Dear xojane (ATT: Daisy, Emily and Jane),

Let me begin by saying that I love your site. Full disclosure: I am kind of obsessed with Emily McCombs. Specifically because of her candid conversations about sex, as well as the sensitive yet humorous way she consistently parlays her adolescent traumas into some of the most moving, honest, and enlightening writing I’ve found on the Internet. She has set a high precedent in terms of what I expect to find on your site. Having said that, I was very disappointed, and dare I say disturbed, by the language used in a recent article on xojane titled, I’M FAT AND I’M NOT OKAY WITH IT: I don’t want to accept my body and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
  

As someone who has overcome a whole slew of food/body issues, I found Daisy’s discussion of weight and body image to be uncharacteristically insensitive and lacking in accountability. While there are lighthearted ways to discuss these types of poignant issues (see Emily’s articles), shaming yourself as “fat” and complaining about losing a few pounds is not one of them.

 Though normally I tend to avoid articles directly about diet or weight loss, the self-destructive Neanderthal in me was attracted to Daisy’s big fat headline like a pregnant vegan to carne asada. While I was expecting to be enlightened by the perspective of an actually overweight person taking responsibility for health and happiness, one who was not blindly pushing for “body acceptance” or advocating for an “appreciation of ourselves at any size,” what I got was a perfectly healthy sized woman suffering from a bit of low self esteem, a woman who drinks too much before family dinner, and who (like many skinny women) is not thrilled about how she looks in a tube top.

I’ll admit that my motives were masochistic and inevitably soliciting trouble. The words “I’m fat” trigger years of self-sabotaging behaviors, most prominently the insatiable urge to measure myself against others. I urgently needed pictures to know what Daisy looks like and if she weighs more or less than I do. And if it was less, did that mean I was fat? Fucked up, I know… Like any good recovering eating-disordered person, I wanted/needed a visual to calibrate the immeasurable, elusive concept that has always remained a vague blurry blob in my mind, which is what “fat” actually looks like. I felt like this person would know, like she could be a reliable, trustworthy, unbiased source being that she contributes to a publication that I value, respect, and turn to for other newsworthy updates and thought-provoking content. I fully acknowledge the stupidity of this assumption.

If you didn’t read Daisy’s article, which you can find here, it was basically an essay about how she does not feel comfortable half-naked or in a hot tub amongst friends, even though most people probably don’t see or categorize her as fat. It was an article in which she discussed her reluctance to post things about her physical appearance because she viewed it as self-indulgent (this irony is not lost to me). It was an article in which she labeled herself as “FAT,” all the while exhibiting an acute awareness that she was, at the very most, a few pounds heavier than she finds aesthetically pleasing.

I know I’m perverse for actively seeking out destructive ways to clarify my own skewed and demented conception of my shape and size. And I do appreciate that Daisy is speaking candidly about her discontent with the way her arms look or her tendency to drink a bit too many alcohol calories. I am in full support of a person’s will to improve upon their bodies and bad habits for the sake of both health and vanity, and to be vociferous about it. My main gripe about Daisy’s article is that she accuses herself of being “FAT” in front of an audience of women who consider xojane.com a safe, sympathetic, non-judgmental place. And “FAT’ is a judgmental, emotional trigger word. Whether it should be is a whole different question.

 So I guess this article made me feel a bit judged, which was bothersome because I come to this site specifically NOT to feel that way. This was the first time my self-esteem was actually, for a moment, a bit lower because of an article I read here (other than the ones about selfless philanthropists). My immediate thought was, “if Daisy thinks she’s fat and looks like that, maybe I’m fat and don’t even know it…” It’s not often that I leave comments on blogs, but I’ve worked too hard on improving myself and have learned far too much in the process to not at least pass on a few take away tidbits, that irrational concerns about our bodies are inevitable and totally acceptable, but the way we talk about our “stuff” does have an impact on someone else’s “stuff” and it’s important, especially within a public forum, to be considerate and careful. I don’t know if I’m in the right, or if I’m just being hypersensitive. I know that it’s impossible to please everyone and to be PC all the time in a society populated by watchdogs, I just think “FAT” is a mean, loaded word with a lot of nasty baggage attached to it, and that there are plenty of superiorly eloquent, productive ways to get a similar point across without making it feel suspiciously like the beginnings of girl-on-girl crime.