TW: Weight Gain and talking about weight

I have talked on here about how I went up three dress sizes this pandemic. A brief update on that, I’ve been embracing it more and I got new clothes little by little (your girl is broke) so having clothes that fit and that I like has made me feel much better!

I’ve also started exercising again. I only do exercises that I enjoy and so that makes the experience fun. There are so many ways to exercise, honestly do what works for you and don’t pressure yourself too much if you don’t respond well to pressure.

If you do respond well to pressure I hear gym classes are the best or having a friend to keep you accountable.

Anyway, so I’ve been better to the point where I was actually curious about how much I weighed and so I checked.

I was surprised to see I had reached my weight goal. In the past I never thought I’d reach it and yet I have!

I have to say, it suits me. It suits my frame and even my African Aunties are saying the same things… my African Aunties! If you knew how blunt and harsh they can be you’d be rejoicing too.

I was with my cousin as I weighed myself and she did too. Then I told a friend and my friend was like, ooh same!

And it was so interesting to us because we have different body shapes. All three of us have different body shapes and weight looks different on all three of us. It’s not a bad thing or anything but rather it’s a fascinating thing.

It really made me think about representation.

I knew this before but seeing in real life three women, myself included, with different body shapes and being the same size really drove home how TV and film stick to one image all the time.

There are so many different body types and yet we’re stuck seeing the same ones over and over again. Can you image how much more confident people would be if they saw themselves represented in media?

I say in media, because it’s not like you can go staring at strangers like, “I wonder if they look like me.” Whereas on TV and film you can look and see, you can see what kinds of people are desired and what kinds of people are portrayed as being undesirable.

Which is stupid by the way,  beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I know I say this a lot but I truly believe that.

If we all fancied the same people the world would be boring and there would be a Game of Thrones esque match over a handful of women/men.

And size 12 (UK) is not even that big! That’s my size by the way and yet I see some online shops not carrying that size… what! How size 12 too big! How is size 1o the biggest size you can do in jeans?

I don’t know how people haven’t rioted honestly.

Anyway, to end, you are beautiful. That’s the take away here. There are many body shapes in the world, don’t let the media fool you into believing there are only three and that you’re weird for not fitting into those three.