I am working on a post about my relationship with my body. I am trying to find the words to talk about something I refer to by two names: a) big black girl syndrome and b) thin lipstick girl syndrome. ‘Big black girl syndrome’ is a term I learned from Shope Delano who is one of my favorite humans in the blogging space. Both terms refer to the same phenomenon of wanting to be smaller, thinner, make my body physically take up less space- but for different reasons. Big black girl syndrome comes from the feeling that I experienced being a black woman in very white (lol) spaces where it felt like I was hypervisible. I felt like I was too noticeable, took up too much space. In the time I felt that way, I weighed so little that winter winds would literally blow me off the ground- like I struggled to not be carried away by a gust. Thin lipstick girl syndrome comes from a feeling that I got as I became more comfortable embracing my femme-ness. (The road to embracing that will likely come up as a post on its own) I think somehow for me, especially in the space of queer, hetero-passing femininity, I started to equate femininity with a certain aesthetic that was very much informed by size 0, high cheekbones, 24 waist, white women. I felt like that was the ultimate beauty/high femme, and honestly I’m still struggling with that. Both resulted in my desire to be thinner and thinner for different psychological reasons, neither of which were healthy. I will figure out how to write about that for next week, I hope. So stay tuned.
I hope you are well, and I hope this year is good to you. I hope you are kind to yourself. Catch you all next week.
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