TW // body image and mentions of sex
"Giiiirl, you're phat with P-H."
I was in the fourth grade when my friend told me this during an arts and crafts session in class, and I didn't realize the impact of these words and how they would serve as a catalyst for shame and dysmorphia for years to come.
I was confused when she told me that, of course. I was nine years old and my hips and thighs started to develop quickly, while the rest of my body was still childlike, so my Asian mom had already taken to calling me "fat" in the house, but now a girl at school was calling me fat too? With a "P-H" for flair? As if regular fat wasn't bad enough? But then she explained "phat" was a good thing, that it was a compliment to my budding curves. That confused me even further - was "curves" and body shape something a person who hasn't reached double digits yet should be thinking about?
My relationship with my body and dysmorphia I've experienced growing up is two-fold: fatphobia coupled with overt sexualization.
I've been curvy my whole life, fluctuating from sizes 8-14. Since the fourth grade, the comments, the stares, the "help," the diets, the catcalls, and the insecurity started. "She's getting big too fast." "Her butt sticks out under her kameez." As if I could control the rate at which my hormones decided to work.
My mom, out of Asian motherly love, employed my best friend (who was stick thin but ate KFC for breakfast, lunch, and dinner) to help me workout and diet to stay in shape. This is incredibly ironic, considering my fat self loved healthy food (my dad managed a health food store at the time and visiting him at the store was my favorite thing to do on the weekends), but my skinny friend had never touched a vegetable in her life.
While I was shamed at home, school and the outside world was a different story. Boys would whisper and make bets about who can touch my blossoming bottom first; even my female teachers would gossip about me wearing tight, stretchy pants that accentuated my hips and legs. Of course, at the time I didn't realize how bizarre it was for grown ups to look at and sexualize a 12 year old in that way.
These were the best stretchy pants from the Gap
I wore them almost daily I was cute!
But I started to become acutely aware of my body, the way it moved, jiggled, and spread out when I sat down. I began to notice the way I would look in clothes, my bumps, lumps, and rolls visible under the fabric. I slowly began to realize that I was fat, and not with a P-H.
In middle school, a girl called me over during recess to ask me "is your mom thick?" I thought she was trying to call my mom dense (I didn't know "thicc" was AAVE until that moment"), but then she said "no, it's because you got a fat a** for an Indian." I awkwardly said thank you and walked away. It was the fourth grade all over again, my curves that I had no control over being sexualized before I even had my first kiss.
Middle school award ceremony
High school was when the battle between fatphobia and sex began. Cishet boys would make my body the topic of every conversation, while my parents were busy body shaming me and trying to make my curves less noticeable under clothing. Being raised Muslim, I already wasn't allowed to wear revealing outfits so I was in skinny jeans and t-shirts a majority of the time, but that wasn't enough - my jeans had to be looser, my shirts had to be bigger and cover my behind because my bigness wasn't acceptable. My mom would think of creative ways to wrap a scarf around me when I wore traditional outfits so I wouldn't "show." Shopping for a lehenga for my Sweet 16 was hell, as every skirt was too tight around my hips and butt and oh my, "manush ki bolbe?" Somehow, it was all still revealing and it was my fault that I couldn't cover up properly. I didn't know how to explain that no matter what I wore, my curves and body would still be visible. I wasn't praying to get a body like this overnight, I wasn't eating excessively to make myself gain weight, I wasn't doing anything special to make my body grow like this on its own and make myself "look like an adult." I just couldn't take the fat off my body when I wanted to. At the same time, aunties would tell me that losing weight was good for my health, even though I had no health problems. They would make remarks such as "oh, are you dieting? Trying to lose?" when I would take less rice than everyone else at dinner (maybe I just wasn't hungry?). I just couldn't understand why there was so much commotion over my natural weight gain and curves that I couldn't control.
I decided to take control. I just wanted the comments and the hurt, to stop. I would spend my days and nights on Tumblr, looking at pictures of thin white girls and accepting them as the standard, that if I was slim and slender I would finally be perfect. At the same time, I was into the alternative "emo" music scene, so skinny white girls with thigh gaps were the only types of girls represented. That was my ideal. To be the perfect version of myself, I had to be stick thin because that was beauty everywhere I looked - in music, in fashion, in culture. The perfect Brown Girl was also skinny, fitting into her kameez and saris beautifully, and being the perfect example of a daughter to every aunty on the block. I've always been a light eater (as I usually get full easily), so I took this to my advantage: from junior year on, I would eat maybe one and a half meals a week in an effort to achieve perfection.
Looking back, I don't think I actually had any significant weight loss (maybe around my midsection), but it felt good to be in control of my body in some way. It was the only way to keep the sexist, fat shaming comments at bay. I don't know when exactly (or how) I stopped my disordered eating and started to heal my body dysmorphia, but it was sometime in between my freshmen and sophomore year of college. I remember taking a look at myself in the mirror and thinking "is there actually something wrong with my body? Or is there something wrong with society's way of thinking and beauty standards?" In high school, I had no real concept of the way I looked - I was a walking sex toy for cishet men, but also a walking blob of fat to cishet women.
I realized the way in which I was taking control of my life wasn't effective and was destructive. I started to own my sexuality, which is difficult in and of itself as a Desi Muslim. For our community, curves are inherently immodest and sexualized, and somehow you can't be Asian/Muslim/inhabit a female body and be big at the same time. But it's not my fitted clothes or my body that's obscene, it's the notion that I should be ashamed of putting my body on "display" by not covering and minimizing how much space I take up.
In 2015, I unintentionally lost almost 30 pounds at my job at the time (lots of running around plus not having enough time to eat fully during break), and that's when the compliments started to roll in. "Wow, congrats on the weight loss!" "What did you do? You look great." Thanks, except 1. I once never said or implied that I wanted to lose weight, and 2. I hated the way I looked "slimmer". It wasn't me. I realized wasn't meant to be anything less than 165 lbs. My lack of curves was so foreign to me. "You look so good now!" So, I didn't look good when I was 40 lbs. heavier? Because I thought I did. Thankfully, I gained back the weight once I left that job and went back to looking like myself, much to the dismay of everyone else. Some of us enjoy being big. Shocker, I know.
Why are bigger, female bodies constantly scrutinized and vilified? I'm shamed and sexualized all at once, as if I chose to look this way. Fatphobic comments from aunties and the constant assumption that folx with bigger bodies are always on a weight loss journey and want to/need to be smaller need to end. The idea that weight = health needs to end. The perpetuation of the Eurocentric ideal of being stick thin needs to end. Curves being equated to adulthood needs to end. The sexualization of curvy bodies AFAB from a young age and the notion that we're "showing off" when we are simply just EXISTING needs to end.
healthy, thriving, flourishing, blossoming, and taking up space
I didn't choose to be big, but I can choose to honor that my curves are my home, that this is the temple I live in, the monolith in which I worship the form I was given.