Learning to love my belly

I don’t want to jump into this with negativity because that would only add to what I am trying to release. First let’s talk about where I am now and then go through how I got here. This is a trigger warning, because I will be discussing fat phobia.

I’ve stopped apologising to my boyfriend for growing. Never, ever has he said anything bad about it. Only that he is so grateful to be with the most magnificent woman he has ever met. ‘But my body is changing’ I say to him. ‘Because you are a woman, not a little girl, and you are only getting more beautiful.’

I remember being 14, on vacation with our family friends. One of the sons was 3 years older than me and of course the object of my obsession at the time. We would walk through a fascinating city and as I was enjoying the buildings and the plants, he was looking at the women. In Dutch he would comment on their exposed non flat stomachs as they walked by, saying horrendous things that I will not repeat.

These gorgeous women were getting hate commented on by a 17 year old. His parents are good people, great actually, and I can’t imagine any language like that ever being used in their house. But he spoke the same way all the boys in my class did. At a young age I learned that to get positive attention, or let me rephrase that, to earn common decency and respect from boys and men, you had to look small and have a flat stomach. 

I’ve experienced the cruel observations of young boys that somehow feel that they are entitled to judge a woman’s body and deem her unworthy. A right they have earned, how exactly..? They would normally never be able to even get with said woman, or any for a fact. But nonetheless my younger self internalised their commentary. 

To prove how prominent this mentality is in the manosphere, listen to one alpha male podcast. (At your own risk, or actually just don’t ) You will learn that women are seen as replaceable objects with an expiration date based on a merit of factors, for example: their age, the amount of men she sleeps with but mostly, the way that she looks. Society keeps brainwashing us with the idea that who we are is what we look like. And that what we look like is bad. When in reality, we look fucking amazing. And it shouldn’t even matter, because how is ‘looking good’ something we owe society in order to be treated well?

People do the hardest things to their bodies in order to lose weight. Some put their lives on hold until they are skinny and thus worthy of joy. Most mental energy is focussed on diets and self deprivation. We drag our health through the gutter, put ourselves down and actually give away the self. Only our body is what we focus on, instead of everything that we and life itself, have to offer. 

The early 2000’s (and before that) were horrible times for women to grow up in. Now it isn’t much better, but at least we are talking about it. We used to be terrorised by what the media decided we would see: Cruel ‘losing weight’ tv shows, weight commentary, the only people we saw were unrealistically thin or ridiculised if they weren’t. The early 2000’s was a traumatising time to grow up as a girl. We were brainwashed with hate, the media completely lacking humanity.

I would read magazines made for young women, girls even, always full of articles on how to lose weight. I remember reading that if you eat in front of a mirror, you will be so confronted with how you look that you won’t even want to finish your plate. We were being tortured and torturing each other. And. For. What….?

Thank the fucking goddesses that there is an uprising movement of women loving their bodies. I don’t know where I would be without it. My teenage years have thankfully been spared from an eating disorder getting out of hand (which you almost inevitably get at that age due to all the shit we are exposed to) because I had role models that weren’t ‘models’. A highly problematic show, do not get me wrong, but somehow the series Girls opened my eyes to love myself. 

The series portrays different bodies compared to the ones I was used to seeing, still hyper white, cis, privileged and able bodied, but for the time, it was somehow revolutionary? Very sad, but it was the first time I actually saw a woman bigger than my thumb enjoying herself on television. It showed girls (but again, cis, able bodied, white and privileged) making mistakes and saying dumb shit, which was crucial for my teenage development as I hadn’t seen it before. The bar was so incredibly low for television, this one changed the game for me. And in retrospect, the series didn’t even have bigger bodied characters. They just weren’t as thin as all the other actresses I was seeing. There are without a doubt superior tv shows that are a far better example for young girls out there, but this one happened to come across my 15 year old self. And it already had this much of an impact on me. Imagine how lives can be improved if there is actual representation on tv? Of bigger bodied people, people of colour, trans people, people with disabilities, everyone! I can write a whole essay on how the show Girls is a problem, and I may in the future.. But for now, let’s move on.

Throughout my younger years my metabolism was out of this world. I could eat a village worth of food and casually shrug it off. I live an active lifestyle but overall it was sheer luck and youth. I’ve been able to maintain my weight from when I was 16 for almost ten years. Fast forward to a year ago.
I started a job that gave me lots of stress. The work in itself wasn’t too bad but the environment gave me immense anxiety. It would get far worse when I was hungry, and the way I would react when hungry was putting me in ‘danger’ of conflict that needed to be avoided at all cost. So, I would never allow myself to get hungry. I would treat myself after a long day with eating whatever I wanted to eat and whenever my partner and I were together, we would get sweet treats. This was and still is an amazing ritual we enjoy together and I’m not planning on stopping it. 

