‘I’ve been thinking a lot about my pot belly in quarantine - especially as I notice an unusual amount of articles with titles like ‘how I lost he weight’ and ‘diet is everything.’ Are there more of them or do I just have more time to notice? Somehow headlines that used to roll off my flesh rolls sing in a new way - not because I think that’s the body U’m meant to have - but because it feels like it’s adding yet another item to the epic to-do list we are all creating for ourselves in Covid.’
These were the words of Lena Dunham posting on Instagram this week, and as far I’m concerned never had a truer word been spoken. I want to share this with my own followers, so I roll past my camera phone in tiny beige shorts and a cream body. I’m on roller skates - my new obsession. Not that I’ve done it loads but I like watching roller skaters on Instagram - @oumi_janta Is my current favourite - I want be able to do the things she can do on 8 wheels so bad. I’m trying to make a reel for instagram. Showing my followers that I’m not ashamed to show off my new size 14/16 figure, even though I was a 10/12 earlier in the year.
For some reason I happened to come across my activity levels on my phone for the year. My mouth dropped open. It was less than a third of the previous year. Oh well, I guess that’s the reason I’ve gone up 2/ 3 dress sizes this year alone.
I feel like the ultimate lockdown cliché - I split up with my husband, I tried (and failed) to dumb down my feelings with drink and food especially during the first lockdown and I put on a load of weight. I’m not sure you can get more lockdown chic if you tried. I’m definitely going to emerge post-covid a different person - that’s for sure.
As I said in the reel I eventually published after nearly crashing into the garden doors (I haven’t learnt how to stop yet properly), I’ve been a size 10,12,14, and 16 at some point in 2020. I’m fairly realistic about it. Wasn’t it Rhianna who said “I actually have had the pleasure of a fluctuating body type” I know that when life resumes to normal - whatever that is - my body will mostly likely change again. That’s my rational brain speaking, which accounts for about 70-80% of my thinking. However, there’s the other 20-30% flip side when I feel like shit for letting my body get here.
Like everyone else my weight does get me down sometimes too. We’re all a product of a life of conditioning from a patriarchal, consumerist society and the diet industry making us feel like we’re inherently wrong and need fixing. I pull my body apart mentally, I hate my stomach especially, I avoid looking in mirrors at my cellulite-d thighs. But I’m much, much better than I used to be. Before my body hangups made me depressed, I didn’t want to go out, I wouldn’t go on holiday and I dreamed about dieting or ways of losing the weight quickly, constantly. I swore to myself that I would never wear a bikini again - my body (apparently) was too grotesque after having children to ever consider the possibility.
One day I decided that my body wasn’t changing, no matter how much time and energy I spent thinking about it, it wasn’t hearing me, but my life was a full stop, it was at a standstill. I also thought about what kind of role-model I was to my children. Did I want them growing up in a household of the chicken soup diet one week and a juice cleanse the next. With a mother who was obsessed with the number on a set of scales in the bathroom and who had never had any mental capacity for other things, much more important things. Like being happy, reading a book, being in the moment, a fulfilling career, politics, race, misogyny and of course roller-skating. It’s amazing what happens when every waking thought stops being consumed by getting into those size 10 jeans that hang in the wardrobe. Life. Now I wear a bikini, despite the stretch marks and the overhang. I have one in every size.