Getting Fat

Image courtesy of Pauleanna Reid

I'm getting fat. I'm getting fat and it's a hard fact to face. I'm getting fat but I have to tell myself it's okay. Because I'm pregnant.

It's a strange thing. After decades of friends, family, media, marketing, and internal dialogue telling me that I need to be trim and fit, I now have to change that message into "it's okay to get fat". When I see myself in the mirror my knee-jerk reaction is one of disgust. It takes conscious effort to transform that disgust into...happiness? Shouldn't I actually be happy about my gaining pregnancy weight? Somehow it seems wrong to link fat with happy. Like it's a cop-out.

The extra pounds indicate that the pregnancy is going well, my baby is growing at a regular rate and my body is naturally adapting to accommodate. So why does my brain not recognise this? It's made me question just how deeply these anti-fat messages have been embedded in my psyche.

I can't remember the first time I was told that thin = pretty for women. It may have been a Disney princesses, or a television show, or a friend, or an adult. The message was certainly common sense to me long before puberty hit. In primary school the "fat kids" were ostracized as undesirable. On television the fat character was always comically obsessed with eating. Our mothers were overheard talking about exercise and diets. It was just a part of life: no one wanted to be fat.

I'm not known as a fashionable person. I've never bothered to learn how to apply foundation or use hair straighteners. Yet I've still spent many hours of my life thinking about my image and body. I've exercised, I've changed my diet, I've bought creams and lotions, I've matched my wardrobe to my 'body type'. I've read countless articles on what I should buy and do to look my best and yet I've never bought women's magazines. Clearly, this obsession with image has permeated female society when even those who, like myself, don't care for the beauty standard, still find themselves somehow pandering to it.

It's not all pastels and messy-yet-gorgeous hair.

Image courtesy of Stress Busters Spa

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Now that I'm pregnant, the messages about my body and fat have suddenly switched. People tell me I should be excited to be growing, websites talk about the joy of having a "bump", yet those same websites still sport images of tall, lithe women, albeit pregnant ones.

Perhaps it is because I am still in this in-between stage of weight gain in pregnancy. I don't yet have an obviously pregnant belly, I just look like I've stacked on a few pounds. "Like a sack of potatoes" is how I've been describing myself. When I look in the mirror my logical brain tells me that I'm pregnant and putting on weight is a natural part of the process, yet I still feel a sinking disappointment at the tubby way I look. In that mirror stands the image I have fought against for my entire adult life: a fat me.

I've got to wondering if the beauty standard and anti-fat messages that surround us are doing more damage than we think when healthy-minded pregnant women get pangs of depression about their body image.

A study in 2005 found women felt more fat in early pregnancy when they didn't look pregnant. When they were more obviously pregnant, women started referring to themselves as 'big' instead of 'fat' and referred to their excess weight as being that of the baby. Could our language choices be a reflection of how we think other see us?

In a 2012 study it was found that women in early pregnancy suffered more anxiety caused by "constantly legitimising the divergence of their bodies from ideal feminine bodily performance". I hear that. I've found myself worrying about what friends will think in that brief moment between them seeing me this size, and my telling them that I'm pregnant. That's literally micro-seconds of time where someone might think I'm fat, and yet I'm worrying.

But it's not just friends, it's society. Catching the train, or walking down the street, again comes the thought "what if people think I'm fat?" In Western culture the image of a fat person represents someone who lacks self-control or morality. We freely label overweight people as lazy, selfish, or greedy. This is a problem. This is dehumanising.

On the other hand, many women find pregnancy liberating. They say this is the first time in their lives that they are free to be fat. They can finally eat that chocolate eclair, or buy a tub of ice cream without feeling guilty. This brings up a completely different, but not unrelated, discussion about women feeling obligated to conform to a beauty standard. If women aren't feeling free to look how they choose then clearly we as a society have some 'splaining to do.

Pregnancy forces a person to completely overhaul their ideas of body image, and for me this has been revealing. I've always felt quite secure about my physical image, but having it change so rapidly in a way that I can't control has brought to the surface my insecurities about weight.

The conversation needs to be had: how are the messages of beauty standards and anti-fat affecting women in pregnancy? Are there links between antenatal or postnatal depression and body image?

Let's hope it never comes to this.

Image courtesy of neighborbee

Bibliography

Nash, M. 2012, 'Weighty matters: Negotiating 'fatness' and 'in-betweenness' in early pregnancy', Feminism & Psychology, vol.22, no.3, pp.307-323.

Skouteris, H. Carr, R. Wertheim, E. Paxton, S. & Duncombe, D. 2005, 'A prospective study of factors that lead to body dissatisfaction during pregnancy', Body Image, vol.2, no.4, pp.347-361.