Why I Sometimes Miss My Bigger Body

#TransparentTuesday

This might sound weird to some folks, but sometimes I miss when my body was physically bigger.

Weight gain was a side effect of the antidepressants I used to take, so a few years ago I found myself at the highest weight I’d ever been. That was admittedly annoying in some ways (like how I kept needing to buy bigger clothes every season), but in other ways it was actually really liberating and affirming.

Why? Because I really liked the feeling of taking up space. 

(So much so, in fact, that since coming off my medications and settling back at the lower weight my body wants to be naturally, I’ve gone out of my way to try to take up as much physical space as possible by wearing things like oversized clothes, big hair, and platform boots and sneakers!)

Part of my job is to help women reject the idea that they need to be small and unobtrusive in order to be acceptable and worthy, and I love helping people step into their power and learn how to take up space… both physically and emotionally. 

That said, I’m below average in height (5’3 and a half on a good day) and have always been relatively thin, so taking up space for me has always been more of a metaphorical and energetic thing, than a literal or physical one. 

Gaining weight gave me a taste of a different experience though— one in which my literal body was more substantial; more dramatic; more imposing. And it felt cool as hell.

As a body neutrality coach I knew I had the tools to not be distressed or bothered by gaining weight, but I was genuinely surprised to discover that I actually really liked aspects of it. 

I know this experience might sound unusual, but there was something about walking into a room and having my personal space bubble be decided and protected for me that I loved. I felt like I more thoroughly inhabited every space that I stood or sat, and I felt like my body was always communicating to the people around me: “this space is mine.” 

If you’ve read my book Body Neutral, you’ll know that we don’t need our bodies to do this kind of communicating for us, and that relying on our bodies to help us get (or avoid) things tends to set us up for body image issues. After nearly two decades of empowerment work, I knew I had the tools, skills, and willingness to claim my space and power regardless of my body size. But it was still nice to let my body do the talking for me, for once.

To be clear, I have always lived in a relatively thin body and benefited from thin privilege. Even at my highest weight I still wasn’t “fat,” and I’ve never faced discrimination for the size of my body. 

That’s important to keep in mind here, because I am by no means trying to suggest that my experience is universal, or that gaining weight should (or even can) feel good to everyone. 

In a world that celebrates thin bodies and stigmatizes fat bodies, taking up too much space physically can make you a target, and social conditioning teaches women in particular that they have to be extremely thin and “feminine” in order to be deemed attractive and worthy. 

And maybe that’s actually part of what I liked about being bigger.

The experience reminded me of when I turned 30 and buzzed off all my hair, just to see what it would be like.

Having gone through a million phases of short and long hair, I hadn’t realized how much work my hair had been doing for me (even when it was short) to make people view me as feminine, desirable, and deserving of attention and respect. So I was shocked by how differently others seemed to view and treat me without hair—especially men!

 It was like I was suddenly in this whole different category of person in their minds. 

I was no longer viewed as a sexual object or “trophy” of any kind, which men often made clear to me by telling me unprompted that they prefer long hair on women, they didn’t understand why I had done it, or they thought it was a “shame” that I had cut it because I was “so pretty before.” Random men stopped hitting on and catcalling me, strangers assumed I was gay, people assumed I was hostile rather than friendly, and even my own friends asked me in hushed and worried voices what my partner thought about it.

While all of these changes were jarring (and some of them were extremely uncomfortable), this experience gave me a new level of freedom, confidence, and body neutrality that I don’t think I could have acquired any other way. 

Having been raised and conditioned as a female, I’d spent my entire life internalizing the belief that the absolute worst thing I could be was unattractive to men.

I’d done a lot of work at that point to challenge and dismantle my internalized conditioning that my worth was based on my appearance, and I no longer consciously believed my value came from men's approval or validation. 

But even so, I found it surprising that suddenly losing men’s approval and validation wasn’t… I don’t know, a bigger deal?

“This is it?” I remember asking myself. “This is the thing I’ve been scared of since I hit puberty?”

Not only was the experience not as scary or upsetting as I’d imagined it might be, but I was also finding parts of it truly healing and delightful. It was actually a big relief to be “invisible” to men in a way I’d never experienced before, for example, and it was both fascinating and illuminating to see how the assumptions strangers made about me were suddenly so different, based on nothing but my hair. 

Plus, the rebellious part of me really enjoyed watching people battle with their own confusion about why I “wouldn’t want to be pretty.”

This was also the first time I noticed that I actually preferred how it felt for people to stop automatically viewing me as “feminine,” treating me like a “woman,” and assuming I was straight. After a lifetime of thinking it was an insult to be called “masculine,” I discovered that I actually didn’t mind it, and I reveled in looking androgynous as my hair grew in and I explored different styles, like undercuts and mohawks. 

All of this was surprising to me, because my social conditioning had convinced me these things would feel nothing less than devastating. Not only was I not devastated though, I was actually having fun. 

Gaining weight on antidepressants felt very similar, I think. Our society teaches us that gaining weight is automatically a bad thing, which can lead only to insecurity, shame, unhappiness, and a lack of confidence. 

Having been working in the body neutrality space for so long, I wasn’t surprised that gaining weight didn’t have a negative impact on my body image, happiness, or confidence. But I was surprised to discover that it had a positive impact.

Nobody talks about this possibility. 

Nobody talks about how—if you are truly able to adopt a morally neutral view of your body, and be curious instead of judgmental—you can actually experience all kinds of interesting, liberatory, healing, and positive things when it changes. (Even when those changes are “supposed to” feel negative!)

Nobody tells you that you might actually find joy or empowerment in the very experience you’ve been afraid of, or avoiding. 

They don’t tell you that observing changes to your body/appearance without moral judgement or internalized biases can actually teach you a lot about yourself, or even help you cultivate a deeper, more authentic, and more resilient level of self-acceptance and self-affirmation. 

But they can. And this is the power of body neutrality.

When you approach the fascinating, complex, and ever-evolving experience of having a human body with curiosity rather than judgement, the journey often takes you places you never would have imagined. 

Big hug,

Jessi