Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

by Lindy West

“Where do you get your confidence?” is, “You must be some sort of alien because if I looked like you, I would defin...

there’s no graceful way to commiserate about self-image and body hate across size-privilege lines—solidarity with other women is one of my dr...

“reverse body dysmorphia”:

“Where do you get your confidence?” chapter could be sixteen words long. Because there was really only one step to my body acceptance: Look at pictures of fat women on the Internet until they don’t make you uncomfortable anymore. That was the entire process. (Optional step two: Wear a crop top until you forget you’re wearing a crop top. Suddenly, a crop top is just a top. Repeat.)

the old lie that wearing a girl down is “seduction.”

Meanwhile, alone in my bed at night, the certainty that I was failing as a woman pressed down on me like a quilt.

didn’t know it at the time, but the idea of “coming out” as fat comes up a lot in fat-acceptance circles.

you can’t advocate for yourself if you won’t admit what you are.

Fat people are not here as a foil to boost your own self-esteem. Fat people are not your inspiration porn. Fat people can be competent, beautiful, talented, and proud without your approval.

The media tells me that I’m fat because a weird sandwich exists somewhere with Krispy Kreme donuts instead of buns.

The fact is that I’m fat because life is a snarl of physical, emotional, and cultural forces both in and out of my control. I’m fat because life is life.

It was about learning to live with hunger—with feeling “light,” I remember my nutritionist calling it—or filling your body with chia seeds and this miracle supplement that expanded into a bulky viscous gel in your stomach.

Denying people access to value is an incredibly insidious form of emotional violence, one that our culture wields aggressively and liberally to keep marginalized groups small and quiet.

alienate small, bitter men who dared to presume that women exist for their consumption;

lay bare the cowardice in recoiling at something as literally fundamental as a woman’s real body.

but, you know, we were all raised in the same fucking septic tank.

No one teaches young men how to take care of fat girls.

This is the great curse of popularity and the great luxury of obscurity: People only care about your mistakes when they can hear you. Only failures can afford to be cavalier and careless.

As Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby wrote in their book Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere, health is not a moral imperative.

However, it is easier to mock and deride individual fat people than to fix food deserts, school lunches, corn subsidies, inadequate or nonexistent public transportation, unsafe sidewalks and parks, healthcare, mental healthcare, the minimum wage, and your own insecurities.

We are horrible to look at, we are in the way, we are a joke.

They talk to you this way until you “come out” as fat. They talk to you this way until you make them stop.

Fat people already are ashamed. It’s taken care of. No further manpower needed on the shame front, thx.

You know what’s shameful? A complete lack of empathy.

if you were concerned about my health, you would also be concerned about my mental health,

“violent theft of time,”

Online harassment is not virtual—it is physical.

I sometimes think of people’s personalities as the negative space around their insecurities.

But when you’re a fat person, you can’t hide your vulnerability, because you are it and it is you.

You cannot “want” rape.

Rape is not a compliment.

Rape is not a gift or a favor or a validation.

Fat women get raped too.

There is nothing novel or comedic or righteous about men using the threat of sexual violence to control noncompliant women. This is how society has always functioned. Stay indoors, women. Stay safe. Stay quiet. Stay in the kitchen. Stay pregnant. Stay out of the world. If you want to talk about silencing, censorship, placing limits and consequences on speech, this is what it looks like.

The social conventions that keep human beings separate and discrete—boundaries, etiquette, privacy, personal space—have always been a great well of safety to me.

The emotional state of emergency following a death necessarily breaks those conventions down, and, unfortunately, I am bad at being human without them.

But before death had ever touched me directly, those interactions felt like trying to dance, sober, in a brightly lit room.

Cancer doesn’t hand you an itinerary.