BODY SHAMING 

Let’s be clear: body shaming is evil and anyone who does it

(personally, professionally or commercially)

is a demon. 

 

As the following link attests, all-out efforts to body shame healthy but wrinkling/greying/stout human beings turns rational victims of the practice into schizophrenic introverts on the inside and shame-faced prisoners on the outside.

 

https://www.upworthy.com/women-beauty-standards?mc_cid=3ed3b77870&mc_eid=c3bb2626f9

 

When I read this Upworthy article, I recalled my ages’ old battle to get thinner despite the ever-present reality that my metabolism fights being slim tooth and nail, whether as a result of decades of yo-yo dieting or just because I’m mostly of stout Germanic descent.

 

My “Weighty” History

 

When the metabolism of one my obese aunts on my father’s side was tested, it was discovered that she could maintain her overweight condition on just 500 calories a day.

 

When I was similarly tested in 1977, I had similar results.

 

And if you know anything about diets and dieting, a so-called starvation diet starts at around 1000 calories a day.

 

So to call me an “easy keeper” is an understatement!

 

Scrawny to Stout

 

Until I was five or ten, I was underweight.

 

I weighed  just a couple ounces over five pounds at birth and lost two of those within a couple weeks of being delivered.

 

When I was five, I weighed all of 35 pounds. My pediatrician told my mother I was undernourished for my age and height.

 

By the time I turned 12, I had gained my full height (5’7″) and weighed 125 soaking wet.

 

(That, apparently, is “overweight”; the average 12 year old female weighs 92 pounds).

 

I see photos of myself at that age and think I look perfect weight-wise…

 

But there you have it, right there!

 

Society said I should have weighed 92, not 125.

 

But I have big bones (my sister’s bones look like bird bones next to mine!) so most of that “extra” 25 pounds was probably bone and muscle since I lived on a ranch at that time and was feeding cattle and horses, baling and lifting hay bales, and doing gym five days a week at school. (I was one of the few “girls” who could chin myself on overhead bars and climb a rope.)

 

Not long after (and at about the same time my gender dysphoria began to drain my natural, ebullient happy nature and turn me into a scared-feeling “alien” among “normal” earthlings), the weight started piling on… and on … and on!

 

As long as we stayed on the ranch, there was plenty of activity and I maintained my weight at between 160 and 175 pounds, probably. But after we lost the ranch, my activity level dropped precipitously and my weight ballooned to an astonishing 278 pounds before I had intestinal bypass surgery in 1977 to create malabsorption syndrome so I could lose over 100 of it in the coming two years.

 

It was experimental surgery back then, but it worked for me and my younger sister, who experienced the same svelte-to-stout acceleration after we left the ranch.

 

Then, about 20 years ago, my thyroid quit on me and I gained back 40 pounds within about five months, so I went to the doctor thinking I had cancer, only to find out I just needed a pill to arrest the escalating weight.

 

But the doctor didn’t want to give me too much levothyroxine (enough to reduce my weight to where it had been) because he said doing so could throw me into hyperthyroidism and cause even worse risks to my health.

 

So, since then I’ve been pretty much stuck at between (at various times) 210 and 238.  As long as I stay insanely active walking, playing pickleball and/or bike riding, I can maintain my weight at 210.

 

My chest masculinization surgery took off about three pounds. My upcoming panniculectomy surgery will take off another 14 to 16 pounds of excess hanging skin from around my middle and abdomen. So then I will weight probably between 190 and 195.

 

And I assume that’s the best I’ll ever be able to manage, given my sloth-like metabolism.

 

Not doing this for society’s benefit, but for my own

 

The thing is, I didn’t get these surgeries to “fit in” better.

 

(At this stage of my life, I’m very used to not fitting in in a number of ways… and kinda proud of most of them, too! The things that make me different have made me a better human being because I understand what being marginalized and underappreciated feels like, so I’m a great ally to other marginalized folks.)

 

I’m doing these things to reclaim the “me” that I believe myself to be.  I want to look in the mirror and see an aging older man with no excess baggage (with the rashes, sores, and skin damage that accompanies it) hanging off his front panels.  I want to buy clothes that look good on me even when they’re snug.

 

I never bought into the mass hysteria that said I had to be slim, unwrinkled, and colorized (okay, I did color my hair for a couple decades but that was because my hair looks awfully thin when it’s grey and grey makes me look older than my skin confesses to being), that my lips need to be colorized, my eyes outlined and shadowed, and my face made up to look like some actress in a glossy magazine.  (That’s the eternal guy in me yelling, “Hell to the NO!”)

 

All I’m looking for is to look as good as I still can (naturally) with my excess skin taken away. And I’m doing that for myself, to make myself VISIBLY healthy, even robust, despite 70 years of living.

 

Trying to achieve the illusion of perfection as a physical specimen

has never interested me, and it never will.

 

My tribe

 

I don’t look at people and decide much about them based on their height, weight or appearance. I’ve known far too many well-coiffed and manicured scoundrels, and so many great unadulterated souls, that I don’t go by outward appearances any more.

 

I go by eyes, words and hearts.

 

I go by another person’s willingness to engage without prejudice and fear.

 

I go by how safe I feel being myself with them, and how safe they feel being with me as I outwardly change into the person I’ve always been.

 

All I’m looking for is like-minded friends who see the value of every human and animal soul.  When I find them, I glom onto them.

 

They’re part of my tribe!

 

Here’s an excellent recent example.

 

Just yesterday, Lisa and I were shopping at Winco when we spotted John Marshall in the parking lot pushing groceries to his vehicle.

 

I rolled down the window so we could greet him because he is always such a joy, and we hadn’t seen him in over two years.

 

But he has kept up with us via Facebook, I quickly found out!

 

When I asked him if we could park my car and chat a bit, he said, “No time right now, but I do want to joke with you a little bit.”

 

We said, ‘Okay!” and waited for a joke to escape his lips.

 

Instead, he placed his hands over his chest and asked me point blank, with a big grin, “What’s new!?”

 

I laughed, placed my hands over my now-flat guy’s chest, and responded, “NOTHING!  WOO HOO!”

 

He said, “I’ve been keeping track of you on Facebook.”

 

I said, “I see! And I’m glad!”

 

I love it when a human being acknowledges my changes without looking or feeling embarrassed or at a loss for words.

 

He was celebrating my joy with me with just a few easy words, indicating, “You’re safe with me and I’m fine with you.”

 

It brings tears to my eyes to recall the exchange.

 

Compassion and acknowledgement.

What freaking great things those are! 

 

And they’re so easy to do.  Ya just gotta get into the other person’s head to imagine the utter joy that’s in them (or the fear, or whatever else it is that you want them to know you care about, too).

 

John Marshall, Lisa Twining, Helen Schofield, Teryl McLane, my Cle Elum High School “sisters” and a few others have gone out of their way to celebrate my joy in various ways.

 

Every single time, I has meant the world to me… and it always will.

 

It chokes me up!