2020 Ruined Our Body Image
By: Bex Addis
Tags: Body Positive, Eating Disorders, Pandemic, Body Image, Memoir

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

Over the last few weeks, I have received a number of message requests from new followers on Instagram. All female, all with faces filtered to the point of absurdity. The mere hint of a pore blurred from their skin, their lips over-lined and their bodies contorted to highlight protruding hip bones or more pronounced cleavage. I’m unconvinced that the majority of these accounts are real — the duplicated copy and near-identical imagery screams ‘BOTS!’. But if this is the case, why are they all reaching out to me? What is it about my profile — the pictures of my cat sprawled across the floor at my parents’ house and the views of my weekly park walks — that have made me the object of these trolls? Why has the algorithm vomited them into my lap? They’ve each employed the over-used, trendy buzz word ‘well-being’ in their brief bios, some going as far as to even describe themselves as ‘weight management experts’. Their combined ethos is simple: thin people are happier. That’s why I need to sign up to their newsletters and tag three friends in their posts. They scream about body positivity and yet preach self-hatred.

I have seen so many memes, GIFs and comedy sketches that have ridiculed this year and the experience of living through a pandemic. They have done the rounds through our group chats and I see them intermittently on my early morning scroll through social media. It’s the unflattering images of grotesque caricatures with quadruple chins and mayonnaise smeared across their mouths; the joke that the only trousers that will fit us now are elasticated. But going into lockdown, many of our expectations were high — not only would we lose weight, gain muscle and tone our abs to Avenger status, we would also learn to bake our own sourdough, finally write our bestselling novel and start our Etsy side-hustle; wood burners and crochet hooks poised and ready. This was a rare time in our lives where we could reflect, acknowledge our priorities and privileges and strive towards our goals. We would nurture ourselves and our friendships, we would use it as an excuse to reach that effervescent, illusive ideal of ‘self-care’.

However, as the weeks rolled on and our inability to socialise and wander uninhibited continued, my eating habits altered dramatically. I saw working from home as a danger. I snacked constantly, filling up my online ASDA order with every type of Kinder product available and multipacks upon multipacks of crisps in every flavour, texture and size. Food was my coping mechanism, the only constant as the case numbers grew. On the day it was announced that the organisation I work for would be working from home for a couple of weeks, I raced to my local Sainsburys and filled my basket with all-butter croissants and bougie raspberry jam. I was going to treat myself. This situation was dire and unprecedented and in that moment I required comfort. My eating was intuitive and necessary. Even though I would feel a slight pang of guilt when I saw the nutritional traffic lights on the packaging, I promised myself that I would not hate myself for it. I was living through a terrifying period and I could afford my body some kindness.

When I look back at pictures of my appearance in 2020, I will probably feel pretty happy with them. I’m the smallest I have been in almost five years and I’ve managed to stick with my yearly (usually unfulfilled) resolution to take up and continue running a couple of times a week. Some days I do yoga before work. I’ve even managed to fit back into one of my favourite dresses. What I will probably not remember, however, is just how awkward and disordered my eating was this year. How some days I would eat three home-cooked, relatively healthy meals and others I’d revert to a diet of ginger nut biscuits and Bombay mix; some days folding sad sliced chorizo from the packet into my mouth and calling it dinner. I probably won’t remember my alcohol intake, unrecognisable after months of Zoom drinks and quiet evenings in front of the newest Netflix series. But I will remember the sadness of not being able to see my family or hug my best friends and that will be the spark, the connection between it all.

Our relationships with food are personal and ever-changing, wrought with anxiety and occasional obsession. I can point out specific times in my life when I have starved myself — either out of vanity, extreme happiness or extreme sadness — and times when I have binged for the same reasons. I have downloaded, and promptly deleted, calorie counter apps so many times out of sheer frustration that the knowledge that one piece of seeded toast equals 131 calories and I can never eat less than three, is brandished; burned onto my brain. I have organised my eating habits around celebrations and events, outfits that I yearn to wear. My weight has been in a constant state of flux since I was at school and I’m still convinced that I don’t suit certain shaped dresses because I’m ‘top-heavy’ according to an episode of What Not To Wear that I watched when I was twelve. And I’m not alone.

This year I have gone through bouts of a no-weigh detox, cramming the rickety old bathroom scales behind the sink and therefore out of easy grasp. After years of obsessively imagining the fastest ways to dissolve any and all of my body fat and reshape my silhouette into a lither, leaner version of myself, I have moved my focus to different pursuits. I’ve worked instead on keeping on top of the washing-up pile and speaking to my family more often. I’m not saying that this will stick, I know that some days the insecurities will seep through, but the appreciation for my body has grown. For now anyway.

The body positivity movement, formed out of a need for joy and gratefulness in a time of filtered perfection, has allowed for more diversity in the images that we are broadcast daily (although, not nearly enough). Social media accounts that defend ‘all bodies of all sizes’ and embrace what the media has deemed physical flaws clutter my feed instead, and have taken the size zero places of fitness accounts that used to taunt me. Instead of clawing at the dimples on the tops of my thighs, I have learnt to allow them a place on a body that moves and breathes and lives. A body that likes to dance ferociously in the kitchen to Meghan Trainer and curl into impossibly awkward positions to finish the last chapter of a book. The aspects of my body that I never see in online campaigns — the silver stretch marks travelling across my hips, the constellations of moles and freckles on my arms, the spilt port birthmark on the back of my neck — are things that I never organically hated, but was just taught to despise every time I looked at photoshopped images of Kate Moss or Bella Hadid.

I covet the bodies of these women — the Victoria Secret Angels, the Lana Del Reys, the Alexa Chungs of the world with their perfect hair and beautiful wardrobes — but I forget that it takes time and money and hired help to achieve this. I don’t have the money anyway and would much rather spend it on holidays or gig tickets, and my time is much better spent video calling my sister or hiding under the covers on a Sunday morning catching up on Saturday Night Live. It’s not an impossibility to transform my body this way, but it’s also not my priority. The impact of exercise and diet on a person’s mental health is well-documented, and I applaud the people who strive for a certain body shape and are able to maintain it in a happy and healthy way, but I’m not that person. And I don’t think I ever will be.

The idea of a picture-perfect, productive lockdown was a fantasy; a fallacy broadcast by the companies waiting to sell us resistance bands and the influencers paid to peddle appetite-suppressing shakes. I have not failed the year by not sculpting my abs, if anything I have won by merely existing. In the grand scheme of things, a dress-size or an increased grocery bill is nothing compared to the sadness and trauma of a year inside. And those trolls need to learn that.