Oops full length rant mode engaged: Finding out that I was potentially hurting OTHERS when I poked fun at myself was probably the only thing that made me really stop (at first!).
I used to make jokes onstage about my size. But when I considered how I wanted audience members my size to feel, I changed the type of jokes I made. (I hated myself, not them). Now my size jokes are all about how GORGEOUS I am.
It's been about a decade since I figured that out. Sometimes people come up to me after shows to talk, and last year I toured to a regional town. I was the last to leave the meet n greet because I was surrounded by a small group of women who had been really affected by watching me. One was showing me photos of her teenager daughter on her phone, saying she wished she could've seen the show (it was absolutely not appropriate for kids lol) because maybe she wouldn't have such terrible body image if she had. There were a few women asking me how to dress/shop at our size. There was one woman who was holding my hands with tears streaming down her face saying she'd never felt beautiful until she'd seen me onstage bragging and joking about MY beauty (with a few hundred audience members agreeing with me!).
When I first made the decision to change the humour of my act from self deprecating to self celebratory, I didn't fully believe it myself. I still had hangups. I was masking my real anxieties, but celebrating them just for (what I thought was) the good of others. Turns out it was absolutely for my own good too, it just took some time.
There's a lot of truth in "fake it til you make it" I guess, cause now at 32 I can say I have - for the first time in my entire life - a happy healthy functioning self image. Yes everyone has rough days sometimes but I've never been happier with my body, even when I was thinner. It didn't happen overnight of course. But slowly, over time, by being more conscious of the way I think and speak about myself, I have apparently changed not only my own mind but the minds of those women standing in the lobby that night.. and maybe even a few thousand others over my decade plus as a performer.
Surround yourself with media, people and ideas that reinforce body neutrality. If you haven't already, stop saying negative things about others because of their body shape (!!!!). Deliberately step away from the idea that the way you look has ANY bearing on your value or desirability. And because you're on Tumblr you know that there's ALWAYS someone in the world who wants to fuck you, regardless of how you look, you'll be someone's cup of tea.
You can trust that I know how hard it is to overcome the intrusive and negative thought patterns that come with mental illness. I'm definitely not saying it's easy. But I'm saying it's possible.
