I think big is beautiful. I also think small is. And average and irregular and asymmetrical and all the sizes are genuinely fine. In this “woke” generation that we live in, you can literally find a self-esteem booster anywhere with just the click of a button. But more than that, as women, we are being encouraged more and more to love ourselves and support each other. To be healthy in whatever way works for us, and try to avoid people who might tear us down. I have the luxury of being privy to these body-positive messages as an adult who has already survived the trauma of adolescence, and thus, has been afforded years to get used to my body and even love it a little. Whereas when you’re an insecure teenage girl, surrounded by other insecure teenage girls, self-esteem can get real low and it can be hard to believe any positive messages that you hear.
My point is, I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m used to the way I look, and on occasion I try to also like the way I look. I exercise regularly, I eat good stuff a lot of the time, and I genuinely try to do the things that make me feel good about myself. So imagine my surprise when I took a trip to register with a new doctor closer to my new home and was told that I was overweight and therefore the doctor did not want to prescribe me contraceptives. I mean, eh? Aside from the fact that this seemed like a weird ploy to get more people pregnant, I had never heard that in the 14 years I had been prescribed the contraceptive by different doctors.
She noted my shocked face and assumed out loud that this was news to me. Then she looked back at her notes, reminded herself that I went to the gym three times a week, didn’t smoke, had no heart problems, no history of diabetes in the family and never had high blood pressure. Then she said, “Your BMI is this and we usually don’t prescribe above this, but I will give it to you as you’re doing a lot.”
She still suggested that I go to a specialist clinic to make sure they were ok with me getting the contraceptive, and then I left that Hell-hole of a consulting room (it was actually quite a nice consulting room, but it just felt like Hell) and watched as my self-esteem plummeted to below zero on my journey home.
Does this mean I’m a big fat whale who is good for nothing more than baby making without the fun (even though, medically speaking, women who are overweight have a lot of difficulty with pregnancy)? Has all my hard work at the gym for almost a year been for nothing because I am neither a size 8 or over 5”3 and never have been or will be? Or is it, as my best friend said when I told her about my doctor’s visit, that the Body Mass Index or BMI is absolutely wrong for most people?
The latter seems plausible, and having had time to reflect upon it, I know that I am a generally healthy person who can run and jump and doesn’t get out of breath after climbing a few steps. Of course, in the moment of hearing something like that, it can tap into a part of you that you thought was buried. Insecurities can be funny like that. But goddammit, I’ve worked very hard to feel good about myself and help others feel good about themselves, regardless of what shape and size they are. A few government-issued regulations based on a mathematic equation rather than the individual nature of people, shouldn’t have the ability to take the glory away from all that hard work.
But it made me sad. Not just for myself, a grown adult woman who eventually figured out that she knows her body better than a doctor she just met, but also for the young women out there who are not yet as self-sufficient. Maybe they play lots of sports and they’re just naturally the size they are. All it takes is someone with “authority” to come along and confirm their worst fears: “You don’t look like the women in the magazines so something is wrong with you – drop and give me 20!”
It speaks to the idea that looks can be deceiving and you can’t make decisions based on that alone. We should be celebrating each other in our different shapes and sizes and that’s what I plan to continue doing. And I should note that I don’t blame the doctor. She was just doing her job and using the only tools she had at her disposal. But I have the luxury of many tools at my disposal, not least of which is perspective and knowing myself better than anyone else.
So I take back what I said; I don’t think my body is procrastinating, it’s just doing exactly what it’s supposed to, and it’s the rest of the world that needs to catch up.
