FOR I AM THE SHAPESHIFTER

Features I find really beautiful

• unibrows because they look like beautiful bird feathers elegantly placed across the face

• cleft chins as it makes the face appear to be so masterfully carved from stone

• acne scars and blemishes because they look like constellations or the blooming wattle I see fallen in the grass

• thin lips are so beautiful because they are like clouds travelling across the sky, full lips are like a softly blooming flower

• asymmetrical faces mimic how foliage of a tree grows

I’m not beautiful “despite” my acne or “despite” my cane. I am beautiful WITH my acne and WITH my cane.

CW: mentions of disordered eating, comments about weight and internal stress about body size.

When I was a little kid there was this teacher who would tell the girls (only ever girls) when were eating lunch that we were eating too much food. This wasn’t the only thing she did.

I was really excited that day, my mum as a treat had gotten me a lunch order. It was a reasonable amount of food, if anything not that much. She sat across the table from me with some of the other kids and she looked at me and said

Thats a lot of food

I was so embarrassed. From that day on I always left a bit of my food in my bag when I went out to the playground. I was afraid people were judging me when I ate, thinking I was lazy or gross.

I remember distinctly when I was very young standing in the shower and looking down at my belly and being afraid that I was too big. People in my family are fat and growing up I saw how everyone treat them like they weren’t a person.

I remember my mother once said to me when I was eating a bag of beef jerky

you need to control you’re eating or you’ll be as big as a house

That teenage metabolism is going to go away one day

Please let us change the way we talk to children about weight.