The scale in my bathroom has never been my friend.
When I was in high school, I used to step on the scale and watch the little hand whoosh back and forth before settling just past 100, a testament to how anxiety had crawled into my stomach and made me full. I don’t know if I was more afraid of the pounds or the judgement that would come from not having the money to buy lunch or to make it myself. I knew that I needed to gain weight, that it would be better than starving myself, but there was a thrill that came with knowing that people thought I was pretty because I was thin, even though it was dangerous.
In college, I avoid the scale like it’s a bad ex, but that doesn’t mean I don’t revisit it from time to time. The last time I stepped on a scale, it was at the doctor’s, and it spent a minute flickering back and forth from 148 pounds to 152 before settling on the latter with little remorse. The rest of my appointment, I waited for my doctor to comment on my weight, to scold me, but she said nothing, more focused on that I had turned twenty-one in April and that meant I needed some grown up texts.
Since I started gaining weight, I always wondered what the perfect amount was. By all accounts, I am not fat. My tummy is soft, and I have a few rolls, but every ounce has redistributed itself so that people don’t really say anything. Sure, they may squint, ask if I did something with my hair, that something looks different, but they never figure out that it’s weight gain. (If they do, they don’t say anything unless they’re extra bold and say that my face has gotten rounder.)
It’s odd being between fat and thin. Societal pressures-wise, I can slip through the cracks of being fat-shamed, but I also must confront the fact that I’m not the ideal and that I’m straddling the line of being able to fit in for my body. Society is hilarious like that, isn’t it? One second, there’s love for every body type and the next second, there’s a chorus of “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant this,” and it’s all slightly less skinny girls being paraded around, their stomachs flat and the rest of them curvy.
When I was thin, I was worried that I’d look skeletal in a bathing suit, my wrists slim, my ribs sticking out—but no one worried about me. Now I’m worried that I’m too obsessed with food, that I’m one too many bites away from someone swooping in and giving their two cents. Now that I’m the weight that I am, I find myself fat-shaming myself in place of random strangers on the internet and people I know.
I know that I still have privilege when it comes to my body, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s been odd to watch it shift and diminish as I’ve gotten healthier but heavier, losing conventional attractiveness to happiness and a few stretch marks. For me, being between fat and thin has been a push-pull experience, a series of wins and losses. But I know I’m not alone in that. I know that I’m not the only one fighting with the scale and compromising with herself. I know that it’s going to be okay.