just because my body type is trending doesn’t mean that skinny-shaming isn’t heavy to carry.

my story is not a tragedy. my journey doesn’t negate yours. it doesn’t make it any less relevant, or any less uncomfortable. it’s contrast. it’s raw. it’s mine.

now, let’s breathe…

i’m trying to feel my past enough where i can still type this. enough where my mind doesn’t lose itself in memories. enough to face the words on this screen. enough for my throat to ease, not contract. enough for my tears to flow, not flood. enough for my heart to be here, not there. enough to still breathe it in, and let it out.

So, let’s start here: i grew up in port-au-prince, ayiti seeing thick thighs, round bellies and soul full backsides. and that didn’t mean much to me until my teens.

manmie reminisces with a smile on her face. “you were such a fat baby,” she says. “we had to switch arms holding you!” by the time i was 2, she said, i became very particular with food, and inevitably lost a lot of that weight. it worried them heavily. uncomfortably, so for me. from there, i carried the weight of insecurities i didn’t have for years. pills, serums, overfeeding, force feeding, stressing high carbs, teas, doctors visits: that was my reality.

i still can picture that shelf in that chestnut cabinet full with bottles of capitalistic lies. how manmie reached into it every meal we shared. as a child, how that spoonful of every new syrup became a tasting game to forget needing to innerstand. i didn’t mind my size, so i didn’t get it. but, i stopped asking questions. besides if i was talking, it meant that i wasn’t eating, and ain’t nobody getting off that table without a clear plate. i had other things to do… like frolic in the garden, or let that swing under that mango tree make me feel like i can fly;… i don’t know…anything but this. eventually, meal time and discomfort were one and the same.

i remember finessing their concerns into getting more meat on my plate: chicken, oxtail, fried pork, shrimp, crab…i mean…. if you were raised in a haitian household, you know the meat was never the bulk of your plate. it was often the sòs pwa, or the diri with that damn jiròf. if you know, you know. eventually, i understood that they’d do anything to see me gain weight. so i thought, at that point, i might as well be invested too.

i remember being in 3rd grade and being mistaken for a kindergartener. it made me laugh. in fact, it was quite normal for my size to be brought up somehow. but i don’t remember caring all that much. perhaps seeing that experience carried across social spaces was annoying, but it wasn’t earth shattering…at least for a while.

by the time i was entering my teens, and still even after my mooncycle done came, gone and back, my titties, my hips, my bum were still running behind. it was then i really started to see this part of me. i’ve always seen me, but not like this. i worried that i didn’t look my sex…even more than my age. this is when i remember distinctively wanting to dress in more tight, and feminine stereotyped clothe. in a catholic, and haitian home, there’s a thin line with that one before it’s perceived as a precursor to being a prostitute. but for me, it was a matter of wanting to seem less skinny, so others could feel like they can mind their busyness with something else that wasn’t me.

back primary school: same age tho, i’m about four months older.

lapingèt (). moustik (mosquito). chèchko (skinny body). ti gera (famous real skinny comedian). ti sourit (little mouse). ti pitit (little little one). zopope (as skinny as a doll)

these ARE but a few names that i answered to with a mind full of shame. all names that felt like a trap into this body…like i couldn’t be me beyond it. they don’t mean it like that… right? surely, I’m just being sensitive…right? that’s my uncle-aunty-cousin-friend-mom-dad showing love… right? my own overthinking gaslighting my heart into beating down its walls…just to be…free.

eventually, somehow friends, family, strangers (all of whom were almost always inchesssss larger than me) felt so unbothered to share parts of their insecurities as advice or concerns or some nice-nasty comment:

how men wouldn’t want me or marry me,

how i should eat a few burgers,

how i should stuff my bra,

how they can (and do) buy me food,

how they should pump me with air,

how i look sick,

how i must be depressed,

how i’d look so much better with 10 more pounds,

how i’m so beautiful even as a skinny person,

how i could eat whatever i want being sooo skinny,

how i needed to order the fattiest dishes from the menu cus…look at me,

or how they worry the wind would overtake me.

the most unsettling ones were perhaps those people that would touch me at this big age that i am from back to front to calculate my inches, or them ones trying to guesstimate (and purposely underestimating) my weight live, or grabbing my ass to show the lack thereof, or tapping down my chest looking for my breasts, or measuring my wrist like an onion ring, or arguing that i’m trying to be a model, or picking me up to demonstrate how weight…less i was. i mean, i *really* could go on.

with me, folks have *shamelessly* expressed and explored their observations, especially with diagnosing me with anorexia, bulimia, depression, covid, anything to them that can justify my size. It felt like an all too common experience: coming into spaces and feeling like you’re being denied the divine right to just be present and exist without concerning eyes prying into whether i ate that day, or how much i weighed.

by my early 20s, i was traveling more independently, so much so to relocate states, and continents away for months, or years at a time. this meant for me that reconnecting in person was often overshadowed with insecurities around whether or not i was at a perceivably acceptable weight. being around loved ones again felt like self-harm. i distinctively recall being as grown as 28 on the plane readying myself to respectfully bypass comments and concerns i didn’t even have for myself. and i’d return home to myself in need of a lot more nurturing.

but the conundrum really was how i couldn’t even check people without being told that i was being too sensitive, or overreacting, or unAPPRECIATIVE. much less, i couldn’t even express any discomfort with my own weight lest i be met with:

“oh shut up! you’re skinny!”

“i would die for a body like this.”

“but you can eat whatever you want.”

