IT’S CALLED BODY ACCEPTANCE MUM!


Okay, so I get this question allll the time on tumblr. 
‘How did you become so confident?’
It’s become my least favorite question to answer, because the answer is I honestly don’t know. It’s not something that just happened over night, as many people would imagine. You don’t go from hating everything about your body, to embracing it overnight.
For the purpose of this blog post, I will try and depict where my confidence has sprung from.

Firstly, I’m not going to bore you with my whole back story, because if you’re a bigger girl/guy you’ll know all about the bulling. All the ‘fatty’ sniggers and the unsavory looks you get for eating a piece of cake or anything with a grain of sugar in it. Everyone has experienced bulling of some sort during their childhood. So I don’t have to explain to you about how I was bullied my entire school life and how it affected me.
But moving away from that, when I was 15 I met my guy, James. I think that this was one of major first steps that guided me into loving myself. At 15, I was still practically a child, I was sitting my GCSE’s and applying to college. I don’t think that any teenager in the history of the world loves their body/themselves at the age of 15. Everything seems so far away and you’re just getting to grips with yourself, you don’t have a care in the world.

Meeting James was a major confidence boost, because for once, a guy liked me.
I’m not sure about anyone else, but my self worth was so low when I met him, I used to think he was dating me out of pity, I thought that he didn’t really find me attractive at all and that he was just too nice to dump me. – 4 Years on and this is obviously not the case. But he used to tell me I was beautiful, pretty and was always ladling on the compliments.

A compliment + A smile= DOES WONDERS for a girls self esteem.
I used to brush them (The compliments) off, didn’t take any notice. I felt like I didn’t deserve those nice names he was calling me. But now looking back I see, it was his persistence early on, that help set the foundations I would so desperately need later on.

From then on I felt like my confidence was slowly creeping up. I went through a lot of style changes. I swapped my grungy baggy jeans for cute dresses. Wore a little less eyeliner, and more lip gloss. Part of me thinks it was because It was time for a change, and the other half was because I wanted to impress James. – Which ever it was, I’m glad it happened.
Obviously being a big girl, finding clothes and shoes to fit properly and flatter my figure was difficult. This being said, I used to shop regularly in New Look and Evans for cute clothes. A lot of the time I would find anything I really liked, or that fit me.

Why didn’t you just loose weight and find clothes to fit you, I hear you cry?

Well, it never really occurred to me. Yes, I disliked my body. But I was coming to terms with the fact I was always gonna be a big girl. And also, James loved me how I was. He didn’t pressure me to loose weight, his attitude was very laid back. Being a bigger lad too, he knew all about what I was going through.

As I passed through college with good friends by my side and a man on my arm, I really felt like things were looking up.
The clothes for bigger girls that the shops were selling were becoming more stylish, and I really liked them. Shoes in a width fitting that I needed were coming out in highstreet stores. I developed a love for shopping and clothes once I discovered there was a whole network of plus size clothing stores it blew my mind.
Being able to buy nice clothes there weren’t DIFFERENT to the smaller girls clothes was a massive boost. Plus size clothing was no longer frumpy and dull. It looked stylish and I loved it.

As I started to experiment with what looked good and what didn’t look so good on my body, I found that I looked good in a lot of the items I was trying on.
Girls, you know that when you find the most amazing, dress, pair of jeans, shoes, whatever it is. And you worry how it’ll look on; then when you try it on it fits you like a glove? Like it was meant for you? That’s the feeling I got when I was trying on something I thought wouldn’t look good. I know you know that feeling.
I just wanted to fist pump the air and strut my stuff in my sexy new purchases.

I think that when I found the Plus size community online I was swallowed whole by it. It made me see that there were girls (and guys!) out there who loved their fat bodies, and they weren’t sorry for it. They didn’t give a shit about what the media deemed acceptable. The plus size community had its own rules and didn’t care about how or what society labeled them as, so long as they were happy.
This really inspired me to fully embrace myself, as a plus size woman. Because if they could do it. So could I.

I’m not going to lie, learning to love yourself isn’t a bed of roses. There are days when I look in the mirror and criticise my hair, or skin, or how a skirt makes my legs look too wide. But that’s just part and parcel of it. Nobody can be 100% satisfied with their body all the time. We all have insecurities.
But you know what, then I feel like that, the best thing to do, it to doll yourself up, slick some lipstick on and smile at the world. Because you are fabulous, whether you’re a size 2 or a 32. Yes it’s cliché. But its true.

Accepting and embracing my body is and will always be an ongoing project. There will never come a day when I am completely satisfied with how I look. But that’s okay, I don’t want that day to come.
Loving my body and being a confident plus size girl is the path I have chosen, and I want to continue embracing my fat, my ‘boobs at the back’, my fat arse, my thick thighs and my chub rub. Because you know what? 

This is my body, and I’m not changing for anyone. 

4 comments:

  1. Hear, hear! When I was 15, I went through the same thing, and began dating someone. I went through the beginning of the relationship with the same thoughts as you, and eight years later, I'm on my third boyfriend (this is the one!) and I never would have thought that this would be my life.

    I'm not confident by any means, but I don't really care what anyone else thinks of me, and that's mistaken for confidence a lot.

    Nice entry today, you are a part of the fatspiration that I have discovered today, and it has made my day, and I feel empowered =] Trust me when I say, you have gone down in MY history.

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  2. i really loved this. it made me feel so much better about my self. i have actually started to go down the same path because of a guy you can say. even though he left me after lying and shit, i still felt like i could maybe be beautiful, as he used to tell me. (thats not what he lied about). and just reading this makes me think i actually can get to the point of loving my self. which is my goal.

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  3. Just stumbled on your blog, really enjoyed reading this post... I am a fairly new blogger on my own journey to find happiness in my own body and can relate to lots of what you are saying!

    Callie x

    fromthecornersofthecurve.blogspot.co.uk

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