TRIGGER WARNING: In this letter, I discuss eating disorders and share my personal experiences with body shame and weight. If these topics are triggering for you, please do not read this one. My aim is to write honestly while respecting everyone’s unique experiences. I hope I can do this. If I say something tone-deaf or if I need to educate myself further, the comments are always open and I am always eager to learn and be better.
Dear whomever,
My relationship with my body is, of course, ever-evolving. I have spent years re-learning her, trying to fully accept her, but every time I think I’ve got her, she escapes my grasp.
I gained awareness of my skin when I was 12, and suddenly so so hungry, packing 6 sandwiches for recess every morning. There was nothing odd about this, in my mind, until my aunt, at a dinner table, pinched her fingers together and said, completely unprompted, “If you just lost a bit of weight, just this much, you’d be perfect.”
Later on, as I helped her with the dishes, she taught me to hold my stomach in and assured me that if I did this simple thing through the years, I would “never grow a belly”. She said she wished she did this, when she was younger, so I followed that advice, my trusting little self, hoping I was doing a favor for the older version of me.
When I would feel my body ease back to comfort, often in the middle of class, I would breathe in sharply, No! and h o l d.
Before that night, I didn’t really comprehend that I had a body. The mirror was to glance at my face, I suppose, to make sure there were no crumbs. It was there so I could study the new dress I was to wear, to see how it flowed around me. Nothing else ever stood out to me. But - I went home that night, pulled my shirt up, sucked my stomach in just like I’d been taught, dutifully, and I thought:
Huh. I look like a woman.
womanhood is a thing so deeply intertwined with pain
I know we have grown significantly from the shadows of the toxic beauty standards of the 2000s. But still I feel that we hold with us some kind of internalized belief that beauty is pain - that’s something we have not let go of. Like, think about it: the night-time routines of bottles of skincare and derma rollers and hair that’s painstakenly rolled up and bound, the stickers that close your mouth for you, the oddly shaped pillows that keep you sleeping upright.
We continuously develop new standards as soon as we let go of the old ones. It is a cycle I’m unsure we’ll ever be able to break through.
I sucked in my stomach for years, courtesy of my aunt, who I felt was the first person who welcomed me into being a grown-up. I felt special, perhaps chosen, that she spoke to me like I was old and wise and just like her. She whispered things to me about beauty and diets and what boys like and I treated them like gospel. I wanted to be the version of me that she envisioned. I did.
I couldn't quite gauge the true meaning behind the things she told me. Like, I only knew it was good to be skinny because that’s what I heard around me. I knew straight hair was better, more complimented, so I’d beg my mother to straighten it and would bravely endure the painful brush through my curls, the pulling of my hair, the hot iron against my earlobes.
I learned silence that way. I learned, then, that pain leads to good things, and I swallowed that belief and held it. Endurance, they say. Beauty is pain, they say. Be patient and you will be rewarded, they say. Suck in your stomach for a few years and it will always be flat, you will always be beautiful...
I did.
I didn’t even monitor if anything was changing - I couldn’t. I never glanced at my naked body until I was an adult. Never. It was forbidden. It was haram. It was off-limits. I showered in my underwear, I closed my eyes until the towel was wrapped around me. Never. Never.
My body was so important, it seemed, to everyone, but I couldn't even meet its eyes. The only way I tracked my bodies’ changes is through people’s reactions to it.
Thus is born a people-watcher.
the secret is, i won beauty by accident
The anxiety hit me like a wave. I was having daily panic and anxiety attacks which made me lose most of my weight, and there was a period in time where I was only complimented, and oh so profusely, oh so sincerely. My aunt would reiterate, whenever I saw her, “Stay like this! You’re perfect now. What are you doing?”
I didn’t know what I was doing other than suffering. I’d wake up nauseous, and hyper-focus on my breathing for so long that I forgot to eat. I’d Google “How many breaths a minute are normal?” and count. 1,2,3,4,6, No, 1,2,3,4. . . I was in Hell, but with the collective love thrown at me, I thought this was the way to be. Perhaps the secret to beauty was the fear. The deeply, painful, embedded fear that ate at the edges of my skin.
Truth is, I loved it. It hurt so fucking good. A breath of relief to my constant terror was the influx of compliments; the oohs and the ahs, the I wish I looked like yous. I’ve done puberty right, I’d decided. The secret to being a beautiful woman is being so sick you can’t eat. The secret to being a loved person is being so weak you can barely hold up a jug of water. This is normal. This is ideal. This is lovely. This is what the models do.