The woman at my work who was causing the stress would show me pictures of her so called friends, great looking women, commenting on how they haven’t lost their baby weight yet and that they are fat. That most pregnant woman use their pregnancy as an excuse to ‘let go’. She on the other hand ‘cares how her husband sees her’ so she lost the baby weight as soon as she could get up go to the gym again. She would point out how our boss or other people were gaining weight and in those moments she was the happiest I’ve ever seen her. She lived for putting others down. Whenever I would take off a sweater I would see her scanning my body. She would comment every lunch break on how much I ate (which wasn’t that much actually) and how I would have snacks. She made me feel so on edge all the time. But if I allowed myself to get hungry I would’ve most likely cried. 

I could feel my pants growing tighter and I stopped wearing anything restricting with buttons. I would compensate the way I felt with beautiful skirts and amazing stretchy pants with joyful patterns, allowing myself to be comfortable and to breath. My partner would say that I look amazing and I felt great as well. But what terrified me was what other people would think. How I felt like I was under constant observation by the work woman, friends, acquaintances, strange men on the street that I don’t even care about at all. I knew of multiple old friends or exes that would be overjoyed with me growing a few sizes, because they shared with me when we were still friends, how much they struggled with having gained weight in the past. And how much they hated themselves for that. I felt that in order to be ‘on top’ in life, I had to look as skinny as possible. But very quickly it dawned on me that, I don’t want to, or need to, comply to what other people think of me. 

Why would I waste these precious years that I have in life, on being insecure and restricting myself in order to fit a beauty standard that is put in place by people that I don’t want to be near in the first place? Why would I want people in my life that judge me solely on the way I look? Why would I ever love someone that loses their love for me if my body changes? That is not love. Especially men seem to treat women as temporary collectibles (objects) that are highly replaceable if they don’t comply to their expectations. The set of rules that needs to be conformed to or you can not be part of the club - a club that exists out of hate. Even if you were to do it all ‘right’ and get your way into it. Would you be happy? Would you not be aware of the fact that what you offer can be replaced by a higher bidder? If people love you only for the way you look then that is what they will love in other people as well.

If people from the past get joy from me growing, then I let them. They are in the past for a reason, I most likely have put them there. If they would laugh or say things about it, I haven’t spoken to them in years anyways. So why would I care? If they had an opinion on anything else I wouldn’t give a fuck in the first place. 

So, why are we so obsessed with our size? We live in a patriarchy where we are always supposed to comply to how men want us to be. The skinny forever 21 year old girl (as a goal) is a goal controlled by the demands of men and a long history of white supremacy. Not trying to fulfill that standard is letting go of a safety blanket. I’ve learned through changing, that what I feared was letting go of being liked by everyone. But again, I wouldn’t want to be close to these people anyways. 

The struggle that I had with my growing body came from the fact that I changed, and I know how society reacts to changing. I’m not forever 21 and I won’t be ever again. And through this experience I learned that I don’t want to be. 

I surround myself with people that love me exactly the way I am now, and how I will probably look in the future. I want people to love me for who I am, and the way that I look should be the last thing on the list of reasons that they love me. What I take as a much bigger compliment than commenting on how my body looks, is the way I express my body. With what I say, my jokes, my love. But also of course my appearance, because we do look good. Compliments on how I use my appearance as a canvas of self expression and joy. My make up, my clothes or the tattoos that peek out under them. 

We need to ask ourselves what energy we really want to invite into our lives. Do we want to imprison ourselves, give away all of our time, energy and wellbeing to wanting to be smaller? To fit into a box for people that don’t even love us? Aiming for something that is most likely not even obtainable, or do we want to live our lives, the way we are supposed to?

People I love, that are beautiful and fit into the ‘skinny’ size, somehow still seem to hate their bodies. Even though they look the way many of us are trying to look. It is never enough. Even when you fit into a certain size and some people will love you for it, you haven’t achieved it. If you change, the love is gone. And that may be why it is never enough. It is a goal that inevitably leaves you broken. 

The media and the people around us have mainly shown their preference for thinness. But, what the majority likes isn’t always right. Let’s throw away the whole idea of right and wrong out of the window for starters. Why do our bodies carry morality when they just exist? 

