Here is one woman who did not bother with a pre-wedding diet, and we love her for it. "My Wedding Was Perfect and I Was Fat as Hell the Whole Time" proclaims writer Lindy West in an essay for the Guardian. You've got to see her dress.
West's essay digs deep into the issue of fat women feeling worthy of love -- but not just love, public declarations of love, like proposals and weddings. West had dated men who adored her privately but were afraid of being teased by their friends. She wanted to break the taboo against loving a fat woman, of women like her expecting romance and a partner.
Following a proposal at a bar in front of friends and family (which felt like a political act) West started planning her wedding dress. It wouldn't be your typical "figure-flattering" plus-size dress designed to hide the wearer's body. "I don't hide anymore in my everyday life," West writes, "and I definitely wasn't going to hide at my wedding."
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Instead she collaborated with her designer friend Mark Mitchell on a gown that made her "look like a flower market ate fat Betty Draper and then barfed her up in the middle of a haunted forest." She's being funny. But the "strapless, skintight mermaid gown exploding with silk flowers" (photographed by Jenny Jimenez) is everything a big woman's wedding dress isn't supposed to be -- and yet West looks resplendent and, yeah, really off-her-rocker happy in it.
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[/code]FUCK YEAH MY WEDDING Photo by Jenny Jimenez / photojj.com.
A photo posted by Lindy West (@thelindywest) on
Seriously, every bride should be this thrilled -- and comfortable with herself.
You really have to read the entire essay -- and maybe you have already. The response around the Internet has been overwhelmingly positive and everyone's been sharing it on Facebook. We asked West what she thought of this. Here's what she told us via email.
I had a feeling this piece would resonate with people--human bodies, especially women's bodies, are so intensely policed and so aggressively conflated with worth that pretty much any discussion of them brings up intense emotions -- but I didn't expect the response to be quite this huge.
The amount of pain and relief pouring into my Twitter and Facebook and e-mail today are overwhelming. There's so much more body-positive messaging out there now than there was when I was a kid, or even just five years ago, but I think the response to this piece highlights how much more work we have to do.
It breaks my heart that the message 'You deserve to be happy just a you are' has such a profound impact on people. So, so many people have never heard that before, or dared to believe it about themselves. Women spend so much time trying to "fix" our bodies -- spending money, being hungry, doubting ourselves, comparing ourselves to other women -- and I believe it holds us back in significant ways.
And here is the deeply profound, paradigm-shifting way she ended her message to us: "You can't take good care of a thing that you hate."
Wow, can we all just sit with that for a minute? Are there parts of yourself you hate? Do you live with hunger and anxiety because of it? How West came to love herself and claim her right to happiness is no doubt a long story. Just knowing she got there, though, is incredibly inspiring.
Image via Jenny Jimenez