Skip to main content

WAISTLINES


Back in high school, just before our final exams, there was a sudden obsession about waistlines.it was the emergence of the crop top (begins every curvy woman’s nightmare). I was the small population that looked through the glass. I have almost forty inches on my waistline. I stopped measuring a few years ago when I decided the world cared enough for me to just chill. I Outgrow my clothes rapidly still, and I try not to care that my friends fit the same clothes for years. I try not to care that they can share every single item.

I fail at loving myself, a lot. My YouTube home page is pages upon pages of how to lose waist inches overnight and inventions like these (they don’t work btw). There was a time I would rock my waistline when I did not give two shits about what I could or could not where. Then came the nights out and the late-night dresses. Nothing would fit me the way I wanted it to fit, mostly because I wanted more to change my body than the dress I was wearing. I had been called big and fat a lot of my years but now the language had switched to thick and my waistline was now measured sexually.

Even today I am wearing an oversized sweater to cover the bulges within. the African heritage I used to be so proud of has been washed away by all he ads and the models and all the diets that have been suggested to me. I find myself rethinking every outfit to mask these places in my body that look to me uneven. the people around me have constantly told me ‘maybe if you shed a little belly fat you would be perfect’. they have always given me a stare when I reached for a second cookie. They have left comments on social media about how big I am. There were days I was stronger and able to take them in stride, but today I choose to hide and undefine my waistline.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#BFF GOALS

My best friend was coming out to me, in the dead of the night, whispering between the upper bunk beds of oh so adventurous high school. I was alert to the details of her new awakened feelings for a woman, even though I had not declared my own sexuality to her yet. My lover and I were still a secret, even to ourselves. At that moment, when she began telling me, I knew I wanted to stand with her, for her. When she began, I knew I was going to be one of those woke best friends, that was when she began.  Then she elaborated these feelings. There had been an object of her burning desire, ‘your new friend,’ she said, ‘I think I want your new friend.’ Maybe at that point, if the lights to our overcrowded dorm had been on, she would have noticed the despair that sketched itself across my face. Maybe, she would have read the words of Don’t you Dare in my eyes and stopped there. Maybe she would have seen how I had to ball up my fists to keep the words in. Maybe she would have reali...
Post a Comment
Read more

COITUS INTERRUPTUS

The world was blown away by a fem positive revolution around 2010/11.My little world at the time was taken by storm by Oprah and Ellen. I decided i had found the word i was looking for. To hear an echo of what was my story from a woman of color and a queer woman both from the across the globe inspired me. I made the mistake of speaking the word to my father. It was at a family dinner, he had just served himself the lion share(oh the African culture) and was settling comfortably into his seat.I turned to my mother and told her we had learnt about rape at school that day. My mother did not miss a beat, she said " That is not table conversation." The very next day and every day after that there was a cold knife on my neck when he came to take me. I realize that I had been captivated by the success stories. I had looked past the process of coming to terms. I tried again, when i met my first girlfriend five years ago, and this time I was ready for the hurt, confusion, guilt and...
Post a Comment
Read more

PLAN INTERRUPTUS

  There was a whole flow of events set in motion the day I was born. Just like it was for my mother and her mother before her, I was to be raised to be a lady, a wife, a mother, a little of a leader and an all round confident woman. In my early years mother did her part. She nursed me and kept me with her in the kitchen, she occasionally took me to work with her so i could learn the value of an education, she recited stories while i played at her feet and taught me how to care for my younger siblings. With time she taught me that the inside of my body was alive and that i would one day bleed from it. She explained the miracle that is bearing a child and then delivered the stern warning to not dare try. I know, this the chorus to most girl child upbringing. Mine was punctuated by the teachings of my pastor father and my inherited religion every so often, by the time i was eight i had a special sermon to keep the boys away. After that was expected the actual exercise of keeping the...
Post a Comment
Read more