I can tell you all about history, about how bigger bodies were the norm of beauty and health for many centuries. But we already know this. Even over the last decades what is considered beautiful and what isn’t has changed drastically. What I am trying to say here is, that our bodies aren’t an accessory that we can switch up whenever the trends blow over. Trends are inevitably a cash grab, a means for mostly women to spend their money on concepts that have been made up and fade quicker and quicker each time. When we don’t love ourselves, we spend more money to relieve that feeling. We can bend ourselves backwards trying to keep up but I’d rather be doing something else with my time and money. 

We do not exist to be pretty for others. And other people loving us for how we are isn’t the solution to the tricks our mind plays on us. It is great to be with someone that loves you. But if we do decide to bless someone with our time, love and attention, loving us for exactly how we are and how we will be physically, is the bare minimum. 

That being said, many people will find you extra attractive for the way you look now. Especially if you carry yourself with confidence. But this is easier said than done. What if all we see is people that are thin, white, able bodied, living their ‘best lives’. And the people that look any other way are either not getting the light of day or are straight up being shamed. Consuming those concepts and images takes its toll. And we never see the whole picture.

Social media can go many ways. It can either make us feel like shit because we only follow thin models, or we can actually curate what and who we expose ourselves to. 

Social media is for a big part in your hands. Your phone is your device and yours only. So why would you want that little rectangle to convince you to hate yourself? It can serve you, that is what it is supposed to do. Even if you would have a friend that makes you feel like shit, but you don’t want them to see that you unfollowed them, you can ‘silence’ them. It’s your phone, your social media, why invite bad feelings into your own space that you have control over? This is different for tiktok, but the algorithm learns. Be cautious with what you give your attention to. 

What has made all the difference in the world for me, has been following people that inspire me. They won’t hide themselves and stand tall. They tell other women and people that we are all beautiful. We have to hear this from other people that aren’t straight cis men, it is important. We shouldn’t look for confirmation from romantic partners because we don’t always have them. But women will always be here and even if they just exist in your phone for you, you can play their videos as often as you need to hear it. 

Some beautiful people to follow:

(For the Dutchies:) Lotte Van Eijk @lovaeij

Jessamyn Stanley @mynameisjessamyn

Sydney Grace @ohhhhhhhhhoney

Achieng Agutu @noordinairynoire

Sophie @Sophiethickfitness 

Leena Norms @leenanorms (especially youtube)

And many many more!

These creators spread so much love and build a safe space online. They have severely upgraded my online experience and made a real difference. Unfortunately we can’t block out everything, as the internet is still full of misogynists and hate. But for that, we have our goddess @Drewafualo putting them in their place. Bring marshmallows as she roasts these men alive. 

I noticed that I don’t inhale and exhale properly. It’s shallow. The more I observe it, the more I realise that I’m sucking in my stomach. This combined with not breathing properly is giving me anxiety. I do it subconsciously but it’s messing with me. I don’t even let myself breathe properly. This has gone too far and I refuse to make myself smaller and suffocate. 

I am done with letting clothes ‘punish’ me. I’m not supposed to fit the clothes, they are supposed to fit me. On top of that, sizes change completely per brand. Something that won’t fit me in one store, may be too big on me in another. There is no logic, there is no sense, it is just fabric. And my own closet is not going to be a source of shame.

I am emptying out what doesn’t serve me now that my body is changing. I have a few rules set in place. 

1. Anything I can’t comfortably sit in, goes out.
2. All the jeans and other unforgiving material that I’ve never even liked in the first place, out.
3. Any clothes that are too small for me, that I think I will fit in if I just lose weight, out. 
*out equals being donated.

Stretchy materials are my friends. Clothes that fit me in the morning and at night after dinner are the norm. Wrap dresses that I can adjust the tightness from are my favourites. They give me the freedom I need and the femininity that reflects me best right now. If feminine dressing isn’t for you, right now or ever, there’s a world of comfortable shirts and stretchy shorts out there. 


I’m pushing myself to have my newfound bestie, the stomach, out and about. I still wear my crop tops even when there is a little voice inside of my head that sometimes whispers fear into my ear. But what is that fear? That people will see that I have changed? Won’t they see that anyways? Am I going to overdress when the planet is trying to rid humanity from its planes with this hot weather? Life is short. And I am tired. Tired of letting other people that I don’t even care about overrule my life. It is mine and I can do with it whatever I want. And so can you. 

There are so many ways that our mental and physical energy and time can be used. You are here, conscious, and that energy should not be spend on torturing yourself with hate and diets. I don’t know the answer yet, but it is a journey that many amazing women are venturing and I’ll happily follow them. We need to know that we are all beautiful, amazing and most of all, worthy of happiness and love. And fuck people who make you believe otherwise.