“With a disgusted look, my own trainer asked, ‘Why are you SO overweight?’ I felt like I was just punched in my (fat) gut. I cancelled my gym membership and dropped out of high school. Ashamed and embarrassed, I just wanted to crawl in a hole and cry. I always felt in competition with my siblings.”
‘You’d be SO MUCH prettier if you lost weight.’ I was 10. My siblings got juice, while I was only offered water. When we got into fights, ‘fatty’ was their low blow.’
‘One person told me, ‘Your stomach is so nasty. How can you be confident and sexy when you look like that? Take care of that mess of a body.’ Those harsh words stick. Ugly. Fat. Worthless.’
“Out of nowhere, I was being told I should ‘lose the baby weight’ so I could get back to the way things were before. WHAT? How I was before? Before what?”
‘Look at that fine a**.’ He followed me down the sidewalk. I felt that familiar tension in my chest and a knot in my throat. I was disgusted by my own skin.’
“I was bombarded with numerous questions. ‘What were you wearing?’ ‘Did you make them think you wanted it?’ ‘Why were you walking by yourself?’ For years, I recoiled at anything that made me feel sexy.”
‘We need to talk about her weight.’ The doctor then looks at her and says, ‘I think you are old enough to start using exercise equipment too.’ ARE YOU KIDDING ME?’
“He left the room. She looked at me and said, ‘I’m fat?’ Tears started running down her face. My jaw was on the floor. It was too late – the damage was done.”
‘I was 6 when I wore my first bathing suit in a beauty competition. I was 8 when my dance instructor told my mom I was too chubby. I was 15 when I became addicted to diet pills.’
“After being sexually assaulted as a toddler, my trust was shaken. After becoming a mother, I’ve gained 75 pounds. You’d think that existing in a larger body – something I feared my entire life – would lead me further down the self-loathing spiral. But something miraculous has happened.”
‘DISGUSTING. I don’t know what husband would ever want to come home to that.’ That’s how someone recently responded to my postpartum body.’
“First of all, shame on her. If anything is disgusting, it is those words. YES, my body has changed quite dramatically since my pre-baby days, as you can see.”
‘For every woman unhappy with her postpartum marks, there is one wishing she had them.’ I once was her, the ‘one.’
“Some mama’s go home with only scars and no baby in their arms. For the ‘one’ wishing, hoping, praying for her miracle, this is for you.”
‘The scale said ‘error,’ which meant I was heavier than 375 pounds’: Man loses 180 pounds eating ‘junk food’ every day
“My biggest motivation came from watching the numbers on the scale drop, even though I was eating all the food I loved to eat. I was doing the impossible.”
‘So when are you due?’ I got asked the words that every woman dreads when she is not pregnant’
“Not due for my period, not due for a poo, not due for the promotion… when am I due to have my baby? That’s what she meant.”
‘It is not my job to be a decoration at the beach’: Strangers unite to write ‘hurtful words’ on each other to ‘wash away’ negativity, celebrate their ‘bikini bodies’
“We found there is a common bond, among every single one of us, regardless of body type, that we have been shamed by others, and it was time to wash those words away.”