Guest Post: Another Fucking Growth Opportunity

Another Fucking Growth Opportunity

A few weeks ago, the Women’s Resource Center at the University of Utah shut down along with the LGBT Resource Center and Black Cultural Center. This was the university’s dubious response to the equally dubious law, HB 261, which demonizes programs and services based on “individual characteristics.” You know, those pesky little adjectives like Black, female, gay, etc. that are so inconvenient for a majority white, majority Mormon, patriarchal society like the one I call home. I was a client at the WRC for multiple years and attended a support group called Body Politics. I entered their doors believing that disordered eating and the fucked up mental baggage that went along with it was my cross to bear and left with a systems-level understanding of why I and so many other women and femmes waste our time and energy worrying about things as trivial as the number on the scale. The WRC was also the catalyst for me entering my chosen profession, social work.

The timing of the WRC’s closure coincides with yet another fucking growth opportunity for me in my disordered eating recovery journey. Since having my second daughter, my body has been different than what I am used to. I’m soft in places that have never been soft before, and my squishy bits are quite a bit squishier than they once were. A part of me knows that these are simply neutral statements of fact. After all, the same softness and squishiness in my 9-month-old daughter is a source of endless delight and pride. But another part of me wants desperately to “fix” this new body, to get it to fit back into the pre-maternity clothes and to regain the privilege and status associated with being a particularly thin woman that I’ve enjoyed since adolescence. Luckily, whenever I feel the temptation to intentionally change my body’s size and shape, I recall a scene from the Matrix, the one where Trinity says “You have been down there, Neo. You know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that’s not where you want to be.” 

My mother knew that road too. She spent my entire childhood trying to lose the “baby weight,” trying to undo the visual and tactile proof that her body had grown, birthed, and breastfed two humans, trying to regain her status as a particularly thin woman. She tried all kinds of crazy diets and supplements, from huffing banana scented markers that were supposed to replace actual food to swallowing handfuls of diet pills made of crushed crustacean shells before every meal. I’d like to think that, had she lived beyond 47 years, she would have eventually overcome this impulse, but who knows? She never breathed a word to me about my body being something to control, but I learned nonetheless.

Speaking of crustaceans, I’ve been thinking of them lately, specifically the kind crowded in tanks at the Asian supermarket. As a vegan, letting my four-year-old get some entertainment value out of these sad, doomed creatures while picking up gochujang paste and rice noodles falls solidly into a moral grey area. Their claws bound to prevent them from injuring one another, they endlessly try to escape by climbing on top of one another. I can understand the impulse. Life in our society is essentially Russian roulette, a battle against probabilities. Someone will go without food. Someone will lose their home. Someone will die. We know this and feel powerless to change it. But not me, we pray, not the ones I love. We use racism, sexism, sizeism, and all of the other systems of oppression to climb on top of one another in our desperation to escape the inevitable. As a white, cis, able-bodied person who, even now, has thin privilege, I have only experienced the truly devastating effects of this phenomenon second hand. I’m aware of the struggle people over a certain size face when buying clothing, flying in airplanes, and even attending doctor’s appointments with their dignity intact. 

I don’t think the folks behind HB 261 are hateful or evil necessarily, but I do think that at some subconscious level they see themselves as lobsters in a tank. If someone is giving the other lobsters a hand up, they and theirs are that much more likely to be the ones left behind. For the privileged, any progress towards equality feels like oppression.

And this brings me to the most shameful admission of this essay. As much as I want to pretend this is only about me and my relationship to my own body, I know it isn’t. When I’m really honest with myself about the beliefs behind my feelings of shame and discomfort around my new body, I come face to face with the part of me that is accustomed to climbing on top of others to escape the metaphorical tank, the part of me that feels an automatic superiority to those who are larger than myself. This part that belittles others for the chance circumstances of their bodies and genetics exists despite my deep love, respect, and appreciation for individuals in larger bodies: my old boss who is one of the wisest people I know, the children’s librarian who has been such a wonderful role model for my daughter, my friend from the WRC, and many others.

I want to destroy that part of me. Destruction is quick and final. You only have to make the decision once and you can move on. Growth takes time and endless patience. You have to water the seed every day. Thich Hnat Hanh said that peace isn’t a place you arrive at; it’s the choice you make every step of the journey that is your life. But I’m mixing metaphors again. 

This essay is about growth, not destruction. So I will let the tree of “To be fat is to be disrespected and disowned” stand. It has been watered every day of my life by my culture and by the people I have known, good people who were doing the best they could. Next to that tree I will plant a seed that says “I trust you, body” and another that says “My body is an instrument, not an ornament” and another that says "Every human being has incredible dignity and worth.” I will tend to these seeds knowing that I may never stand in their shade. Maybe my daughters will. Please God, I hope that my daughters will.

By: Alexis Levitt