Sdudla Fatie Bhumba Ngidlingidli

 

I am fat, I eat, deal with it!

I have come a long way y'all. I just watched a video about the fatshaming this person received from her doctor today.

I have posted about this many times over the years. My own mother has known me since before birth but it irks her that I am fat & she'll be the first one to tell you that I have never been thin, ever!

When I was 12, a neighbor promised to give me wohloza when I turned 15 but they had moved away by the time I turned 15.

My lack of knowledge of how fat is stored in the body at that age led to a lot of mistakes, like vomiting food & then drinking umbhubhudlo (sugar water) for energy. I would take laxatives routinely every Friday for 2 years. Laxa, Epson salt, brooklax... were readily available & easily accessible.

I didn't know there was such a thing as an eating disorder back then, all I knew was that my body size & shape wasn't socially acceptable.

Fast-forward to 2001, where I lost a considerable amount of body fat over 8 months of 1 banana a day and 3 hours of walking from Pine street in Pmb to Agric campus in Scottsville(6,8km) & back.

It gave me an indication of exactly what it would take for me to consistently lose weight. Even then, I still wasn't thin. I could rock skinny jeans tho💃

And when I finally got a job I started the diet pills, name it I have tried it. Herbalife & Forever, I have been there! Shapewear too🙋.

Until I discovered Chastity & Cece, I was really lost. I didn't know how to accept my socially unacceptable body. And as RuPaul says, "if you can't love yourself, who the hell is gonna love you!"

I became excited about the body positivity movement & even discovered that there are people out there who are actually attracted to big girls, not as a fetish or anything like that but genuinely see big girls as worthy of love, as sexy & most importantly as normal human beings.

I felt reaffirmed as a person & began my self love, self acceptance and self compassion journey. It's not exactly a sprint but a lifelong journey.

I trust that people who struggle with body image issues or adults who feel like they have to settle for bottom of the barrel will find freedom to be through this post. #fatphobiamustfall #BoPo #dietculture #fat

I remember when we attended the Beatification of Benedict Daswa in Tshitanini a few years back and how I had to delay my lunch because the camera man covering the event decided he was going to zoom in on me eating, when throughout the day he had been focusing his camera lense on my other friends. The shaming of fat bodies as people who eat a lot/eat too much/ eat unhealthy foods /even eat at religious events/eat inappropriately comes naturally to most people. 

The fat body joke never tires. Laughing at people for their body shapes is the most normal thing on earth for some reason. The assumption that because you are fat, you must also be stupid and incompetent is so deeply entrenched and embedded in our psyche. I say this because of my experience, living as a fat woman, shaped like a Roman Goddess. 

Let's kind to people regardless of how they look. 

Shalom✌️