It’s a big deal

Along with The Big Lie, we’ve now got The Big Quit – people walking off their jobs. It’s crazy out there, it’s all too much, the problems of this world.

Thank God there are a few inspiring things happening that excite me. Queen Latifah, star of one of my favorite female karate-kicking TV shows, has joined a campaign called “It’s Bigger Than Me,” which aims to change the conversation around obesity. She talks about the concept of being big as it pertains to weight management instead of stigma and shame, to spread understanding that obesity is a societal issue, a manageable health condition, not a character flaw. She highlights the unnecessary self-hate and shame suffered by so many in our society. 

I’m so over the never ending prejudices in our culture. I’m sick of the centuries of constant condemnation by entitled people that chastise anything that’s different than them. 

It’s time for women to feel good about being big. I mean, big, big, big in every possible way. The idea that we’re supposed to be skinny miniatures wobbling on high heels, unable to function from hunger, is just ridiculous. Go ahead and eat girls, you need the fuel. Oh, I know we all want to be healthy these days, men too have more pressure to be slender, to prevent heart attacks and to fit in, but females face a much bigger scale of attack. 

Women have been judged for too long. We want freedom. Another powerful woman on the hunt for our freedom is Linda Bacon. Just the right name for a gal with chutzpah: “Fat isn’t the problem. Dieting is the problem. A society that rejects anyone whose body shape or size doesn’t match an impossible ideal is the problem. A medical establishment that equates ‘thin’ with ‘healthy’ is the problem. The solution? Health at every size.” 

You’d think that an extra carbohydrate would kill us. I remember when girdles were in, along with nylons suffocating our crotches in summer. Women have squeezed into everything from spanx to bustles and corsets pulled so tight we couldn’t speak – sort of a metaphor, don’t you think? 

I see young women in my therapy office and hear horror stories, like competition in colleges about who is the thinnest girl. Vomiting to limit calories is common. One of these lovely girls entered my office years ago. She was about 25 and petite with stallion shiny black hair, drop dead gorgeous, smart and charming. Self-loathing poured from her mouth during therapy. I put my entire weight into assisting her through the negative stories in her head, which was like a poked bee hive that stung her lively spirit. Her self-hate, believing she was not “enough,” was sad to see.

Roth, in This Messy Magnificent Life, puts it well. “Might this be another way the patriarchy controls women’s bodies? By hypnotizing us into believing we must be thin in order to have value, or authority? If I wanted to silence half the population of the world – I can’t think of a better way to do it. Expecting a woman to stand up for what she knows while convincing her that she must first be thin is like binding a Chinese woman’s feet and asking her to run a marathon.”

Katy Byrne, MA, LMFT has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Sonoma, and the Bay Area for 35 years. She’s been a columnist for The Sun and 

Women’s Voices News for over 15 years and has written two books: The Courage to Speak Up and The Power of Being Heard. Conversationswithkaty.com or 707-548-8982.