanting to be a health nut. Plus, nobody will really notice a soft and lean stomach under my Venom x Beyoncé XL tee shirt.
My strong suit are my large hips and big thighs. I got it from my mama, who got it from her mama, who got it from her mama, who got it from… You get my drift. I love my thunder thighs, my rum ham, my precious little lower-body jiggly puffs. That’s what makes my butt great. That’s what makes my walk great. That’s also a great source of pain due to the chaffing and every thick thighed person will understand the suffering, the heartbreak of a ripped trousers on the side, the one that goes from the sewing lines making them look like fleshy cocktail weiners. Nobody deserves that and I feel you.
Feet are good but they get tired a lot. Arms are good but they get tired a lot. Back is good but they get tired a lot. Neck is good, but because of the stupidity of many and the double frustration that comes with one’s expectations of me to act like any angry Black woman they saw on telly, it also — you guessed it! — get tired a lot. My body screams neglect and greed. I took things for granted and my GP advised me that I have reached the point of no-return with a BMI approaching 40 and a body fat mass going above the 50%. In other news, and trust me, I never thought I would have to utter those words anytime in my life, I got put on a diet.
My intersectional feminism does bring the boys to the yard but I can’t do milkshakes anymore. I have to reduce my food intake with this calorie-counting system, which is horrible because I suck at maths and I don’t want to think about how much workout I will have to do to eliminate those extra calories. Cheese is life — MAY I REMIND YOU WHERE I WAS BORN AND RAISED???— and bread is the best appetiser. Cutting down on the “bonne chère” is like renouncing to my Frenchness. Food is everything to us. We love it, we love talking about it, we love flaunting our love for food, it is in our DNA. The very personification of gastronomy worldwide is a Parisian rat with a little toque. But that’s not what’s killing me. The real blow right here is that I am being told that I am too fat and that I need to be thinner to be accepted in society. How awful is that?
I hate the fact that society put fat people down because they are fat. Yes, obesity is dangerous and can cause severe health conditions in the long run BUT so is fat-shaming. Fat-shaming kills, fat-shaming discriminates and fat-shaming causes depression. I don’t think that diets are the cure to fatphobia, acceptance and minding your own goddamn business have been proved to be super efficient. You should try it! The thing is, I know I’m not fat. I’m chubby and I have fatty spots but I’m not fat; it’s just that the numbers aren’t doing me any favour.
I also don’t like the whole vibe going with beauty standards set up by the fashion industry. You have to look a certain way, have a certain BMI (that shouldn’t be harmonised because people are different and so are bodies — you would never compare the beauty standards in South East Asia with the ones in North Africa because they are clearly diverging) and dress only in “conventional” ways (once again, conventional for whom? It’s conventional in Orthodox Jewish women to hide their hair with wigs and Muslim women with hijabs and Valley Girls with top-knot buns, you know, choices!). Whomever came up with the idea that there is only one beauty standard to follow and to care about must be brought back to life as a goose, only to be stuffed with chemical shit, have a slow, miserable and painful death and end up at my family’s Christmas feast as their selected foie gras for the night. That’ll teach them motherfuckers to mess with women’s bodies.
So, yeah, I’m on a diet now because I reached a point of no-return and will have to spend less time watching Netflix documentaries and more time squating in my living room whilst my cat is living her best kitty life. This is unfair, but then again, life is unfair and people are stupid, so what can you do… If you say more squats, I’ll smash your toe with a kettlebell! Even you, Mr Motivator.
