My Body Type is Pissed off

Used to be pear or something.

I’m ranting about pharmaceutical weight loss drugs today! Hilarious! If it’s not for you, feel free to skip! Shout out to some of the incredible writers and researchers for their (detailed, in depth, smarter) work, knowledge, and perspective when it comes to anti-fat biases, size inclusivity, and how both those things relate to feminism. They have helped me reframe, laugh, and not starve (in no particular order).

Aubry Gordon, Roxane Gay, Lindy West, Virginia Sole Smith, Kate Manne, Sophie Gilbert

I’m a simple woman, which means I love a diet coke in a can from time to time and will not pay for Hulu Premium. Hulu un-premium comes with the same great content plus the sweet nostalgia of commercials twice as loud as the show you’re watching.

I recently made my way through Schitt’s Creek, an important cultural touchstone I was only ten years late to watching. The show was great, and I finally understood 90% of the gifs I’d been texted in the last decade, but I frequently slammed my laptop shut halfway through an episode because every commercial was repping pharmaceuticals for weight loss.

I’ve never been diagnosed with an eating disorder (a diagnosis? In this economy?), and lack the self control necessary for one. I’m a straight-sized white lady who can purchase clothing at most stores without having to special order. My body type is accommodated by several styles and cuts and even graces an advertisement from time to time. I also grew up steeped in late-nineties/early-aughts diet culture, surrounded by diet coke (yes! in a can!), margarine, olestra, and media insisting that Kate Winslet, Brittany Spears, and Jessica Simpson were fatty fat fat people—which was the worst thing a woman could be. Media prominently featured long shiny torsos decorated with jeans that exposed sharp hip bones and crop tops that peeped underboob. I spent my allowance on Slim Fast and HydroxyCut that I hid under my bed along with the lunches my mother packed for me that I didn’t eat. I was teased for everything from my thick thighs, being “too skinny to have boobs”, and once for my four-pack abs (RIP) because diet culture has taught us that being horrible to each other is actually being, “Just worried about your health.”

I wanted to include reference photos of celebrities in the early 2000s but it was depressing just searching for them, I decided on this instead—a paradigm of body neutrality.

It’s now 2025 and I listen to Maintenance Phase, read Lindy West and Roxane Gay, and know the BMI scale is trash—a mutual distain. I follow Health at Every Size-nutritionists and while I don’t decline to be weighed at the doctors office (you can do this! I had no idea!) I do ask not to see the number. I haven’t owned a scale since I was twenty and try to appreciate that my body is my home.

When I try clothing on for the first time, I do so away from a mirror partially so I can focus on how the clothing feels rather than looks but mostly so I’m not confronted by my fleshy bits at war with whatever fabric they’re battling that day. I’ve wasted too much time in tiny, poorly lit, mirrored rooms staring at jeans that cut off my circulation at the knees and need to be removed with a shoe horn and vaseline. I know intellectually that I don’t need to change my body to fit into clothing but should find clothing that fits my body.

And yet.

It’s a massive, daily, effort of regular thought and intention to care for my relationship to my body—not to love it—but to exist without submitting to the many pieces of input I receive daily to shrink, sculpt, unjigglify, or otherwise change it.

I do the homework of unlearning diet culture. I understand that fat does not equal bad or unworthy or unhealthy. I know that bodies change and shift in many directions and that does not change their value, their worth, or necessarily, their health.

And yet.

Part of me—a primal, instinctual part—knows I should always be losing weight. Part of me is always ashamed that I take up so much space. Part of me is certain that the number on my pant label is a direct indicator of my worth. It’s not a part of me that’s using rationale or logic. It’s not a part of me I like. It’s a well-trained cultural part of me that understands how to assimilate to our culture.

So when I see an ad after ad after ad of smiling folks talking about the weight they lost and how it’s changed their lives, I mourn the undoing of so much of this work. Semaglutides are a fraught topic. People have experienced positive shifts from using them and others use them to achieve a specific aesthetic and probably many experiences in between and beyond. I am not opposed to medicine or bodily autonomy. If someone wants to achieve a certain aesthetic by whatever means, I’m glad for their freedom to make that choice. AND I want to retain the freedom of choice not to pursue those aesthetics.

So despite not “needing” to lose weight (BMI will call me a liar) I feel hardwired to want to lose weight every day. This new onslaught of commercials is not helping. I’m furious that it takes up so much space in my life. And I’m furious that avoiding the content that reinforces these notions is impossible unless hermitage is right for you.

As a mid-lifed lady person, I’m specifically targeted. In January, my Instagram explore page was devoid of all knitting, cat, and socialist memes and turned into a hellscape of weight loss content. I couldn’t spend a moment on the app without being accosted by posts from strangers encouraging me to lose weight.¹

Much of this frustration is marveling at how my brain works: How is it that I can unlearn for many, many years, intentionally consume content, images, and reports that affirm that my body fine and does not need to change, that being told that fat = bad is an aesthetic lie, and still, sincerely want to make my body smaller. How am I still mourning the clothing size I wore when I was so depressed my diet consisted of beer and also beer? How are there this many truths in this one mid-sized body?

A few weeks ago I got a text ad for weight loss drugs that encouraged me to respond “yes” to if I wanted to change my life, so I replied, “This is extremely shitty behavior and I hope you’re embarrassed to be causing so much destruction among folks who are in eating disorder recovery. Please fuck off, thank you.”

It easier to yell at a robot than to shrug off buying a different size.

The moral is I won’t be watching things on Hulu unless you have Hulu Premium and want to share.

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Other updates:

I’m currently reading Sophie Gilbert’s genius and depressing book, Girl on Girl, How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves which is about as much of a riot as it sounds. I am devouring it faster than my favorite binge foods which were Oreos and Pillsbury frosting.

First swim of the year in Lake Superior was last week and it was fantastic. Highly recommend putting your whole body in a body of water.

Elissa Bassist is hosting seminar/lecture/writer nerd hangs once a month for her paid subscribers and I’ve loved every single one I’ve been able to attend so far (one). If you’re interested in ninety minutes of generative writing time with a very smart and funny human I highly recommend.

I got to hold a goat at work. This is not a regular part of my job, but I will consider it a huge perk.

1. If you’ve ever posted about your weight loss “journey” on instagram it’s very likely that I unfollowed you even if we’re friends and I love you a lot! I don’t want to know anything about your diet! It’s me, not you! Hope you’re well and I don’t care what size you wear! I’m proud of you for existing!