A book that can possibly change how you see yourself.

Alright, real talk. For my first post in this New Year, I’d like to talk about one of my icons; Jes Baker.

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Who is Jes Baker? Possibly one of the most badass women you could have ever hoped to stumble upon on the internet. She’s runs a blog called The Militant Baker, is a fat model (and yes, she wrote that herself), self-love enthusiast, feminist and many other wonderful things.

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Recently, she’s launched a book called ‘Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A handbook for Unapologetic Living’. Now, I downloaded this on my Kindle and I kid you not; I couldn’t stop reading it. It was just so honest and unapologetic and most of all, inspirational! I literally could not go through a chapter without some sort of revelation or hearty agreement. The books was phenomenal and though it took me awhile to finish (because sleep is important and lord knows I need more of it), when I did I felt kind of changed.

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The first thing that struck me was how she referenced Sonya Renee Taylor, poet, social justice activist and founder of ‘The Body is Not an Apology’ movement on how important ‘Body Love’ is to the health (mental, emotional and physical) of our whole world.

A shortened excerpt;

“The Body Is Not An Apology fosters global, radical, unapologetic self-love which translate to radical human love and action in service towards a more just, equitable, and compassionate world…. We indeed believe in inherent ‘beauty’ of all humans but as Lindsay shared, not from a lens that is about aesthetics but about inherent value and worth.”

I might have cut out a few things somewhere in the middle but you get the gist of it. Reading this in Jes’s book was just MIND BLOWING. I had to legitimately put my kindle down before I accidentally threw it with all my flailing.

Learning to love your body is hard. Sometimes on bad days, it seems downright impossible! But when we do, little by little, it can affect not only ourselves and those close to us; but it can affect the whole globe. Just imagine yourself rocking an outfit that was deemed ‘ugly on fat people’ and posting those images online; confident in yourself and your body in a way you’ve never dreamed of before. This could spark a slew of positive changes in other people across the globe and like Jes said in her book;

“A world that starts to invest in body love has the capability to shift to a more equal, compassionate and kind place”.

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Jes also goes on about reclaiming the words used to hurt us. Like the world ‘Fat’. Fat is just an adjective to describe someone who has a large amount of excess flesh. If you have a lot of excess flesh, then you could be categorized as fat. But the thing is, fat is not all you are and being fat does not cancel out all your other qualities. Like how kind you are or how helpful; how you’re funny and smart and witty and sassy and how you might know more than two languages or are good at math or sports or art or a myriad of other things.

People are the ones who have somehow imbued so much negative connotations with the word ‘fat’ that being called as such seems like the end of the world. It’s not.  So you’re fat. No big deal. If you wanna slim down some, go ahead. If you’re happy with how you are and it’s not affecting you negatively in a health sense than go you! Because just thinking that the word ‘Fat’ can dehumanize and scare you (and an entire generation, cause damn, the statistics looks shady asfck) is just not on. 

What's good about me?

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In my personal opinion, I believe that a lot of people suffer from this problem where they honestly can’t say anything good about themselves without making it into a joke. For example, just the other night, I asked my housemates (H) and (S) about what they thought their best features were.

Their response:

(H) – “Hmm? I don’t know... But I do wish my eyes were a bit bigger.”

(S)  – “I honestly don’t know. I think I’m kind of weird. I don’t know why people like me, even.”

They both responded with a vaguely amused tone and a kind of casualness that made it hard for listeners to say or do anything but shrug their shoulders in a ‘What can you do?’ fashion.

In all honesty, their replies weren’t anything I haven’t heard of before. We hear this sort of talk almost everywhere; in secondary schools, universities even at work or in malls and cafes. 

We seem to have this habit of downplaying ourselves to the point where it’s much easier to list out a series of what’s wrong or bad with us rather than what’s good.

So why do we do this?

One of my (many, but definitely main) assumptions is that we lack body confidence..

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According to Harriet Morris, the author of ‘The A – Z of Better Body Image: 26 Ways to Look Great and Feel More Confident’, we now live in an era where (with the help of photo editing tools such as Photoshop) we can enhance and beautify any image to make it look perfect.

In addition, our media has also become heavily saturated with visuals of ‘airbrushed perfectionism’, and our own dependency on the internet has made comparing our bodies to these digitally altered images a social norm.

Long story short, we want a better body image because we crave for the confidence a ‘perfectly toned, tanned, beach ready body’ can supposedly give us. At least, that’s what I feel we’ve been led to believe.

