"Talk Like Tara": Reclaiming My Image

I am about to turn 37, and it has taken me the past year to begin healing a body image I’ve held on to since I was twelve years old. The “spur to prick the sides of my intent” was having a daughter. I saw the young woman I was, the young women my students are becoming, and the girl my daughter is and deep inside me erupted a rage against the unrealistic beauty standards of our world. I had never been one to shy away from a good diet tip or miracle cure for fatness, and if it came in pill form, I was in. When I really delve into my diet-obsessed teen years and early adulthood there are five momentous ways I gave in to thin culture.

1. Restrictive eating: In high school I ate a vitamin, a cup of juice, a juicebox, a granola bar, a supper supplied by my parents, and I splurged on PB and crackers with pepsi for a nightly snack. I now recognise this for a food obsession that requires help. And I wish I’d had THIS article about restrictive eating when I was going through high school.
2. A PH diet made of powders and pills: When I moved to NYC a friend introduced me to some magical powder stuff that made you thin. It did, but mostly because it wasn’t real food.
3. Wild American-approved weight loss pills: When I lived in NYC I had access to weight loss pills that revved up the process, not available in Canada. I tried a few. They all made me sick.
4. “Clean Eating”: Ha! I went for a different restrictive eating in the aughts and I tried vegetarianism and then veganism to restrict my calories.*
5. Obsessive exercise: I did this for about a decade, in the name of health! Hours of each day were devoted to working out, and if I missed a workout I obsessed about it. 

At 33 I couldn’t do those things because I was pregnant and then caring for an infant. I discovered how great it was to just eat food and exercise in a comfortable way. At the same time I mourned my restrictive pre-baby body. It was around the time I was 35 that I started to see little ripples in society about body acceptance and fat shaming. I realised I’d rather be a role model for my students and my daughter instead of someone who only focuses on the shell.

I was embarrassed as I learned about body acceptance because I discovered that my reluctance to gain weight had put me at the top of the shamers. I had become the body shaming persona of those who tormented me in school and in the media. I fully take the responsibility for my own self-image. Still, I know that my body image issues stem from junior high school, a time when your body becomes the most picked apart thing in your world. Being smart and quiet and fat meant I was a target for bullies, and I never stood up to it. Here are a few formative moments to my self-loathing.

1. Chipmunk: Many boys screamed this at me in the halls for three years because I had chubby cheeks. I did not like the attention.
2. The guy behind me in grade eight: He was awful. He kicked my chair, said awful things, and the worst was the time he wrote me a note asking me to date his friend. This was a common tactic for merrymaking among these sorts of boys. Guys like this liked to write notes to the chubby girl and laugh when she accepts the big joke date. Laughing at a girl who doesn’t know her place was a fun game for them. The burning shame of that one stays with me.
3. “Talk like Tara”: I didn’t talk much (because I tried desperately to not bring attention to myself), and I had a slight overbite. Slight. But, in an effort to bring attention to these supposed flaws JB, a boy in my grade eight class, would yell out: “Talk like Tara!” and then stick out his upper teeth over his lip making an exaggerated overbite. It was like a cheer, all year long, and all the boys, and some of the girls, would follow along, making the exaggerated gesture.
4. Shave your legs: It was the 90s and I lived in New Brunswick with little access to beauty regimens. So, in grade nine when I broke out the jean shorts for the first time that June (a happy sign summer was on the way) the boy next to me pointed and said: Eew! Don’t you shave your legs?! I deadpanned a reply, looking down at his hairy legs: Don’t you? This might sound wonderfully feminist for a clueless 13-year-old, but I was serious in that moment because I had no idea that I was supposed to shave and that he was allowed to stay hairy. Mortified, I got a razor the next day.

These are the experiences that show us it is most important to be thin, beautiful, small, pretty, and cute. When I went to high school, I’d grown a few inches, naturally dropping some of the fat. I became invisible to all those taunts. In retrospect I realize this most likely had more to do with going to a bigger school, being surrounded with great friends, and enjoying my studies than how I looked, but years of being the ugly, chubby girl had a lasting impression. Determined to hold on to this new growth spurt look of mine, I would spend the next 18 years trying to keep that body.

And then at 35 I gave up (or, started to). I thought: why am I doing this? Why do I care so much? And how can I fix this for my daughter and my students? I started seeing things online about body acceptance, I read posts on FB mom groups about body shaming, and I learned about fat acceptance. Then, I started to read. I read and read and read. And now I can’t stop.

Here are my top six favourite books that sent me on a path to retrain my brain and accept my body. I’m not there yet, but I am working on it.

1. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
2. Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West
3. Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing by Jennifer Weiner
4. Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit
5. Sex Object: A Memoir by Jessica Valenti
6. Dietland by Sarai Walker (Verena, please put ME on The New Baptist Plan!)

My favourite go-to blog for body acceptance is “Dances with Fat” by Ragen Chastain.

My favourite instagram accounts to follow to help retrain those images in my brain are:

1. @bodyposipanda
2. @brittanyherself
3. @effyourbeautystandards
4. @themilitantbaker
5. @the12ishstyle

My favourite documentary about body positivity is Embrace by Taryn Brumfitt.

I’ve discovered a new purpose in my thirties, and that is instead of finding new ways to diet, I need to find new ways to love my body, and I hope to help others accept theirs. If the narrative changes, so that instead of being told there is only one way to look and to act and to be, won’t we do our children one better than the way we grew up? Admittedly, I am a work in progess, but that’s okay.

This is a post for those who’ve stayed silent when people make destructive comments about their body because we think we deserve it for not being the standard, and because there doesn't seem to be an alternative. There is a better way, and we need to retrain our thinking to move forward. I’d like to reclaim JB’s “talk like Tara” refrain to be one of body acceptance, because I’m not going to shut up about it.

​*I am no way saying these aren't legitimate food choices, but I tried it to be thin.