Does size matter?

This post has been sitting around in my drafts for nearly a month now, and I've rewritten it about 3 or 4 times, and even considered deleting it. However, I think it's a topic I need to talk about. Does size matter? And not in *ahem* that way. I'm talking weight and clothes size. Perhaps the reason I've been so reluctant to post this is because I've always been so embarrassed of mine, and tried to hide how incredibly insecure my size makes me, but in truth -

I have always had a love/hate relationship with my body.

There is no dancing around the subject, sometimes I look in the mirror and really hate what I see. All I can see is how big I am, and how wobbly everything is, and that there is absolutely nothing I like at all. But then I have good days, when I look at myself and think I look hella fine, and wouldn't change what I see for the world. So what is it with my bipolar feelings towards my body?

Can I blame the media for indoctrinating me into thinking 'thin is in', and that the only way I'll be loved by others (and even love myself) is to be able to squeeze into size 8 jeans? It's true that these magazines post toxic stories, of how celebrities have 'let themselves go' and are suddenly now a 'huge' size 10, or 3lbs too heavy to be seen as socially acceptable. Has this convinced me that society won't accept my size? The truth is, I can't remember being a size 8 since I was about 15, and my body has changed a lot in those last 5 years. It's not that I've let myself go, it's more that my body has grown up, and has become a lot less forgiving after a week of terrible eating and poor exercise.

I don't think that my lifestyle is too unhealthy. I generally tend not to snack too much, I eat a fairly balanced diet, and would say I get moderate exercise from walking a lot. I'm hardly a fitness fanatic, I don't make myself protein shakes, and go to the gym, but I certainly don't sit on my arse everyday and gorge on chocolate and takeaways non-stop. So why do I feel like my body is punishing me for enjoying life, and food, and all the comforts I enjoy? I love to eat. I'll admit that sometimes I can eat portions which are far too big for me, and binge eat to the extreme if I'm in the mood, which thankfully isn't that often. However, I can also have days where I'm not really hungry, and can go the whole day on something as meagre as a sandwich. I don't spend all day everyday sitting around doing nothing, I have a fairly active lifestyle, so why aren't I any thinner? I think it's pretty simple, I don't try to be any thinner. And really, why should I be?

I'm fed up of feeling like I'm too big to be accepted, and that I need to cut the tags out of my clothes so people won't see what size I am. In my eyes, I have a fairly healthy lifestyle. I'm not going to deny that it could be a lot better, I could do with a bit more exercise in my life, but I think that ultimately that's it. I should be more concerned with whether I am healthy, than if I am thin, because I'm beginning to think that these are two completely different concepts.

Maybe thin doesn't equal being healthy and being fat doesn't equal being unhealthy.

Maybe it is quite possible to suggest that I can be perfectly 100% healthy and not look like a Victoria's Secret model. I could be this healthy and still be fairly large, in the same way that I could binge eat to my hearts content and be stick thin. Life can be cruel, but I have to make the best of what I have, and work with my body, not against it.

This is my body and this is who I am. My size doesn't not reflect who I am as a person, and it shouldn't be a measure by how much society should accept and love me. Sometimes I do have to remind myself to stop punishing the vessel through which the rest of my life will be lived, because it has to see me through until the end, but it is tough.

Therefore maybe it's about time I take some advice from my favourite drag queen, Rupaul -