I grew up disliking almost everything about myself: overweight, clumsy, and an introverted bookworm. It’s your typical nerd story, except I wasn’t a typical nerd and of all the things I hated, my name ranked first (Who wants to be a fat girl named Fatima?) And mirrors, let’s not forget mirrors.
I’ve hated mirrors for a long time. There was only one question that popped up in my mind whenever I stared at myself,
“Do I look fat?” And I did, I do.
I tried holding my breath and squaring my shoulders more, I tried folding myself to fit into a smaller mould. I looked at my family tree of fat aunties and knew I was doomed; everyone else said so. From TV to the magazines to the Harlequin romance novels I was obsessed with at 14 with heroines I was never going to look like.
Eating began to feel like a sin, something I had to hide to do. I began to chew fast, trying to gulp down my food quickly enough to escape the accusing eyes of my mom.
So when did this our obsession with size begin??
I can’t tell you exactly, but if you look around you it’s pretty obvious. And it’s no longer just a fat people problem or a women’s problem.
Our feelings about our weight often get tangled up with how we feel about ourselves. “Do I look fat?” or “I feel fat” often translates to meaning you feel depressed or your life is out of control. I did it too, and sometimes I still slip into that way of talking. On bad days when I feel unmotivated, tired and unattractive, I’m tempted to blame ‘fat’ but I know better.
‘I’m getting so fat has little to do with your body, moulded in that mirror, and more to do with the state of your life. A thinner frame could’ve guaranteed a less rocky romantic relationship, steadier friendships, greater success, the steady hum of static happiness. Those last 5, 10, 20 pounds, you’ve been told, are the sole barrier between you and a life well lived.’ says Your Fat Friend.
“TV says…Thinner is better…” is a line from the Sia written, Beyonce song ‘Pretty Hurts’ and honestly, the media and pop culture cannot be over held accountable for the twisted view many young people have of themselves, especially young females. Good has become equal to skinny. We feel guilty and bad for eating ‘fat’ foods and the guilt is just so exhausting. Fat people are considered lazy and lacking self-control. Similarly, larger people are assumed to be unhealthy and unfit. The reality is that some fat people are in excellent health, while some thin people are not.
While we’re at it, who is a ‘fat’ person? As in who should be addressed that way?
“Fat” is relative, too — some women consider themselves fat simply because they are larger than most of their friends, or they have suddenly become larger than they were for most of their life.
While there are clear health risks to being very overweight or obese, the solution most often proposed — for individuals to diet and lose weight — oversimplifies complex realities. Body shape is not as changeable as we are led to believe. Society assumes inside every fat person, there is a thin person dying to be set free. Which is not true!
While we’re obsessing about our weight and appearance, not only are we unwell physically; we also settle for less colourful and full lives… We spend our time blaming weight for all the things going wrong in our lives or fighting our bodies instead of truly living.
When we are counting calories, over-exercising and/or spending so much of our mental energy on self-criticism, we forget what we used to enjoy doing.
Positive body image should come with good health and viability. It’s not about denial, but about listening to your body. Be the judge of what is right for you. If you feel heavy, exercise. If you want to get into a certain size, do so, just don’t do it for the wrong reasons.
I would love to really ask though: Who died and made us the judge of what constitutes the ‘happy’ size? Who made us the experts to give out unsolicited weight advice and conclude that fat people must be living miserable lives?
________________________________________ Growing up, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t overweight (BMI and everyone else said so!) Having a name like Fatima did not help matters at all. Who I am is inextricably linked to those two things: my name and size. If ever I wanted to forget how I looked, my name was there to remind me. I felt alien in my body and in the space that I was occupying. Having the best grades in school, stuffing my head with all the books I could lay hands on and trying not to give a damn could only take me so far.
But this isn’t a story about a fat girl called Fatima. It is a story about how I became the unsuspecting heroine in my own story. ________________________________________
My body and I have always had a complicated relationship. Then something happened that completely changed my life.
In December 2017 while in Pharmacy School, I started a little project whose thought I had been nursing for a while. I had thought about it for months but was always either too busy, too bored or feeling too drained to actually start. It was a social media campaign about Body Image I dubbed #10DaysOfBodyTalk.
I am generally a social media snob but I was willing to immerse myself on Facebook and the online chat app, Whatsapp for a few days. I created a group of almost all the girls in my contacts list and planned to do a few posts on my personal feed. This was just going to be for a few days, or so I thought.
It’s been over two years and BodyTalk hasn’t stopped.
I can summarize my reasons for starting BodyTalk in two words: A book and a boy. One told me I wasn’t alone in my insecurities and the other taught me I could be lovable. And I wanted to share this new-found love with others and hear their own stories. Soon after BodyTalk started, I realized it was more powerful than I had imagined. There’s a power in shared experiences and stories that’s undeniable. I’ve met some amazing people through this forum and it has transformed my life in more ways than one.
I can honestly say I set out to change the minds of a few people around me, but these girls changed my life. It has grown from social media to an Organization with over 200 members but what we really want to be is a movement. We have educated thousands of young women both online and on-the-ground on the themes of Body image, self-esteem, and health. Poor body image usually leads to low self-esteem which is reflected in poor health choices and the cycle we want to break. We hope to take this further in 2020 by relaunching an online version of #10DaysofBodyTalk and making it accessible to thousands of young women across Africa.
As a pharmacist, a writer and an advocate, BodyTalk has allowed me to combine all my passions in a way that helps other people and meet with people and can share this work with.
With topics ranging from sex to depression to building confidence, we are deconstructing everything we know about ourselves and turning it inside-out. The conversations that I’ve had on the Chat group BodyTalk reminded me that no matter what who you are, everyone has insecurities and sometimes the lengths we go to get what we think we want only leave us broken.
How do we go about fixing our broken relationships with ourselves? Nobody has all the answers but I took the first step by writing a love letter to my body. I bet she was so surprised; probably cried over it lol.
For a long time, I’ve battled with self-love and acceptance. Lately, I’ve had the upper hand in that fight and things are looking up. My body and I have come to a tentative agreement to tolerate each other and see how it goes. Self -love is not a destination, but a journey.
So how did I become my heroine?
BodyTalk forced me to examine some of the deepest parts of me. Not only did I have to grow mentally to keep up, but I had to learn everything as I went. Designing logos, building a website, talking to a crowd, befriending strangers. It turned a shy girl into a sometimes shy, but ready to-do-it-afraid woman.
One of the most important things I’ve learned though is how hard you have to work for a dream. It’s a never-ending cycle of learning new things, trying, failing and restarting. But it showed me the miracle of finding something you really love and are good at your life begins to align with it. Everything you do seems to lead to it. That's how it becomes purpose: when you turn your fears into something worth fighting for, something bigger than you. It's taken me to National TV, it's taken me on a plane, it's given me a lot of firsts. But beyond that, it’s given me something to fight for.
This is what you won’t find in books and can’t be taught in TED Talks: It's your story. Everything you need to learn is in your story. Another’s story can inspire you but it won’t teach you what you need. It won’t give you that X-factor you need to give you.
Ameaka Fatima
Ameaka Fatima describes herself as a word addict, smart mouth, a little crazy and maladroit. She's a writer, pharmacist and the unwitting founder of BodyTalk. She's also editor-in-chief of the Medium publication, Self-ish.