Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve

by Drew Afualo

you will discover an inexhaustible source of strength. When you give yourself the permission to love who you are and what you look like without fear of judgment and rejection from mediocre men, that’s when you begin to actually live, not just exist, and enjoy life.

No one cares if you were just training for a marathon or recently had a tapeworm infection. Same results, same comments. It’s unanimous: You look great!

Women and femmes are forever praised for being perceived as thinner no matter the obvious and incredibly dangerous consequences. On the flip side, when we gain weight it’s always flagged as reason for concern or as a sign that our health is in decline. The way fatphobia brainwashes even the most well-intentioned people into believing they’re doctors after they see someone they know gain a lot of weight is shocking. No one gets a medical degree or nutritionist license faster than a fatphobic person who noticed you gained a lot of weight. And regardless of the reason for gaining weight, it should never be something society gets to use as a reason to treat you like shit. The inner workings of someone’s physical health and mental health are not information strangers are entitled to, and they never will be in my space.

Today, I try to believe my body is nothing more than a shell that holds all the most important parts of myself as a human. It’s neither negative nor positive. Like it or not, it just is. And that is more than enough.

“Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” It was from an essay she had published over forty years ago. In true dystopian fashion, women around the world suddenly remembered what had never stopped being true. Women’s greatest fear is violence or being murdered. But men’s biggest fear? Ridicule.

Don’t dim your light so inferior men won’t have to cover their eyes in your presence.

Being mean is an effective tool for asserting the dominance that exists within all of us, but especially when it comes to protecting and standing up for ourselves.

You are worth the respect that you so freely give to others, so if someone refuses to give that to you as a fellow human, then offer it to yourself in the form of advocacy.

Being mean is not always required, but sometimes it’s necessary. And there’s nothing wrong with that!

The key to becoming more confident in standing up for yourself lies in tackling the little things first, because they are there to help you begin to believe that you should always assert yourself and want the best.

As women and femmes, we’ve been conditioned to temper our own dreams and desires even without prompting; otherwise, we may end up bitter and alone, void of any success, happiness, or a person to love us. I’m here to remind you that I am living proof that that isn’t true.

This is your life. Don’t waste one second of it living for anyone but yourself.