Are Generation Z the First Generation on the Road to Acceptance?
Once upon a time there was a woman who was content with her body, never went on a diet, and lived happily ever after, the end. Does that sound like a familiar story to you? No, me neither.
I have always been thin. Thin enough, at least. Sometimes tentatively straddling the line between slim and chunky. But always thin. And then I was really, really skinny for a time. In 2018 I stopped drinking alcohol. Weight fell off me as though I’d developed a speed addiction overnight. And then I went vegan and my figurative speed habit turned to meth. Even then I had fat days. I would still look in the mirror and find myself criticising a tummy I thought was protruding too far. Scrutinising cellulite that dappled my thighs like the plains of the Sahara. Everyone complimented me on my twenty-six-inch waist, and I went home glowing from a day where I’d been referred to as ‘the skinny one’. I felt overwhelmingly lucky that with no effort at all, I’d lost so much weight, that I seemed to be staying so small. How easy, I gloated to myself, feeling as though I’d won the lottery.
But for years and years before my skinny year I’d fought a tremendous and wearying fight against my body. One that ate away at my confidence and bit chunks of my mental health away before spitting them back out, gnarled and useless. Once upon a time my entire life revolved around food. My love/hate relationship with food was my treasured obsession and I would restrict myself so much that I’d end up binging on entire…
