When Netflix comes calling

The title I wanted to use didn’t quite fit the screen 😏🧐

“Surviving 90s Diet Culture As A Teen But Still Unraveling The Trauma 30 Years Later While Dealing With Perimenopause And Also Trying To Raise A Daughter Who Hopefully Won’t Have To Eventually Undo Nearly As Much Harm As I Did”

Whew. It’s a lot. Believe me, I know. 

But those formative teenaged years of the mid-1990s, trying so hard to convince myself that consuming all things fat-free would magically decrease my body size and I’d finally be palatable to the world’s judgmental gaze…well, those years really f*cked me up, man. 

Because what was being planted and sowed behind the scenes was far more damaging than any of the chemicals in those disgusting, inedible cardboard Snackwell cookies I choked down as a replacement for joy. 

I was being taught that my body was simply too big in comparison to the heroin chic waifs dominating the magazine pages. I was taking up too much physical space, which made me want to shrink not just my body, but everything about me. 

I wanted to be invisible. To disappear. To remain quiet and not draw attention to myself. To not be perceived by anyone, lest I be judged by the quantity of cellulite on my thighs.  

Of course we all wish we could talk to our younger selves, to reassure them, with the privilege of 20/20 hindsight, that everything about them is OK just as it is. That no one is looking at the way the shape of their belly makes their shirt hang just slightly askew. 

(Pinky promise, absolutely no one was looking at that. They were too focused on their own insecurities to care about yours.)

That someday they’ll look at their younger selves with much kinder eyes, armed with the quiet assurance of maturity, and realize that the tools they needed to unravel the harm could only come with time and experience. 

That they were just doing their best with the pressures, warped ideas and expectations that had been thrust upon them. That hopefully the next generation’s societal programming is much less harsh, way more empowering or, better yet, vehemently rejected altogether. 

But to attain that level of peace and wisdom, it takes a lot of conscious work to undo the years and YEARS of messaging - from the world, from family, from friends, from strangers on the street who feely they have a right to an opinion about your body. 

I’d be lying if I said I was on the other side of it. I still actively push back against it. Every. Single. Day. 

But there’s progress. Painfully slow at times, but light years ahead of where I began. And I’ll keep chipping away at it, healing bit by bit, dismantling piece by piece, undoing harm by harm. I’ll get there. 

And to the 90s teen who wanted nothing more than to be enough, just as I was, that’s absolutely something. ❤️