It’s all fun and games till your jeans don’t fit…and “SADLY” for me, my genes don’t fit.
Protruding glutes, curvy hips, thick thighs, and muscular calves are the cards I’ve been dealt through genetics, so why is it that these features seem to be the very things that I can’t seem to fit into my jeans. My body is a mix of my African grandmother’s broad hips and thick thighs and my European grandmother’s muscular calf’s and broad shoulders. I’m not short either and living in Asia the past very year I often feel that I tower over most of the people around me.
I have always had quite an “athletic” build and over the past few years have gained weight over my broad frame and I have found myself struggling because my genes don’t seem to fit into the society driven image of what I SHOULD look like. I have struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember, always wanting to be smaller, more toned, more defined more “mainstream” and when my jeans don’t fit I go into a state of panic.
I have recently been struggling with a new wave of weight gain, not like any previous episodes which were brought on by growth spurts, expected side effects of medication or gradual “up-sizing”. This episode was brought on by sheer neglect, I got too busy with everything else I didn’t see it coming. BAM!!! 20kg/44lbs more than I was, just like that…
Well, it wasn’t really just like that, I ate my way through breakups and then ate my way through long nights of trying to launch a new business, then ate my way through filling the void that was left when that failed. I didn’t just eat my way through the lows, I ate when I was happy too. I happily got to know my husband over numerous dates many of which involved our mutual love for food and cooking all this unmonitored eating coupled with a shift in my daily schedule, a shift in my priorities and a lot of traveling and moving added up.
It added up over time, and as each month and year went by, it added up, stayed on and here I am, my jeans don’t fit.
This was me in 2016, the caption when I posted this was “Week 1, 3kg down, more to go”… 
Me trying to fit in to my “easy go-to” jeans.
I know that the “obvious” solution is to get a new pair of jeans because I can never get new genes, but in that realization lay my biggest problem, that it really wasn’t about the jeans not fitting, it was about my genes not fitting in.
Even though with some searching through the plus-size racks, I could find jeans that fit, “upsizing” would always make me feel ashamed of who I am; a curvy, overweight, broad-shouldered, “athletically built” 30’something-year-old, who had always wanted to be smaller, even at my smallest.
These thoughts about my image have haunted every waking hour for as long as I can remember, from the daunting task of finding something to wear each morning (a task that has become even harder as now it is coupled with the task of finding something that still fits) to my every meal, every shopping trip, every fitting, every day at the pool or the beach, every time I cuddle next to my husband or strip down to take a shower and catch a glimpse of my naked reflection… really, to be honest, these thoughts about my body image, haunt every moment I spend doing the things I love to do, and taint the joy that they ought to bring.
I have become a girl who cries all too often because I can no longer fit into my favorite jeans… but now I realize that I cry because my genes don’t fit into society’s ideas of what is beautiful.
So why do I care so much… How have I allowed images of “perfect bodies” and society’s perceptions of what is attractive to control and haunt me to the extent that really what I have begun to detest is who I actually am?
My hope this year is that I can learn to love my body, to be kind to it, to listen to its needs as focus on keeping it clean, healthy and active so that I can enjoy the beach, the cuddles and the glances in the mirror with gratitude for all my body does for me, knowing that I am good enough even though my jeans don’t fit.
Stay Amused.
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