Tag / self-image

by Cicci

“I can live for two months on a good compliment. “

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year!

Lucia is over, finals are over and Christmas is over. The past few days have been spent in a horizontal position on the couch, together with my good friend Ipad and my even better friend Netflix. And with family and friends, just as Christmas is supposed to be.
I just wanted to post about a thing that happened to me after our second Lucia-concert. It’d gone really, really well, and everyone was exuberant because of large amounts of sugar and adrenaline. Several people came up to me and told me how beautiful it had been, what a great concert, and so on.

Nothing odd about that, it had been a lovely concert. Easy compliments to accept.
But then two women, ca 25, 30ish came up to me and said:
“You’ve got a beautiful voice.”

And my first reactions was that they must’ve mistaken me for someone else.

Perhaps getting better at accepting compliments should be my New Year’s resolution this year?

Much love to all of you.

 

by Cicci

“In every fat girl, there’s a thin woman longing to get out.”

I read a great blog post (in Swedish) by Elisabeth Björk and I just had to interrupt my studying to blog.

You see, all my life, since i was very little. I’ve known that I’m fat. And that this was a BAD THING. And while not as fat as many others, still, it’s noticable and different.

And that was, in a way, what defined me. When I was teased in school, that was the one thing they focused on. When I bought clothes, same thing. When I started exercising, it was all about becoming thin(ner). When I got to puberty, it wasn’t about growing up, but that I might lose weight.

If I would only lose some weight…
If I just lost some weight…
I could…
I would…!

If only…

This is what I’ve heard, all my life, from magazines, school, my parents, my relatives…
If you just lose weight, everything will be fine. If you’re thin, you won’t be different anymore.

Got any problems? Headache, stomach ache, depression? I’m sure it’s just because you’re fat.

Any wonder that I thought this was the only thing worth noticing about me. Fat. As in something negative, a burden on me. A Swedish journalist once wrote: “In every fat girl, there’s a thin woman longing to get out.”

My very existance, my entire life, was defined by the fact that I’m not as thin as someone else.

23 years on this earth, and that was it. My eulogy: “She wasn’t as thin as the others.”

My life was, I felt, essentially on hold because I was fat. I won’t get a boyfriend as long as I’m fat. There’s no point in even trying. I can’t dance, because I’m fat. I can’t wear short skirts because I’m fat. I will though, once I’m thin. Later. Some other time. Just not now, because I don’t deserve to right now.

It is insane. Insane, do you hear me? How much time did I waste waiting for that one day where it would be OK for me to live my life? How insane is it that I’ve been taught my entire life that that is just something I have to accept. Second-rate citizen. 

And it’s my fault, because I’m fat and that’s because I have no self-control and I’m disgusting. Read any magazine, that is the bottom line.

In a way, this is what I’m most grateful to feminism about. The realization that I can life my life and I’m about so much more than just being fat.

That being fat is OK. I don’t have to wait.

I’m so many things worth noticing. I’m so much more than just fat.

by Cicci

“Love Thyself”

Hi!

My name’s Cicci.

I’m fat.

Really, I am.

Don’t pity me for it. There’s nothing innately bad about being fat. It’s as much a fact about me as my hair color or my eyes (even though my eye color is somewhere between green, grey and blue and thus rather hard to define.)

And you know what? Being fat doesn’t make me a worse person in any way. It doesn’t even make me less healthy. It’s true, I promise.

And while I still want to lose weight (working on not thinking that), no one has the right to respect me less even if I didn’t. No one has the right to comment, demean or belittle my body. I have the right to dress however I like, have sex (and enjoy it), exercise or not exercise, eat whatever I want and not be judged for it.

I’m fat, healthy and beautiful. And a host of other things not related to how I look that are even better.

 

 

Edit: Interested? Start by reading Kate Harding or The Rotund. Or Julia Skott, if you’re Swedish.