21: Grocery store anxiety
On fatphobia, perfectionism, and the freedom of anger
CW: This post discusses fatphobia & disordered eating habits.
While Haley and Anna take a brief hiatus this week, I’m clambering up on stage to take over the mic.
A brief introduction: hi, I’m Meg. I met Haley and Anna during our junior year of college when we joined the University of Wisconsin’s Writing Fellow program. They’re some of my most cherished writing friends (and just, you know, friend-friends), and I like to consider myself the TWHI #1 fan.
I’m 24 years old, I live in New York City, and I didn’t go to the grocery store this week.
Grocery stores make me anxious. The amount of options are overwhelming, the music is loud and never fits the vibe (seriously, who blares house music on a Wednesday morning? I’m looking at you, Bed-Stuy Foodtown), and the aisles are way too small.
But to be blunt, the real reason I don’t like going to the grocery store is because then people will see me buying food and know I’m fat.
Lately, I’ve been working on my internalized fatphobia and how that has played into my relationship with self-love.
To clarify, self-love and the destruction of systemic fatphobia are two different things, as stated by Amapoundcake in Nylon Magazine’s article, Body Shaming and Systemic Fatphobia Are Different - Here’s Why That Matters. Self-love cannot save me from the external, systemic prejudice I face as a plus-sized woman in the world.
But there’s a chance, at least, that self-love can save me from myself.
Back in February, I started speaking to a nutritionist—who recommended me to my current therapist, ah the circle of psychosis—and amongst my many fears surrounding food and body image, one of them is going to the grocery store. My nutritionist suggested I start shopping in the morning when there are fewer people, and that’s helped (pro tip for any of my anxious grocery store girlies out there!).
But when I couldn’t go to the grocery store this week—due to the fact that I moved and spent the majority of my time packing and unpacking boxes, organizing my closet, and trying to find the perfect dining table on Craigslist—I felt like a failure.
This vicious cycle of internalized shaming and perfectionism has followed me since I was six, when one of my closest family members told me I “didn’t have the body” to wear a two-piece swimsuit. Hear that six year olds? Put down your crayons and blankies, it’s time to get “summer body” ready.
Fatphobic comments like that were not unique to my one family member. Throughout my adolescence, I heard comments including (but not limited to):
“I literally don’t believe you’ve ever gone for a run.”
“Have you lost weight? You look great!”
And my personal favorite, “Meg, why are you so fat?”
All those comments and “compliments” came from my friends and family, and what resulted was that my authentic self began to erode away under the barrage of not feeling good enough. External shaming morphed into internal self-loathing, and I desperately sought a way to counteract it.
I began adapting to any situation others needed of me. To be worth something, I had to be someone that anyone and everyone would like. My body was more than imperfect, my body was wrong, so every other part of me had to be right. Every other part of me had to be perfect.
My drive to be the perfect X person that others needed at any given moment came entirely from the shame I felt in taking up space. But that wasn’t something sad to me. That wasn’t something traumatic or horrifying or heartbreaking. That was just a fact. My body was bad, and I was bad for letting it be that way. The only way to right the situation was being perfectly likable in every other way. Fatphobia had been so thoroughly and insidiously woven into the web of my life that it took me until I was 21 to consider that I could be nice to myself.
I loved myself as a kid until I was told that I shouldn’t. I spent 15 years shaming myself because others told me I should, encouraged it even. And that’s a breathtaking thing to realize. It’s like being slammed into the bottom of the ocean after getting ripped into a wave. I spent my adolescence and early adulthood tumbling around, feeling helpless, and I had to hit the ocean floor before I could get my feet back under me and spring toward the surface for air.
In a country where weight discrimination affects everything from medical care to employment, sometimes it still feels like I’m drowning. A doctor will tell me I’m “perfectly healthy” but “still needs to lose some pounds.” I’ll board a plane and pray my thigh won’t touch the person sitting next to me. I’ll stumble during a workout at the gym and lash out at myself for not getting it right because if you slip up like that, Meg, then people will think you’re un-athletic and uncoordinated and lazy and fa—.