I couldn't tell you what my body looked like - I didn't stop to glance, and was too shy to, like I’d mentioned. But everyone loved what it looked like - and I loved that everyone loved looking at me.
No one asked why the sudden weight loss. No one wondered if I was okay. No, they cheered me on and I happily allowed myself to be sick. I continued my habits: a panic attack before bed, 3-ish hours of sleep a night, a forced apple or two for sustenance, and so much Pepsi. Survive school with shaking hands. Dinner. Repeat.
But with time it dissipated, you see, because eventually I was too small, too scary, too sickly. Stop what you’re doing! they’d urge me. Is she anorexic? they’d ask my mother. But what I’d done was simply sit in my panic attacks and allow my appetite be stolen by the heaviness in my gut. They said Good girl! as I showed clear signs of developing a mental illness, and I nodded along, convinced that this was way of things.
You can stop the diet now, Amal.
Do you even like looking this? You look sick!
What's wrong with you?
What's your secret?
It was nice to be gawked at when they thought I was beautiful. But now, there were so many eyes, so many stares, so many words I didn’t want to hear. I felt like a circus freak - a girl on stage who’d forgotten her lines. Or, better yet, a girl on stage who’d put on the wrong costume, who prepared for the wrong role.
falling from grace
I did not struggle with anorexia despite the claims that I did. I struggled with severe anxiety, which gave me the unfortunate symptom of losing my appetite. The adults assumed it was anorexia, but didn’t do even anything that would really cure it. In fact, with the way they behaved, I’d probably be worse off now if I did have anorexia.
They had people pray over me, though. Of course. They gave me holy water. They urged me to stop dieting, but I wasn't. They gave me talks and lectures and wrote essays, but none of it answered the question of why I was constantly, constantly, terrified. They, perhaps, knew that something was wrong, incorrectly pinned it, and didn't pause to ask if their assumption was correct.
It was all pain, in different ways, from all directions.
The dinner tables were the worst. At the dinner tables, I got the most scrutiny. The dinner tables haunt me, still, to this day.
There was a time my best friends’ mom refilled my plate at least eight separate times and forced me to eat. She didn’t allow me to step up from the table or even to look away, and I was young and naive and trying to be respectful. “Just this last plate,” she’d tell me, and I’d forcefully swallow the final spoon of rice, grateful to get it over with, and then she’d ask, “More?”
When I’d shake my head no, she’d go, “What, you don’t like my food? Eat more. You look hungry. I know you’re hungry.”
I felt sick the rest of the night, unable to move. Being full and eating over that feeling… it was Hell. I swear. I still remember, to this day, how heavy I felt, how, towards the end of it, even simply chewing took so much out of me. I remember how the rice felt in my mouth, the mushy chicken, the way I could barely get my throat to swallow. The way I tried to keep the food in, tried to keep myself from vomiting.
My hands shake, now, at dinner tables with people I view as “adults”, like aunts or uncles or boyfriends’ parents. I try to eat slowly but cannot resist the urge to eat everything all at once so no one says to me You should eat more. This backfires, often, of course, and they are always refilling my plate, urging me on, telling me I didn't have enough. Sometimes they’ll joke, Are you scared? Are you scared to eat anything other than a salad?
I have given up fighting against the allegations, given up convincing them I am not sick, not struggling, nothing but a mostly-normal-girl that happens to be thin. I don’t have a problem with food, really, I used to argue, but they’d shush me, glance at my body as though only it told the truth, and shake their heads.
Whatever you do, my mother would say, No one will be pleased. If you lost weight, if you gained weight… either way they will still find something to comment about - what you need is thicker skin.
But nothing helps a once-beautiful girl now ugly. There is no harder fall. No worse fate. I chased the high of beauty until I just couldn’t anymore. I was ashamed. I was ashamed, and continued to be, even when I regained my status as the ideal, after a few years of nursing the panic disorder. The shame remained. The body dysmorphia, as well. I never look into the mirror and see anything but a frail, weak and ugly thing. I hear my aunts gasping, sighing, looking at me with their big worried eyes.
I was only beautiful once but never again.
Something about my body continues to open discussions - people are comfortable, speaking on it, making remarks, giving advice. I can’t say why. My body is hot topic, something I often refer to as “public property” in my poems. I am still blind to weight, and have no thoughts when I see my naked figure other than “I wish you looked more like a woman.”
Since that first night in the mirror sucking in my stomach, I have wanted to, simply, look like a woman. God knows exactly what that means. But I continue to crave this image of womanhood I have in my brain - I haven't yet been able to let it go.
