#the entertainment industry can be so impersonal and merciless

[thebroccolination]

I remember one of the most influential moments I had on my body image while living in Japan.

One Saturday afternoon, my Japanese coworker and I went out to lunch, and as we left the buffet, stuffed to satisfaction, she said, “I shouldn’t have eaten so much. I’m already the fat one in my family.”

I was distracted thinking about something else, and I thought she was joking, so I made a noncommittal kind of noise. I’d only been in Japan for half a year at that point, and I was already tired of the extensive fat-shaming almost everyone took part in, so I just disconnected whenever it started.

Then I glanced at her and realized she was serious. She had a self-deprecating half-smile, and she didn’t seem to be setting me up for one of those, “No, but you’re so pretty,” responses. She was just stating a fact. This person, who probably couldn’t have pinched more than a pinky’s width of fat anywhere on her body, was ashamed of her size.

Meanwhile, I was twenty-three and deeply, profoundly hated my body. Back then, I would have given most anything to be her size.

And in that moment, I realized: it’ll never be enough.

No matter how petite, how skinny, how svelte, how toned, how whatever. The societies many of us live in profit off of the desperation of mass misery, and no amount of dieting would ever give me a pass from that misery. If I was thin, there’d be some other issue to “fix”, like “weird elbows” or something else that I haven’t even thought about because no one’s had the opportunity to tell me how much it costs to adjust it yet.

I realized in a mall on a Saturday that the joy I’d been chasing had to come from disengaging from the whole chase, not from changing my body.

And I mean, I’m not totally there yet, even over a decade later. It’s difficult to love what you’re repeatedly told is wrong about yourself, and I hated my body for much longer than I’ve been actively trying to love it. I cling to offhand compliments about my looks, and I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I enjoy the “wrong” foods, and I fantasize about how much easier or happier life would be if I looked the way my coworker looked then.

But at least I know to my core that it will never be enough for them. No size, no shape, no degree of perfection will ever be enough for the societies and cultures I’ve lived in that judge one’s morality by one’s body. Relatives of mine in the States over the holidays tortured themselves with “I was being so good so far” and “I’m going to be bad tonight” and it’s just so pointlessly cruel that we’re set up to think this way about ourselves.

I made a lemon-glaze cake over the holidays, and almost no one ate it because so many people were dieting.

I did, though.

I just love the irony that living in a culture so rigid about weight actually freed me somewhat from the chase for an impossible goal. I bought diet pills as a teenager, and I couldn’t believe as recently as last week that a woman I was attracted to was hitting on me, but at least I know I’m in this snow globe now, and it makes breaking out of it easier.

Since university, I’ve been committed to exercising to gain muscle because I wanted to lose weight. But now I do it mainly because I like the strength and the flexibility that comes along with it. My weight’s never hurt me or my immune system or any aspect of my life. My brain did that, and my brain was just reacting to a lifetime of fear-mongering.

It will never be enough until you disengage from the chase.