I’ve decided it is time for another random post. Surprisingly, people were actually still commenting on my poor neglected blog (your comments have now been approved). Thank you to all who still lurk.
I am still practicing and growing with HAES. I am no paragon, but I am growing stronger every day and my latest challenge inspired me to come back to AGR to post.
I have a new job. The place where I used to tend cafe and make lattes has gone out of business and I was lucky enough to find a very similar job before the final day of my old job. So, here I am again, a barista in a small corner of a retail store.
Had I known what I was getting into I probably wouldn’t have taken the job. In terms of body acceptance, I am now working in a very toxic environment. There are a myriad of other problems most of them cartoonish in their ridiculousness, but I will stick to the body hate for the purposes of this post.
My supervisor is a happy member of the food police and the store where I work is generally full of women on diets and who want to talk about their diets all the time. At first (I started end of April) I was very intimidated and angry. I feared that I would be dragged back into diet hell… or even worse: eating disorder hell. I was very angry and very defensive.
But, I have overcome and I was stronger than I realized.
I have seen women get upset that their favorite food item had 10 calories more than a food item they didn’t really like, but buy the less favored item anyway for the sake of 10 freakin’ calories. I have seen my supervisor who admits that an extremely important goal right now is to build sales at our cafe barely restrain herself from chastising teenagers who dared to buy both a sugary drink with a chocolate chip cookie (“DON’T YOU KNOW HOW UNHEALTHY THAT IS???!!!”) I have several coworkers (and I generally see more than one of them every day I work) who are dieting right now and are deep in the obsession of weight loss, food rules and self-hate… and, boy, do they like to talk about it too. One of these dieting people makes sure never to work on Wednesday nights so she can watch (and obsess over) “The Biggest Loser” (a ridiculous body-hating monstrosity of a show).
But, I am doing okay.
I am able to more calmly challenge (when I choose to) my food policing supervisor. I have learned that I am able to just mentally roll my eyes and move on with life when I hear more diet tripe. I’m not fighting every possible battle. It is too exhausting and isn’t going to win any wars for me anyway, but I am not keeping quiet either. I am learning balance in my resistance.
Maybe this situation has made me stronger, but I think that mostly it has just revealed to me that I was already a lot stronger than I knew. It feels really good. I’m starting to more intuitively understand the connection between challenges and personal growth and am starting to appreciate challenges a lot more (I always understood this rationally, but could never quite convince myself of the logic regardless…). Life just feels better and I feel more secure in my body-acceptance in this world full of body-hate and diet-talk. It feels pretty darn good.
It will be interesting to see how these work relationships turn out with all my agitating for body-acceptance. Perhaps they will be the inspiration of more blog posts, but I’m sure those posts will be spaced out in time kind of randomly. 😉
And yeah, I know the mermaid picture* doesn’t really jive with the topic of my post. I just love the picture… and so there she is. Enjoy!
–AngryGrayRainbows
*Link to awesome mermaid picture: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=fat+acceptance#/dt8hpu
yay glad to hear from you glad to hear you are doing well in terms of ignoring body policing.
Welcome back! 🙂 Thanks for sharing with us again and way to go on the inner strength! That’s amazing. ❤
Good for you; I’m glad you are dealing with this so well. It is hard. I am also in a very toxic environment in terms of body policing. My officemate and her friend constantly talk about their diets and exercise routines, and make it clear that all of it is to prevent them from becoming fat. The friend even said, “If I got fat, I would just have to kill myself.” This was right in front of me. I am fat. I still beat myself up for not saying anything. I was so hurt and shocked and felt so erased (they were talking in front of me but as if I was not in the room). So, thanks for sharing. I love the mermaid pic!
Yes, it seems most people really have no sensitivity in fat-hate speech in front of a fat person. I think this is because most of the time it is about themselves and most people are happy to let other fat people be fat.
I wonder if people would say “I would just kill myself if I had acne!” in front of someone who had acne. I bet they would think twice about doing so, when most people don’t think twice about saying such a thing about fat in front of a fat person. If you just really hated red hair, would you say “I’d just kill myself if I had red hair!” in front of your red headed coworker. I doubt it. I don’t think most people would.
I’ve certainly confronted people who have said such things with “well, I guess I should kill myself then” and the reply was usually “oh, you’re not fat!” I often had such conversations with girls who were size two when I was well into plus-sizes. So, I wonder if this has more to do with just general body-loathing and dysmorphia than an actual hatred of all fat and all fat people. (Tho, yeah, I know there are some real fat-hating trolls out there – I am not talking about those at this very moment.)
I am so glad you are back. Your writing is amazing. Your topics are personal to you yet universal to your readers.
I think when the day words to the effect that I would kill myself if I got that fat, they also mean but of course it is OK for you to be that way. You are their inspiration and worst fear. You are also important because without disparaging fat, there would be no celebration of thin. It totally sucks to be used that way. Not all people who hate fat hate fat people. Not all fate haters are thin either. It does suck but I think knowing the rules of the games others play helps me to feel better.
Oh Jenny Rose, you make me want to post more often!
My reasons for not posting often are complex and legion… but one of the loudest ones was feeling that my personal style might’ve gotten old. No one told me that it was. In fact, I had no evidence at all to support this theory. I was just feeling insecure about my style… maybe I need to challenge that, eh?
Yout put it very well: “you are the inspiration and the worst fear.” I remember feeling this way myself when telling my fat or fatter friend that it was okay that she was fat, but not okay for me. I used to lay in bed at night and wish so much that I was like that fat friend that I found so beautiful and wished I could find myself beautiful even though I was in one of my thin periods or had many people around me complimenting my looks regularly. Then I would be horrified at the idea of being fat and feel sure that continuing my eating disorder was the “only way.”
Thank you for your insightful words, as always.