When I wrote a few weeks ago about it being ok to wear clothes that aren’t conventionally flattering, I talked about not having to appear as the smallest possible version of yourself. That nothing we wear is going to change the physical size of our bodies and maybe we don’t need to apologize for that. Basically, can we allow ourselves to take up space?
I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, but I thought I shouldn’t be the one to do it. I’m very aware that I'm writing this while living in a body that’s smaller than average. I enjoy what’s called “thin privilege”. It’s easy for me to talk about taking up space when I don’t offend people with my body. But there are many other ways of taking up space. And maybe by sharing this, you might either feel seen or validated or more compassionate and less judgemental the next time you see someone else taking up their rightful amount of space.
When we don’t worry if our clothes make us look as small as possible, we’re allowing ourselves to take up space.
When we let go of clothes from ten years and two sizes ago, we’re allowing our current selves to take up space.
When we ask our partners to do half of the early morning wakeups, we’re allowing ourselves to take up space.
When we take the effort to do something that makes our experience more pleasurable for ourselves and no one else, we’re allowing ourselves to take up space.
When we push past the fear of “bothering” people to ask for what we need, we’re allowing ourselves to take up space.
Thankfully, there are a flood of books out there helping to normalize this message. Here are helpful quotes from the ones I’ve read and been influenced by recently.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
“As a woman, as a fat woman, I am not supposed to take up space. And yet, as a feminist, I am encouraged to believe I can take up space. I live in a contradictory space where I should try to take up space but not too much of it, and not in the wrong way, where the wrong way is any way where my body is concerned.”
Landwhale by Jes Baker
“I take up a lot of space. Not just physical space but also energetic space. My confident walk challenges strangers’ preconceptions and breaks their mental paradigm. My clothing takes up visual space, demanding to be seen. When I walk through a crowd, people move. They stare. They question. They are forced to acknowledge me when so often their preferred life goal for fat people is that we become invisible. There is power in taking up space. There is power in challenging social norms. There is power in being fat and daring to exist. Every day I live my life, I’m winning.”
Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
On “Human Giver Syndrome”: “When we see women who aren’t trying to control their appearance or their emotions so that they aren’t making anyone uncomfortable, or who use their time, money, and labor to improve their own well-being, rather than someone else’s, ‘What’s the matter with her?’ we say to ourselves. ‘If I have to follow the rules, so does she! She needs to get back in line’. And we call that unruly woman fat or bossy or full of herself. As if those are bad things.”
The Body is Not an Apology (best title ever) by Sonya Renee Taylor
“Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs.”
This is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World - And Me by Marisa Meltzer
“I believe in body love. I also believe, beyond the personal ramifications of self-love and body positivity as a political act, that we all deserve space. I believe that for some women, being kind to themselves works. I do. But for me, the body-acceptance rhetoric just doesn’t hold up to any level of intellectual rigor. If I have not been able to rely on my body to do what I wanted it to and to please me, I have been able to rely on my brain. So an exercise meant to make me feel better in my body, such as positive affirmations, has to appeal to my intellect before it gets to my emotions. Our bodies are more complicated than body positivity. The radical body-love movement is an essential counterpoint to the prevailing, persistent aesthetic of super-fit and slim, but it’s also unrealistic; it takes a rare pioneer to truly flout beauty norms. And I am no dissenter. I’m not sure it’s the answer for me if it means it is not okay to want to be not fat. My desire never wavers. Maybe my biggest problems are with the very words love and positivity and neutrality and acceptance themselves. As if trying to manage my body isn’t difficult enough, it presumes I am going to have a handle on how I feel. Loving my body still keeps the focus on my body. What I would prefer to have is the freedom not to think about my body at all.”
Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West
“I felt something start to unclench deep inside me. What if my body didn't have to be a secret? What if I was wrong all along - what if this was all a magic trick, and I could just decide I was valuable and it would be true? Why, instead had I left that decision in the hands of strangers who hated me? Denying people access to value is an incredibly insidious form of emotional violence, one that our culture wields aggressively and liberally to keep marginalized groups small and quiet.”
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
“We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.”
Lastly, Kelly Diels and Sukie Baxter had an amazing conversation about physically taking up space, and also being aware that some people have taken up more than their rightful amount of space - go watch it here.
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P.S. If you missed The Stress Free Shopping Workshop, you can purchase it here. One participant said, “I am a person who dreads shopping to the point that I only go once a year and end up buying things out of sheer desperation. I'd get so frustrated with myself if I couldn't find everything I needed in a day. The workshop really shifted my unrealistic expectations!”