Society’s expectations no longer keep me up at night

By Hayat al-Zein - Lebanese journalist

I started to struggle with body image issues when I was ten years old, maybe even younger. My mother used to take me along to clothing stores to buy me something new. We’d spend a long time in the shops; there wasn’t a store we missed on our quest to find something that would suit my plump body and my “confusing” size, to quote the salespeople. Sometimes we failed on our missions, but sometimes I did find something that fit me well and that I ended up buying even if I wasn’t completely satisfied with it. I wanted to avoid having to suffer through another one of these trips.

This struggle didn’t get any easier with time. On the contrary, it got more difficult the more the kilograms piled up. This continued until I turned thirteen. At that stage, my size changed from “confused child” to women’s, because the sizes that catered to my peers no longer fit my body that was obviously fat, despite my attempts to hide it by continuously unsuccessfully trying to suck in my “belly.”

All of this made my excess weight weigh me down even further, and it was exacerbated by the comments some family members made—some stung and were harsh, and others were a bit gentler, but in both cases the message was the same: you need to lose weight.

I suffered so much because of my excess weight over the years that I became obsessed with the idea of one day reaching the ideal weight. Maybe to prove to everyone who made fun of me that I can lose weight, maybe to get their approval, or maybe just because I wanted to make up for all those years during which I never wore a dress on occasions that required it.

The idea of achieving the perfect body made me go on strict diets like eating only one meal a day. I even tried the keto diet, which consists of depriving the body of starches and sugars. Then I did intermittent fasting, which basically means you stop eating for at least 16 consecutive hours.

I’ll never deny that each of these methods was useful and satisfying at first, but I would soon gain the weight back and end up where I’d started before the diet. It was an endless spiral of despair.

I realized that I really don’t have to please anyone… except myself.

All of the battles I fought led me to serious self-reflection. When I delved into the heart of these issues, I figured out that my past self was always aiming to please others, even at my own expense. The society we live in imposes certain beauty and body standards on women, and if we stray from these standards, we have to endure looks, insults, and unsolicited advice. This judgment is really what made me torture myself so much. I just wanted to avoid it, so I stopped taking what I actually wanted and needed into consideration.

When I understood this truth about myself—after serious, deep, sometimes painful efforts—I realized that I really don’t have to please anyone… except myself.

The imposed “one-size-fits all” approach when it comes to dress code, size, and weight that women are expected to adhere to doesn't keep my body up at night anymore. It doesn't make me feel bad about myself like it used to. Today, I can say that I actually understand things better, and this has helped me conclude that everything I went through was not a succession of failures, even if that’s what it looked like. It is what led me to learn to love myself as I am, not to grind it down for flattery or praise.

Today, I am no longer obsessed with reaching the ideal weight like I used to be. Now I accept my body as it is, and I am trying to understand what it really needs. I treat it with more kindness, even if we still have small fights sometimes. I learned that people must accept themselves as they are, and that it’s only when they do, bravely and honestly, that they force others to respect them too.