ICYMI: The 100th newsletter is imminent and I’m willing to answer questions if you have any.
CW: Body image, eating disorders, things I wouldn’t normally discuss in polite conversation because it makes people feel uncomfortable.
On July 5, 1946, Micheline Bernadini wore a two piece bathing suit to the Piscine Molitor, a popular Parisian swimming pool. She did what no one else would do— literally, the professional models refused to expose their navels, but Bernadini was a burlesque dancer and used to being naked in front of a crowd. In the race to design the “world’s smallest bathing suit” between Jacques Heim and Louis Réard, Heim was technically first (May 1946, above the navel) but Réard’s suit design is what Bernadini wore on that hot July day and the name of his design is the one that stuck.
Almost forty years later, I was born into a body that fitness and fashion magazines would describe as “not bikini ready.” I resented sharing July 5th with an article of clothing I could never wear and the reminder that I didn’t fit in.
I once joked that I can handle anything life throws at me after living through the early aughts low-rise trend as a fat teenager, and the older I get, the less it seems like a joke. My body type was as out of fashion as it could get at the time and damn, it was hard. Looking at photos from back then, the other girls are in spaghetti strap tank tops and stonewashed American Eagle low-riders, and there’s me in giant men’s t-shirts, sleeves hitting my elbows, over mid-rise jeans from Lane Bryant. Bikinis? Not a chance in hell, even if they came in my size.
Trust the elder millennials on this, the early 00s were rough for many of us:
But the early 2000s were also marked by the highest recorded incidences of eating disorders – and the fashion aesthetic of the time was intrinsically linked to fatphobia, diet culture, and the promotion of highly unrealistic body standards. Between 1999-2000 and 2008-2009, eating disorder-related hospitalisations in the U.S. went up 24 percent, according to a survey.
It can be really fucking hard to live in a body that’s outside the socially acceptance norms— not white, not cis, not thin, not tall, not able-bodied, not many things— and it’s much easier to say that than it is to live through it.
About ten years ago, I was diagnosed with several chronic genetic conditions which effect how my body processes hormones, blood sugar, and regulate my metabolism. I’ll never get rid of them and require daily medication for the rest of my life. Yet, there’s been some peace through what I can and can’t control. Above all, my body is my own and I will do with it what I want, anyone else be damned.
The toughest part of self-acceptance isn’t what your body looks like right now. Harder still is the reality that your body will change and keep changing in ways you can’t even imagine right now. And as if that’s not some shit, you’re supposed to be grateful for that! As in, if I’m lucky, in ten years, I’ll be ten years older with all the aging that comes with it, on and on, until one day, I’m not so lucky anymore.
For now, I’m still lucky. I get to put on a two piece bathing suit for the teenager who never got to wear one and go swim on a hot day for all the times she didn’t go in the water. And most importantly, I get to give less way less fucks with every passing day.
“The Summer Day”
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
— Mary Oliver
Today’s my birthday. If you would like to buy me an ice cream cone for my birthday, you may do so here or here. Take care and be nice to yourself. Life’s short, do something fun in the sun. xo