It's over. Body Positivity was a nice hallucination in the pop-culture zeitgeist. A temporary anomaly, around long enough to be counted and seen, but not genuine enough to really take root with the culture makers.
My algorithm used to show me all kinds of bodies, working out, and trying on cute outfits. I'd see bigger bodies not apologising for existing in the world. What a revelation. Big girls living their lives without shame-forward apologies for taking up space.
Ironically, I noticed a change when the Wicked promotion started. I'm melting! - indeed. The leads look shockingly thin in most photos. All collar bones and sinew. It happens; they'd been working hard. I can't blame them; my initial reaction was one of concern. Their weight loss is significant and unmistakable. But maybe it's just them.
But then, the standard "regular girls" started melting away: Amy Schumer, Mindy Kaling, Megan Trainor. All unrecognisable. Again, I can't blame them; they're doing it for their health.
It's said GLP-1s have folks feeling nauseous to the point where they don't think about food or being hungry. It silences "food noise." Something I suffer from, which is akin to OCD. Folks say it's freeing. Including Oprah. A woman whose body has been a topic of conversation my entire life.
I lived without food noise once, when I was hospitalised for four months and developed gastroperesis. I was on a lot of opioids, and just slept. I had a tube down my throat giving me liquid nutrition, and I didn't eat for months. I never thought about eating. It was indeed freeing. I wasn't hungry. I wasn't thinking about food at all. Ever. Compare this to what I'm usually like, which is thinking about food when I'm not even hungry, and often thinking about my next meal, or the opportunity to eat. I can hide food out of shame, and often have a scarcity mentality, as if any meal could be my last meal. If there's "bad food" in my house, I think about it. I know it's there. I know I could eat it. It's exhausting and compulsive.
I didn't think the turn back to the cult of thin would affect me so much. I grew up in the 90s, Kate Moss was it, she taunted, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." This was a mantra.
When I was in high school, Kate Winslet was written about at nauseum when she was in Titanic. Just shat on.
I grew up with my grandmother's Star magazines, newspaper-quality photos of size 8 women being called elephants and cows. It's not old.
I don't know that body positivity, or even body neutrality, ever really took root. So I'm not surprised that we swung back around to worshipping thinness, but I'm disappointed. It was a nice change for a minute.
I didn't realise seeing Oprah, and other pop-culture "chubby" or over-size-10 women, melt away, would feel so personal. It feels like a mixture of an erasure and an abandonment.
Will there be no bigger women left? Melissa McCarthy is losing weight. As is Lizzo. Everyone is melting away. There's also Rebel Wilson, Adele and Kelly Clarkson. The list is long.
And these women, these people, have every right. And part of me feels gross even discussing people's bodies. But they are also public figures, and they also represent the norm of women's bodies, and seeing them disappear is uncomfortable. It feels like being disappointed in someone you looked to for comfort. It's not their role, it's not their responsibility, but it is a loss. It's an errasure.
Maybe it's jealousy. I can't take a GLP-1 because I don't have a pancreas. My endochronologist told me early on, a GLP-1 could kill me.
I would love to cancel the food noise. I would love help. I would love to be able to silence the incessant voice in my head. To remove the compulsion, to regain the space and energy it takes, to not have the constant shame be ever-present.
Early studies show that folks who lose weight on a GLP-1 have to keep taking it. The medicine targets obesity biology, and thus, if you stop taking it, the "disease" comes back.
It feels as though we are at the peak of GLP-1 popularity, so maybe more studies and more criticism will come with time, but for now, it feels like a "cure" that, unfortunately, I cannot access. So I'll stand here, fat, watching everyone else melt away. I'll man the fort. The fat fort.
