To Be Fat Is To Be God

flickr photo

By

Awesu Olaniyi Williams

“Own your beauty, to be fat is to be God in human form, stretches are fine lines from the raffia of your thighs, you’re God”

Like negritude we must begin to own words that set out to chain and confine us to a limit, a stereotypical limit that says we cannot aspire to a certain point. We cannot fully be humans until we become more like those other humans in the glossy magazines. If so, to be fat is to be God – the peak of perfection regardless of what you might think to the contrary.

In today’s world one of the biggest taboos is not matching up to the expectation of what being beautiful means. It’s the struggle of finding the standard waist size, the perpetual struggle of wanting size 24 against your actual size 34. The frustration of going through dozen of clothes and shoes seeing incredible ones with money in your hand to buy but being betrayed by your own body from achieving happiness.

Owning one’s fatness is seen as being abnormal.

To be fat and beautiful means to accept the stereotype, having voluptuous breasts and a massive ass – with the clause of extra belly fat constrained by a waist trainer.

Body positivity, healthy eating and living right is a call out to fat people for being profane and rude with their bodies to others sharing a similar space. Beyond the prejudice of being out of shape comes shaming based on gender. To be fat as a man means the sign of good living, living the life.

Society tells many lies: “To be fat as a woman is to insult the man in your life to betray the essence of him choosing to love you when you were slim.”

Being a woman and obese is society’s way of admitting you are undisciplined and unattractive, owning your stretches meaning more about offending someone else’s sensibility.

I know society says being fat is a sin one greater than murder. To be fat is seen as being rude to yourself, families and friends. To be fat is seen as a sexist landmark when people describe places; “Yes the building is two streets away once you pass the roundabout you would see one FAT woman selling puff puff, ask for so so and so.”

At that moment I felt invisible – more from my own frustrations with what the concept of being beautiful and handsome means. Perhaps I was numb by my own insecurities more first than accepting to have an opinion. Well never again.

I’m accepting and loving this wholeness of being, it might be a struggle but without the struggle of accepting the fine lines stretching and criss crossing across different intersections of the body, one can’t become at peace with oneself.

I’m not just gonna’ be accepting the snide comments about having been behind in competing with those girls in class knowing full well all shades of her ass is beautiful, regardless of the gender. Should ass shaming be anything reasonable at all?

So lastly, the aim of my post is to deal with body image, shaming, positivity and accepting one’s body. If you need someone to talk to about your size, depression emanating from feeling less beautiful about your body or the stretches on them.

Be strong we can talk.

Awesu Olaniyi Williams

Awesu Olaniyi is a 24 year old, second best graduating student of Political science education from Lagos State University where he won various regional and national awards for public speaking and environmental advocacy. He is currently a freelance writer, LGBT discussant and aspiring M.sc student of political science. He can be reached via [email protected].