Of course, when we compare ourselves to a standard of beauty that not even supermodels can achieve naturally, we often find ourselves extremely lacking.

‘My thighs are too big.’

‘I hate my freckles!’

‘My body is too chubby.’

We end up finding more and more things about our body that don’t match up with the media’s idea of perfection. Our self-confidence also nosedives because without really realising it, we’ve been indoctrinate to think that if we don’t look like supermodels then we’re automatically considered ugly.

What we have to remember is that ‘body image’ doesn’t equal ‘body confidence’. Unlike trying to achieve an impossible body image, you can actually develop body confidence. Just like its okay that you’re not 100% confident about getting an A on a test, you just need to be confident enough.

It’s okay not to love every part of your body 24/7. We all have those days. Days when we wake up feeling so 'meh' that getting out of bed seems much harder than helping Mulan defeat the Hun army. What’s important is that we should detach ourselves from the toxic idea that the doctored images we see online are what we need to strive to achieve.  

Body Image Blues

Hello everyone and welcome to ‘Busy Body Talk’; a blog that is dedicated to celebrating the human body no matter what size, shape, colour or form. In other words, this is a body acceptance and body positivity blog.

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You might be asking me why I chose to write about this particular topic. Some of you might say that it seems a tad bit ‘overdone’. I am inclined to agree, but then again, with 60% of adults’ reporting that they feel ashamed of their bodies and 34% of young boys and 49% of young girls having taken up dieting to change their body shape and lose weight on top of the rampant body shaming culture that seems to be plaguing us in this day and age, I thought a little more positivity and acceptance couldn’t hurt; spreading the love and all that jazz because I personally think that we are all unique and beautiful. 

Now before I start posting about ridiculous beauty standards and how we live in an era of Photoshop and beauty wizardry, I’d like to share a little story about myself and my own personal struggle with finally accepting and loving my body. 

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First of all, I’m South East Asian. I’m from Malaysia if I want to be specific about it and when I was in high school, I was obsessed with East Asians and how amazing they looked. When I was in high school, Korean and Japanese bands, movies and merchandise were a staple.

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With looks like that, everyone in school could see the appeal of  East Asians and how pretty, handsome, sexy and elegant they looked; what with the clear, moonlight skin, perfect figures and gorgeous hair. They could wear practically anything and make it look amazing, dashing, cute and trendy. I remember how we gushed over the actors, actresses and band members; moaning and groaning and asking questions like; 

“Why can’t I look like that?” 

“Why can’t Malaysian guys look like that?” 

“Why are all the hot Asians from EAST Asia?! That’s so unfair!” 

The envy was strong because deep down I knew that East Asian beauty standards were something most of us can never hope to achieve because genetically, we just aren’t built like that. 

For me, it was a bitter pill to swallow and it sucked big time because a majority of East Asian beauty standards gets passed down to South East Asian countries by the boat loads. 

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I remember going to the mall and feeling hunted by all the make-up and skin care ads from The Face Shop, Etude House, TONYMOLY and Nature Republic. 

I remember chatting wistfully to one of my online friends (because like hell I was going to speak to my in real life friends) about getting liposuction to get rid of excess chub. 

I remember spending an exorbitant amount of money on waxing because my genes made me a little fuzzier than the other girls and laser hair removal was ridiculously expensive. 

I remember wishing that life was like the Sims and re-imagining a ‘perfect body’ for myself; slim, fair and flawless. 

Mind you, I’m pretty sure I started having body issues from the age of 10 to 15 and I never once gave any indication to my parents or friends that I was having serious body image issues. It wasn’t until I stumbled onto a body acceptance, body positivity blog when I was 16 that I started to look at myself differently.

I can’t remember the name of the blog now but what I did remember was that it listed out things I had thought were defects on my body and claimed that it was perfectly normal and okay and even beautiful. Vaguely, I remember how it stated that it was okay to love your body even if you are a big size, but if you wanted to lose weight then that was okay too. 

It’s funny really, how some blog that I can’t even remember the name of had managed to help me love and accept my body for how it is. It took awhile but I can’t describe how amazing it felt when I finally let myself love my body. It was overwhelming and addictive and I wanted to laugh and cry about all the years I wasted envying other peoples bodies when I had a perfectly wonderful one of my own. 

So, point: 

Body acceptance and body positivity doesn’t magically happen overnight. You need to make a conscious decision to love and accept yourself as you are each and every day. It might be hard at first but I promise you, it is worth it.