My jeans don’t fit me anymore.

Lau in her corner
5 min readDec 11, 2020

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You see, my jeans don’t fit me anymore. This was a hard realization I had this morning. It was one of those things you are not ready to accept but are fully aware of them happening. In four years, I have gone up two sizes. From being a 12 to a 16. The sad thing is, that while I have to accept it and I know it is not that big of a deal, I still refuse to buy a new pair of pants. Yes, my jeans don’t fit me anymore and I have been using leggings and stretchy skirts with the excuse of not having any reason to wear jeans. But in reality, I cannot comfortably squeeze myself into a size 12 or 14 anymore.

Many things have happened in my life that are to blame for my new jeans size. One, I am not sure if you know, but there is a pandemic currently happening. I am so terrified of going to a gym and getting infected that I have resorted to the at-home workouts on youtube. I know they are as effective as the gym workouts, but I cannot convince myself to get into “Beast mode” when my cat keeps nagging me for food.

Two, throughout this pandemic, I decided to heal my relationship with food. I have struggled for years with being scared of eating. I have done it all, the calorie counting, obsessive exercising, cried over a piece of cake. Lately, I realized that isn’t a way of living, but it is a direct effect of fatphobia and “diet-culture”. I think it’s an act of privilege to refuse to eat. Especially to maintain an idea of beauty created by a capitalist system. Many people around the world are dying because they have no access to food. However, here I am, suffering because I was lucky enough to get fed a little extra during a pandemic. I fully blame my eating disorder on capitalism, my privilege, and the patriarchy.

I can tell you that it has been a very healing process, to eat without remorse and the effect it will have on my body. But with all, it is still hard to see the new stretch marks on my body, the roundness of my breasts, and the sweat I break whenever I button up my jeans. I remember vividly being able to take a picture of my naked torso with my favorite pair of jeans and not see a roll spill out. But now, I have the so-called “muffin top”. Moreover, I think it’s even sadder that I still considered myself “obese” when I could squeeze into a size 12 of jeans. The whole being “fat” and feeling “fat” have been concepts that continuously hunt me. I cannot seem to understand bodies contain fat to survive. But to me, the amount of fat I store is a direct correlation to my worth. It is sad, like a little demon hunting me and pounding in the back of my head whenever I decide to eat. Fatphobia consists of this, demonizing fat bodies. Feeling unhappy and hating yourself for not fitting the westernized-white- heteronormative ideal of beauty.

Finally, the last reason I blame myself for “getting fat” is that I was forced to live with my 80-year-old sweet Guatemalan aunt who gave me a treat every single day. I bet you are wondering: Wait, why were you forced? Well, this correlates perfectly with my first reason, the pandemic. When borders and colleges closed in the US I was forced to find myself a place to live in for 8 months. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun for the most part. But also, I dealt with a lot: Not feeling grounded, the stress of a thesis and online college, not knowing when I would go home, dealing with having an aggressive uncle who battles Alzheimer’s…It definitely made being “fit” the last of my concerns.

If anything, like so many people, I was working on surviving and keeping myself sane. There were days I didn’t want to get out of bed, and moments where all I wanted to do was jump off my one-floor window. Some days, I just wanted to say “f*CK you Covid” and burn my mask. But, there was also the downing responsibility of having my dad working in the medical field. Risking their lives to keep everyone safe. If they could keep their mental health stable while wearing a mask, so could I.

Also, I am a decent human being.

I think it’s ridiculous that after everything we have gone through as a society, all the people dying, and people who became homeless because of the lack of preparation from any government to deal with the effects of people not being part of the capitalism machine. We are all still focusing on the scale and how our jeans fit. The countless advertisement I have seen towards new gym workouts, diet pills, and diet teas to shed the pandemic pounds, is quite honestly enraging.
As a woman who is working on dealing with functioning like a normal human who eats, I beat myself up for not being able to keep the obsessive and intense “fit” living standards. If anything, I should not be ashamed of having to buy myself a new pair of jeans. Because, in all honesty, I am one of the few people who can say she is surviving the pandemic. I can proudly say my body has fought all the mental and physical struggles a pandemic can bring. It is infuriating that the system is capitalizing on such a tragedy to generate profit from people’s insecurities, sadness, and desperation. Most importantly, I have food on my plate and I cannot complain about that privilege.

You know, I constantly think of my body as my best friend. As obvious as this might sound, it is the only thing fighting to keep you alive. If I went up a size in my jeans, it is no reason to be ashamed. I refuse to be part of a system that destroys people’s self-esteem for profit. I refuse to force my body to shrink when I am in a state of survival. I refuse to go back to my obsessive and toxic way of thinking about food. I can happily eat without crying. While I am feeling down about having to buy a new pair of jeans, I am also not going back to allowing society to tell me how to feel.

Right now, I’ll remind myself of the words of Sonya Renee Taylor and Sabrina Strings: My body is not an apology and fatphobia is a form of oppression. I will think and process my feelings. To ultimately do what I should have done since my jeans began ripping in between my thighs: Buy myself a new pair. My body has gone through 22 years of trauma.

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