Super Size Me

I got fat eating nuts--super sized bucket loads of them. I gained more than 40 pounds, which on a petite frame size and a height of 4’ 10”, is quite a feat.

Full disclosure: Not all of my weight gain can be blamed entirely on eating nuts freestyle. I was pregnant at the time. And even though intellectually I knew that I wasn’t “fat” overall but pregnant, emotionally I felt like one big roly poly. Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole fertile goddess look- on others, but for myself, it was hard to take when I saw stretch marks in places I didn’t know was possible.

With the backdrop of the beautiful life that’s growing inside, it seems shallow to express these sentiments. But I’m sure I’m not alone in this experience. I firmly believe that others share this shameful secret of thinking and feeling fat when they’re pregnant. But we don’t talk about it. We know we’ll be placated with “but you’re so beautiful” and with that in place, what’s the point of talking about it? 

So we hug, rub and coo over our bellies instead, and pretend we have warm fuzzy feelings about our developing thunder thighs.

Deep down, why are we worried that the elastic-waist pants will forever remain a staple in our wardrobe? Or become consumed with thoughts that we’ll never shrink again. Could this in someway be influenced by society at large and what we see on TV and magazine covers? Of course, you know it is.

When it comes to baby fat, look at what makes juicy gossip headlines. Supermodels and actresses who haven’t lost the baby weight, or those who have obliterated all signs of pregnancy in less than a month. Overall, it’s a crazy mixed up message, with the term fat being readily interchanged with and associated with pregnancy. 

Society and the media want us to be fertile  and womanly, upholding that pregnancy is a desirable state, but then want us to shed much of the signs of it thereafter.

The covert pressure causes some women to watch their weight before and during pregnancy. Many times women semi-consciously diet before pregnancy at the preconception stage (if it’s a planned one) and keep a very watchful eye on the scale during pregnancy. But this fact is not given much air time. Perhaps talking about it would destroy the image that pregnancy is a bliss-filled state.

Consistently, struggle exists between societal expectations of what a woman "should" look like (think Barbie; 39-21-33, which works if you’re 8’ 9”) and what it actually means to be a woman with the very real functions of our sex.  

The internalized message that fat is bad, especially around the pregnancy issue needs to change. In general just a wider variety of body shapes on TV and in media would go a long way in lifting the burden that many women feel during this time. Striving to look at the body in terms of health and not weight would be a great reframe for all of us.