I don’t know if I’ve mentioned my body dysmorphia in another post - probably one about originally feeling sympathetic to dysphoric people because I believed them to be similar OCD conditions. But yeah I have that, and constant intrusive thoughts about looking deformed or fat, which must be relatively under control, because I’ve never done anything too drastic… anyway boring.
I have very low self-esteem related to my appearance and have felt this way since the age of five. Any negative comment is blown out of proportion by my stupid brain. Comments like “Oh, you’ve come up short. I expected you to be tall” - from my tall-obsessed grandad - I’m 5’6” if you’re interested, so no midget. “Are you sure you’re wearing that outside today? Your legs and stomach look big {complete with ‘wide thigh’ hand gestures}” - from my mum when I was 12 and under attack from puberty. These weird expectations were placed on me to be tall and athletic with long gangly legs even though most of the women in my family are short to average height and have big arses and calves, and fairly big shoulders.
It’s a struggle to accept yourself with these comments - my mum is constantly nasty about other women’s shapes, so even though my family is a cankles family, I still find it hard to accept I’ll never have nice tapering legs and feel disgusted.
I hate dresses because they’re inconvenient, and hard to find a good fit because I have stupid J-cup comedy tits, that my family think are hilarious, so it was ‘brave’ (for me, with my loony issues) to wear on a hot day to meet friends. In waddles this woman, my online ‘friend’ who we’ll McVacant-Face, who invited herself because she can’t tell that no one really likes her.
McVacant-Face is about 5’4” and obese (six sugars in her tea) and frequently makes self-deprecating jokes about looking like HMS Belfast and other large ships (any more blunt comments and she’ll end up with the same fate as Titanic. Shove, Sploosh, get in the sea).
When she saw me in person for the first time (after nine-ish years of knowing her online), she gasped and looked me up and down, shocked at how I’m “so much bigger than she expected.” I’m not entirely sure she meant ‘big’ in a fat way, because she seemed most shocked at my height… which as mentioned is… 5’6”. Above the British average yes - and I do wear a lot of clothes from the tall range - but no one has ever called me tall, so this reaction was over the top and made me feel uncomfortable. What was I supposed to say? “Surprise, I’m not a midget!”? She stood there just stupefied, looking at me for what seemed like 30 seconds and repeated that she expected my head to be below her shoulder, like a child. Even as others spoke to her, she glanced across, mouth open, as if I am 6’5”.
So now I was feeling like an awkward giant (I’m already physically awkward). The giant feeling was not helped by being near my other friend who is about 5’, with a tiny little frame. I have a much bigger skeleton than her and that’s okay; she’s a different ethnic group to me and that’s the way we’re built in our respective races. I’d never been bothered by this before, but McVacant-Face’s surprised-yet-gormless expression suddenly made me feel like a big behemoth; an absolute mastodon and all my delusions started bubbling up.
If McVacant-Face had simply said, “Oh, I imagined you to be short like [other friend],” that would have been fine and I’d have moved on immediately. But as I was walking away, I heard her say to a third friend that she can’t get over how different I looked; how she imagined me to be small and petite. Then later, she raised it a THIRD TIME, just looking at my body like a slack-jawed moron.
And it was hot and I always forget to drink enough, so I had water retention and swelled in the heat. In my mind, I’m this large pachyderm who can’t get to the mud in time. All the time, I had these intrusive thoughts about how disgusting I must look and that I should just starve myself into oblivion, and go on the cross-trainer for four hours a day. Then there were the rational thoughts saying ‘fuck what she says, she’s awful and you don’t even like her,’ but OCDs like body dysmorphia often overpower rationality and it becomes a battle of wills with two parts of my brain.
Then all the photos we took on that day confirmed my worst fears - it wasn’t a delusion, I did look elephantine; my comedy boobs dominating, my body seemed to be behind my friend and simultaneously in front, like cake mix overflowing the tray, the floaty sleeves of my dress giving the impression of blue paisley bingo wings and my limp sweaty, fuzzy hair making my small face look like a moon-like greasy circle of cheese. I begged my friend (not McVacant-Face) not to post them online and she promised not to, but later, McVacant-Face saved them from the group chat and posted them, the cunt.
Later I moaned to my friend H - my first TERF friend who came up with a theory. (McVacant-Face annoyed H to the point of unfriending her, which resulted in McVacant-Face phoning and writing to her house like a creep). H said her comments were because she is a condescending bitch who - because I am much younger than most of this friend circle - has always infantilised me as a way to dismiss my opinions and tries to out-knowledge me on my special subjects. A ‘little girl who knows nothing’ sort of thing. And she was shocked to find out that I’m a full-size adult, taller than her and not this skinny little bimbo ‘doll’ that she imagined. I don’t know how McVacant-Face developed this image of me anyway because she’s surely seen many other photos where I’m standing with my average-height friends where you can see that I’m only an inch or two taller - unless she thinks I’m mates with the seven dwarves.
So, I’ve spent weeks trying to get over this. I don’t know how to stop blowing people’s comments out of proportion, but she did mention it three times with dumb amazement… that’s rude and that’s on her.