Every day, in obvious ways and ways that are less explicit, comedian Sofie Hagen is told to lose weight — but she wants to continue to talk about her body.
In a post to her Facebook page, Hagen wrote that we need to talk about her body as it is — not how it came to be, or what she needs to do with it to lose weight in the future.
"I am too fat for a lot of things — I point out that a plane seat is so physically painful that it is cutting off the blood supply to [my] legs, I get asked to lose weight," she wrote. "When I go to the doctor and ask for the contraceptive pill because I just got a boyfriend, I am asked to lose weight. When I am unable to go to any clothes store and buy a t-shirt that I can fit, I am told to lose weight."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Hagen pointed out that fat people aren't allowed to live in the present, instead being made to "be constantly preparing for the future, in which you are hopefully thin."
But it's time, she said, that we talk about her body as it is, in the moment.
"I have been on a diet since I was eight years old," she wrote. "That was when the first school nurse told me that I was wrong. That my body was wrong. Public service announcement: No bodies are wrong, especially little children’s bodies."
That's why Hagen wants to further the message that our bodies need to be accepted as they are.
"If you are fat, you are constantly asked to not be fat," she wrote. "And if you cannot do that, then you have to at least be in the process of not being fat anymore. Meaning that today is not ours. Today is a waiting room. We do not get to breathe or laugh or fuck. Because it will all get better in Just Six Months."
Her post makes an excellent point — if you are considered overweight, many people believe you need to be actively working on changing your body. Instead, she said, it's time we stop buying into the notion that our value is tied up in the size of our bodies.
"Please, take up space," she advised. "Right now. Right here. Today. In your body as it is."
Read these stories next: