This article contains references to disordered eating and eating disorders.
Welcome to the first instalment of Body Talk, our new monthly column written by journalist, author, and GLAMOUR's Website Director, Ali Pantony. Ali has written extensively about her own journey with body acceptance and eating disorders for GLAMOUR, but still feels there’s so much to be said on this topic. Despite the millions of #bodypositive TikToks, the societal pressures we face as women have never really gone away. In her monthly column, Ali explores the journey to accepting our bodies in a society that has always taught us otherwise.
There was a moment, while planning this column, where I pulled the whole thing before it had even launched.
“I’m killing it, I’m killing the column,” I said indignantly to my bewildered boyfriend one evening, slamming my laptop shut and cradling my head in my hands. (I like to think this was quite Carrie Bradshaw of me, had I been wearing Vivienne Westwood instead of the same pyjamas I’d been wearing all day). “No one wants to read about body image from another mid-size, able-bodied white woman.”
The body positivity movement we know today started in 1969, when plus-size, queer Black women saw how mainstream fat activism was excluding people of colour. Fast forward to today, and many body positive content creators are either ‘small fat’ (typically a size 14-18) or aren’t even remotely fat at all: slim, white women grabbing at a mere whisper of cellulite or squeezing a ‘stomach roll’ the size of my thumb. They’ve become the face of body positivity’s third wave in the influencer era.
So, as a white, able-bodied, mid-size woman who wears a size 12-14, wouldn’t I just be perpetuating the problem? Wouldn’t I just be contributing to the erasure of fat people from their very own movement?
Here’s the thing: I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to live in anyone else’s body. But I do know what it’s been like to live almost 32 years in my own. I grew up in the age of dial-up internet and mobile phones the size of house bricks, when the words ‘body’ and ‘positivity’ were practically mutually exclusive. I’m sure I wasn’t the only ‘90s baby who agonised over when I’d lose my ‘puppy fat’ while being simultaneously bombarded with images of emaciated celebrities. This was the very height of skinny worship, when mantras such as ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ were normalised, when Fat Monica was the punchline, and when certain, ahem, top modelling shows viciously reprimanded women for gaining two pounds.
Since then, I’ve well and truly put my body through the ringer (it’s a wonder, really, that it hasn’t given up on me altogether). I’ve been obsessed with my weight for almost as long as I can remember. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t trying to restrict myself in some way, picking apart what I saw in the mirror. So, when I moved to university, I began to starve myself. Some days, I wouldn’t eat a thing. The next, I’d be so ravenous – my insides aching from hunger – that I’d binge anything I could. The guilt from the bingeing would result in purging. Years later, after gaining more than three stone and going through a particularly bad breakup, the cycle started again.
As anyone with lived experience of an eating disorder will tell you, they are impossibly difficult to leave behind. They’re an addiction; a coping mechanism for when you’re not coping. They’re that piece of shit guy you dated, entirely aware just how much of a piece of shit he was, but who you simply couldn’t tear yourself away from.
Bulimia and purging disorder has followed me steadily since: sometimes loud, governing my thoughts like some sort of parasitic puppet master; and other times quiet, lurking somewhere in the shadows at the back of my brain. An old friend, always there should I find myself not coping again. For the most part, thankfully, the quiet is stronger than the loud. But I want this column to be a place of honesty, a safe space for anyone who might relate – even on some level – to what I write about here. So, I’d be lying if I said my eating disorder wasn’t a part of who I am today.
But diet culture and the insurmountable pressure to look a certain way – namely, as small as possible – affects a majority of women, not just those with eating disorders. Harmful messages about bodies and food are everywhere, sometimes so insidiously subtle that you don’t even realise you’re internalising them.
It’s the gym instructor who says you’ve ‘earnt your lunch’, as if exercise grants you permission to eat. It’s the wellness brands who claim to be anti-diet, but still set dangerously low calorie targets and advocate food-tracking (i.e, a diet). It’s the moral hierarchy around food – how many times have we all said, ‘I’m so bad!’ while eating a snack? – which breeds huge shame around eating. We live in a world that’s managed to turn food into a source of restriction and shame, as opposed to what it should be: a place of abundance, gratitude and joy.
So no, reader, I didn’t kill the column. Did I make the right decision? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. I guess I’ll let you make that call. But while I absolutely will be inviting other voices to contribute to this column in the future, my main aim with Body Talk is for anyone who knows what it’s like to feel uncomfortable in their own body to find some reassurance, comfort or understanding here. If it makes just one of you feel less alone, then I would’ve done something right.
For more from GLAMOUR’s Website Director and Body Talk columnist, Ali Pantony, follow her on Instagram @alipantony.
For advice or information on the topics mentioned in this article, contact Beat, the UK’s leading eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677.