I kept trying to disregard this piece, to forget it, to write something else. Despite it all I couldn't start something new, couldn't stop editing and trying to see if I could adjust the words to be perfectly understood and clean. Then, I came across a post by another creator that mirrored my ideas, about how she hated being beautiful, being gawked at, being a museum piece. I feel similarly often. With all the baggage I carry that has led to my body looking the way it is, I find it a shameful, unbearable thing to carry around with me.
The piece I referenced was written by
, titled “my mother used to show me off at the grocery store”, in which she writes: “It was as if their thoughts had become my problem, and from that moment, I had put on thick heavy soled boots, protecting myself from shards of glass any time I walked into any room.So I made myself smaller, and shrunk myself down, I became a recluse. I despised my green eyes, my “perfect” nose, my jaw line. My chest that started growing before the rest of my classmates, every feature on my body that screamed for people to look my way.”
Though Ashley’s piece touches on slightly different subject matter, it made me feel seen. I have always hated being skinny, despite it being the “ideal”. Perhaps in some ways I am beautiful but this ‘beauty’ came with so much pain I wish I could forget. If this is beautiful then I hate it. Even more: I hate that people find a weak body so pretty when it is so painfully useless.
Must a pretty thing be so fragile? Couldn’t a pretty thing be real and alive and strong?
And anyway, people’s opinions change often, though of course the negative comments sting longer. Sometimes, they find me beautiful, other times, they find me ugly. Sometimes, I’m perfect and others I’m doing too much. That’s probably universal for any woman, but still. How does one survive it? I haven't been able to figure it out. Is that why we have the nighttime routines, the painful, almost religious regimens? Do they ever end? Do you ever reach the point of beauty that is fixed?
Why does it have to be painful?
When surrounded by the women of my culture - who passed eating disorders down like clothes - I felt like their thoughts were my problem. I felt like I was a distraction, a horrible thing, a triggering experience, when I sat at the dinner table alongside them. They asked for my secrets and I had none, and this frustrated them.
You never win either way, I know this, reader. I know that being a woman is a constant battle, a constant cycle of chasing perfection, and that idol of perfection changes as each second passes. I know. But what to do? What to do?
And how to grow past the pain you felt in childhood? How to come to terms with a life where your body is important, first and foremost, before anything else?
I worry I will never figure it out.
It’s abrupt, but the words end here, I suppose. I have nothing more.
Until next time, and with love, and please tell me if this piece is okay,
Amal
PS: I wrote my first poem about my body, about this topic, specifically. This was written in 2019, and I’d like to share it with you:
bones
lose some skin, let your bones take over
a love letter to this weakness
to the eyes that want it
the fingers around my wrists,
the frailness in the mirror
do you enjoy weighing me with your eyes,
measuring me with your hands?
“but what’s softer than your skeleton being on display?”
“it would make more sense if it were my heart”
anyone could break me, don’t you know?
with just a sharp jerk of their hand,
or a few words out of their mouth
first of all i have to say you write beautifully and i am in awe. i started tearing up when you explained the situation with your aunt and what she’d said to you. to know that was possibly the catalyst for what came after is so heart wrenching. it hurts. so good, you're right. there's something rewarding about beauty, about being a woman of course-- looking like a woman, feeling like one. but there is something haunting and dreadful as well, you described it perfectly in this essay. i know everything in life is a paradox, what is some good without bad, some bad without good? but it still hurts just the same, it doesn't make the metaphorical cuts sting any less. it doesn't make the anxiety any better. and i'm so sorry you had to endure all this. anxiety is a nasty creature, i understand exactly what you mean when you say it literally made you lose your appetite.
so what to do? i think you said it in your opening line: "My relationship with my body is, of course, ever-evolving. I have spent years re-learning her, trying to fully accept her, but every time I think I’ve got her, she escapes my grasp." i think that's it, we just let it ebb and flow. i think the important part is that you allow yourself to feel each feeling that arises, look at it and study it, let it live for a little bit so it can be released. and i think eventually true acceptance will come, and as we get older we will be so over all the fucked up shit that has happened in our lives that we will cease to care as much (i hope lol).
anyway, thank you so much for mentioning my essay in this, i am so happy/sad to learn i am not alone in this feeling. the fact that it helped push you to post this, made you feel seen genuinely makes me so happy i could cry!! sending you so much love 💗
thank you for creating the space to talk about this. This is so beautifully written , so many of our experiences verbalized. This is the piece of work that sticks and you think about it, retracing the lines in grocery stores, in traffic and walking home. ( in the best way possible ofc)