No body is good enough

giuliakollmann

by giuliakollmann

Story

I was bullied for being “fat” for many years in my early childhood. I have never been at an unhealthy weight in my life, and certainly it was not the case then. Still, the other students in my class would regularly sing to me something that would translate roughly to “Fatso, whale, sandbag,” crude verses that rhyme in Portuguese: Balofa, baleia, saco de areia.

From early adolescence on, I made it my mission to become the thinnest person I could. I was surrounded by the unhealthiest ideas of what a woman should look like: 1990’s Rio de Janeiro, when losing weight was the thing to do, regardless of where one started. In Brazil, the perfect beach physique—an impossibility of toned and curvy, but slim—was consolidated by heated debates about female bodies every February, when Carnival prompted their ample display along with the Mulata Globeleza vignette.

The Mulata Globeleza vignette was a perfect storm of racism, colonialism, sexism and fatphobia. It consisted of a naked, samba-dancing, light-skinned black woman with a slim body and sculptural curves, covered in body painting and glitter. It was shown on television throughout Carnival season. Mulata is a sexualized term meaning a female that has both white and black origins. It represents a savage male gaze that, in recognizing the colonial violence in the biracial traits of these women, desired, consciously or not, to repeat it.

In the 1990s, however, the term was thrown around as a normal descriptor, and the vignette was highly awaited, its protagonist undergoing careful judgment in every living room. The baton was passed on several times, and the last iterations of the character were recast as muse instead of mulata and finally wore clothes. Online articles on this piece of trivia list the full measurements of these women, to the ecstasy of unrealistic Brazilian mothers, armed with information with which to taunt their imperfect daughters.

This environment permeated the reality of growing up as a woman in Brazil, and I still notice how opinions on my physique are offered without request when I am back in Rio. How well I fit my jeans or the fact that I stopped regularly manicuring are subjects that aim to prompt long conversations. Not only bodies remain subject to judgment, but this scrutiny still has a prime place at any dinner table. The distance from this reality, I realize, brings me relief; the bodies of others are not an important topic in German households or watercoolers.

Since those days of fat-shaming in school, I have never not wanted to lose weight. I cannot escape it, no matter how unhealthy I know it is. My friends cannot either. Our mothers never tried.

I have for a while now shifted my focus to my health. At the same time, achieving a certain weight remains an invisible, but eternal line on my new year’s goal list. I doublethink: I accept and even admire my body as it is, while knowing this ease with myself is probably something I will never be able to achieve during my entire lifetime.

© giuliakollmann 2023-01-19

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