And that saltwater starts to creep up my neck and around my ears and I’m so tempted to open my mouth and drink just to see, just to know what it would taste like, but I have to keep kicking so I can find a way to float again.
Often, that drive to keep kicking comes from anger. It comes from the roiling and churning fire that exists at my core. It is my authentic self lashing out after being chained up by others for so long. And my authentic self is big and loud and just wants to go to the grocery store dammit.
Being angry isn’t small. And it’s been really difficult letting myself feel big again.
Since seeing my nutritionist, I’ve started to feel more free of the expectations others set for me in my childhood, and with that has come the new sensation of being kind to myself. I’ve had friends ask me how I’ve managed to embrace radical self-love so easily, and while I’m flattered that it looks easy from the outside, the truth is that it continues to be the most grueling work of my life.
I’m really harping on this beach/ocean metaphor, but self-love has not been a clean-break from the harmful patterns I’ve built over the last two decades. Choosing to love myself, again and again, is like picking sand off my body after getting back from the beach, one grain at a time. It’s me thinking, “Oh my god, this is endless, I hate this, why even bother?” and then doing it anyway.
I’ll never get all the sand off. The prejudice I face as a fat woman will not end. And there will be times when I wade back into the ocean and get pulled under again. But I just have to keep going. Because, while self-love will not solve systemic fatphobia, it can ease the pain I create for myself. I would rather be a person who makes mistakes and takes up space and is full of anger and joy than someone who gets everything right for the price of making herself miserable and small.
To paraphrase one of my favorite social activists and author of Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, Mona Eltahawy, I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be free.
I have dealt with both internal and external fatphobia my entire life, and I have had the privilege of doing so without also having to navigate the intersections of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and low socioeconomic status, all of which greatly contribute to systemic fatphobia and prejudice. The Teen Vogue article Ask a Fat Girl: Fatphobia and Racism explores these truths further. As with every other cannibalistic system in the world, the demolition of systemic fatphobia has a long way to go. But when it comes to the internal shame I’ve built as a result of systemic fatphobia, I’m not putting down my proverbial hammer yet. And I will keep swinging until every last brick has eroded away and I am the one left standing.
I’m not sure what the conclusion to this post is. Even now, I fear that if I don’t wrap up this rant in a perfect hope-coated bow then I will be seen as another loud, angry fat woman (Look at her! She’s supposed to be a writer and she can’t even finish one blog post correctly?! Dork!), but I guess that’s where we’re at.
Loving myself will not solve the very real problems I face as a fat woman, but damn if it doesn’t make me feel just a bit better.
For those who have experienced some version of what I have, I get it. I get it and I want you to keep taking up space anyway. I want to see your anger and I want to see your loud, full joy. More than anything, I want to see you at the grocery store.
And for those who haven’t experienced any version of what I have, how does it feel to know you look good in low-rise jeans?
My new apartment!
I know, I know this doesn’t apply to everyone, but I mean c’mon. Hardwood floors? Washer-dryer in unit? I feel like a Rockefeller. I will be spending the next month or so curating my new living and dining rooms so that they’re the perfect balance of eclectic, cozy and funky. And I am so excited to go thrifting for some new sweet items (for my New York pals, check out @reuseamericany on Instagram, their stuff is so cool).
A term coined by my sister, I recently purchased a floor orb (aka a FLOORB) and am obsessed. This one was a little pricey at $100, but there are definitely cheaper versions out there. And knowing how expensive lighting can be, this has been worth every penny.
Now that I’m in my mid-twenties, I want to step up my wall-art game. Gone are the days of wall tapestries, and my love for Society6’s prints has faded with time. Recently, my hyper-targeted Instagram ads nailed it yet again by showing me DROOL Art, which has a range of prints from some great artists, and feels like a slight step up from some of the cheaper prints out there. I will be making many purchases.
Hypotheticals by Lake Street Dive
Ooo this song is a BANGER. I’ve been playing it on repeat and boppin’ around my room ALL week. It’s the perfect mix between upbeat and self-deprecating, which is my sweet spot.
I really appreciate the distinction you made between systemic disadvantages and self love. I think people often just focus on one or the other, which can end up feeling really phony or really hopeless. This hit the nail on the head for me!! Go Meg!!