Member-only story
Talking Back to a Commercial
There is this Noom commercial where a woman looks off to the right of the camera and says: “I was being asked by well-meaning people, ‘If you workout so much, why are you still so big?” I have something to say to that woman.
Those are not well-meaning people. Those are ignorant people and your body is not their concern. Those people want to shame your body for being unruly and not in their narrow idea of what a body should be.
Here are some well-meaning questions: How do you feel in your body? Do you feel strong? Do you take the time to thank your body for every workout? Do you take the time to notice as you get stronger, as your stamina grows, as you can do more and more and still feel good? None of those “well-meaning people” asked these questions, they just wanted to know why your body was still fat, beyond what they think of as acceptable fat, beyond their mythical ideas of what “fat” and “working out” mean to each other.
They were not well-meaning. They saw something that looked awry, that looked out of the ordinary, they saw your body and it made them uncomfortable, it triggered all their fat fears and fat phobias and they decided to somehow make it about you. It was never about you. It was about them, and their biases and their fat fears. It was about the narrow box that is labeled “acceptable” and how they saw a body outside it and…