No matter what time of year it is, you do not have any obligation to change your body. Your body is great just the way it is and deserves love, appreciation and the freedom to be flaunted in public without scrutiny.
Unfortunately, each season is weaponised as a new opportunity to shame people for not fitting, or working towards fitting, into a very narrow spectrum of idealised body types.
That spectrum of what is acceptable is considerably smaller for women, and shrinks again as intersections like race, age and sexuality come into play. It’s a standard only the tiniest proportion of people could ever achieve let alone maintain healthily.
That’s because most of the noise around changing your body is not about health. If it was about health, then the fluctuation of our body weight throughout the year wouldn’t be condemned as a cardinal sin.
In Summer we are shamed for lacking the ‘Summer Body’, ‘Beach Body’ or, for women, ‘Bikini Body’, and in Winter we are shamed for not working towards it.
It’s a never-ending cycle of guilt that the health and fitness industries in particular capitalise on, because our guilt creates their profit.
In winter, the staple promise that altering your body is the key to making you happier is coupled with the impending threat of having to expose an unkept ‘Winter Body’, to sell you things. Be that a gym membership, a diet plan, or an exercise regime – these businesses rely on your body anxiety to make money.
But while it’s hard to believe, in the face of all the exploitative and social body-shaming, it’s really, really, very OK if your body changes during winter.
It’s cold! Your body is working harder to keep you warm – so you feel like eating more, your appetite changes, getting out of bed to go to an exercise class is a whole lot more unpleasant, and none of those things make you undisciplined.
If winter is a time when you gain weight, you are not alone. The need to reach and maintain our ‘peak’ physical condition eternally is an empty fantasy, and one that does not allow for the changing priorities and situations we face throughout our lives.
While acknowledging my own privileges as a white, able-bodied woman, it’s a bitter pill to swallow when the gym warns me that after winter “you’ll either come out the other side ahead of the pack or scrambling a month before summer hits.”
We are not in a competition. We are allowed to gain weight and not be the particular size or shape that’s considered our ‘full potential’. We are allowed to stay cosy in the winter and do whatever the f**k makes us feel good.
Regardless of the time of year, you should never be shamed for your diet and exercise choices or the way that you look.
Now, please enjoy this wonderful, body-positive jam, ‘Thunder Thighs’ by Miss Eaves.
