Larger Than Life

By: Bella Carbone


Confidence is key if you are not going to let unattainable beauty standards and capitalist marketing tactics push insecurities and self-esteem issues on you. This is the reality for women. Now, add being big onto that and whew you’re going to need a supersized confidence boost to withstand the brutal comments and negative emotions fueled towards and/or about your body. The fact that people do not know a single thing about me but have the belief that they can say something about my body to me, especially random men if I do not respond to them, truly baffles me. Like a) I know I am fat I live in this body daily your words don’t remind me any more than my entire existence already does and b) maybe I am just shy but I lack the courage to be an intentionally shitty and mean person if I do not have to be. Blame the American society for shoving cheap, chemical-filled, and sugary food into our throats as our countries in Europe ban ingredients that knowingly harm people.


This brings me to the dilemma that has started from being a big person. We feel hypervisible and we continually think about how much space we are taking up. It is so hard to feel like you do not need to shrink when you are constantly aware of how much space you are taking up. Yet we feel invisible, not physically but emotionally. We feel like our needs and desires are not welcome within society. We are made to feel subhuman, unlovable, unworthy, and gross. Our bodies are put on display without our consent and degraded before we can even begin to be humanized. 


We need people to meet others with compassion and humanity rather than hatred and judgment. Understand that we are all humans with different needs and lived experiences that impact our everyday lives. We need to keep fighting the discrimination that stems from the intertwining of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Our lives do not need to be this way as much of the hatred humans impose on one another is not natural or innate but rather a learned product of our society which is built on systems of oppression.

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