Shopping for clothes with friends is something I have not done in a very, very long time. On the few occasions in my adult life that I have gone shopping with friends, it has been with someone who shops in the same kind of store that I do... plus sized. Either way, I avoid this practice. There are actually about twenty reasons why never participated in this ritual...
Recently though, I have been participating in activities that used to make me squirm (or binge) because I am on a quest to prove to myself that: it is not such a big fucking deal. Buying lingerie, buying a dress, wearing either one, posting pictures of myself online that are of my whole body... these are all little things that I used to want to freak out over that have turned out to be NOTHING. No one made comments about what I was buying, my husband liked the dress, and I haven't received any hateful emails from old friends telling me that I am a fat ass.
Yesterday I went shopping with a friend... she has the most beautiful body (that she does not like, and instead hates, despises)... not in the Hollywood way, but in an ultra-feminine, goddess way. She is insane about it, and when she bashes herself I counter her talk with logic:
Friend: "Look at these pants! They are so tight in the thighs, I cannot believe how oddly shaped I am- why am I gaining weight in my thighs?"
Me: "Do you think that this store just cuts their pants differently from what you are used to, or that this batch was cut funny?"
Most of the time the sanity of my reply diffuses a moment of body hysteria, but yesterday after we finished shopping and had shared a cocktail at a bar... she told me of her eating habits and how she wishes she could lose weight because her thighs have been getting so abnormally large...!
I do not play the fat game with friends, as in the one where a thinner friends makes a statement about her "obesity" and waits for the other to counter it with a "You are not fat!" Instead I usually tell that woman that I am in the process of learning to love and accept my own body, and invite her to not talk about weight anymore, or to tell me what she loves about her body.
In the past I would ignore what a friend might say about her body, or pretend she did not say it, but now I feel as if saying something logical and calm is the way I can stand up to this kind of body hate.
Do you ever stand up to body hate? Do you participate in it instead? What are your ideas on this issue?