“who doesn’t want to be skinny?”

recently, a friend picked me up randomly. I was originally very tickled ‘cause i thought she was being playful. once she set me down, she said something along the lines of: “i can bench you any day, aren’t you but 92 lbs?” “well, actually,” i said, and proceeded to correct her with my self-assessed weight. in retrospect, i really shouldn’t have entertained it. at this point, comments like this are but fruit flies: they’re bound to be there. and realistically, the issue is much more to the core, and me expressing my warranted discomfort won’t reach it and much less heal it. if i were to serve this same energy back, every body would be up in arms. imagine me acting like i’m trying to pick up a heavier set person and being like “ye, no, let me not even try, aren’t you like 250+ lbs?” or what if i was to grab onto a roll, and ask “i should get you a salad huh?”

truly, i ain’t been out here commenting on other people’s bodies like that. yes, when i see someone, visually my brain factors in a person’s characteristics. yes, of course it receives this data. that’s a safety mechanism that we all have. whether you’re consciously aware or not, you’re analyzing your surrounding all of the time. now, am i going to walk up on someone and inform them of something that they already know, but even more so isn’t any of my business to begin with? absolutely not! like i know that they’re literally with themselves every single second of every day. it’s one thing to formulate the thought for myself, and it’s entirely another to ensure that you know what’s mathin’ in my mind.

when i was turning 28, i tried veganism— a change in lifestyle that caused further weight loss as i re-taught myself how to eat to engage with life with full intention and attention. this time, it wasn’t just about the booty getting fat, or the hips getting wide, it was about my health. it was about what made my bones, muscles, joints, heart, tummy, lungs…all of me effectively co-create together. this was my breakthrough, honestly. this is when i really shifted my mind to seeing my body as my vehicle in life. and so the ride is as comfortable as what i choose to invest in it (be it in time, affirmation, food, self-love products, money, etc.) and so my focus now is to feel so good that i look damn good.

ultimately, i learned that i have a fast metabolism. my body is constantly in process. i can even argue that this indeed a reflection of me as person: my mind is persistently processing situations, calculating, filtering, compartmentalizing, releasing, repurposing. so much so that resting is an activity i have to consciously do. but i also know now that i’m naturally slender— and that is neither something to change or glorify. it just is. all life gotta do is stress me out for my body to shed some weight. and so i realized that when i am in that state, i don’t prioritize self-love as much as i do when i feel like life isn’t tryin’ me. this means that getting in the mood to cook for myself may feel challenging enough that i don’t want to bother. it could also show up as escaping into doing so much, that i “forget“ to eat. or, my system can even feel so overstimulated by stress that intaking anything more (yes, even food), feels overwhelming.

up until my 28th year, all i ate revolved around gaining weight. this stressful goal—albeit pressured on by concerning eyes, and nosy questions—had me in a chokehold. the thought of losing weight would trigger my anxiety which would then cause a loss of appetite that would then further panic me into losing even more. i had times where i couldn’t be gentle with myself. i couldn’t look. i couldn’t compliment. i couldn’t appreciate. in fact, i so didn’t want to remember those versions of me that i have so few pictures of those times. but i overstand these things about myself now, so i can work with them. truly, it took me a while to really be accepting of how my body chooses to manifest itself and to love every version of it equally, and passionately regardless of how others perceive it.

i’ve misused a lot of innergy checking people, and i’m good on that now. realistically, we’re each hosting our own demons—and for a lotta people one of them is their body image. realistically, i ain’t got the innergy to be a part of everyone’s battles. there’s only so much of it that i’ve (including time) so i’ve chosen to be very selective with it. like when my students are hating on each other’s bodies, i make it an opportunity for us to learn. but when it’s that aunty/ cousin/ friend/ stranger, i’m at a point where i’m soul full of love for myself: their projections cannot disrupt me. i let ‘em roll right off’a my cocoa buttered back.

i innerstand now that, the body shaming really ain’t about me. really it’s themselves that they’re criticizing. really they don’t care about my health for real for real, they’re just distracting themselves from how much of their own trapped emotions they’re still lugging around their waist. really, i’m a reminder of the lightness that they could experience. really, they’re guilting themselves for their own choices. really, they’re projecting. i know that now. i can’t lie and say that sometimes i don’t revert back to old thinking patterns, but i’m quicker to realign with what i know to be true now.

anyways.

have you noticed … brands these days are so not trying to get cancelled that they half-ass throw some’ together and call it it inclusion. when really people from within a community of bigger bodied people should be the ones creating, sampling and modeling designs for the community of bigger bodied people. why shame brands into centering a demographic that they don’t want to be of? why place the responsibility of your satisfaction/ your visibility/ your needs/ your sexiness into the hands of someone that has not lived your experience? wouldn’t you want someone that lives/ feels what it’s like to live in this body to generate or produce for you? sure, yes: brands can hire people from said community to represent. but why fall under, when you can be the main category? like…why be a facet when you could be the focus? for the diversity that there is in human kind, some, and even many are bound to come up unseen, and unserved. and i don’t mean this solely as it pertains to clothes, but to every aspect of living this life. it’s up to them to collaborate and produce what can ease and support their own existence here. others should instead be allies, and support. you want to have clothes that look better on you? create it. you want wider, more secure bed furniture? create it. you want larger car seats? create it. no, it’s not divisive. it’s…proactive. why wait to be seen, when you already see yourself? why squeeze yourself in, when you can have your own table for you and yours where y’all can genuinely take up space?

anyways, that’s my 2 cents. hopefully it added up to something you can learn from.

what do you think? enlighten me in the #calmmentbox: constructively and kindly so.

otherwise, enjoy my 0 to 14 years old pictures below: in the last 2 pictures, i was definitely 12 and 14.

~nuru, the heartist