00:00Tell me I'm fat?
00:01Girl, I call myself fat every day, what do you mean?
00:03If you have something to say about my body,
00:06I'ma let you know right now, I literally don't care.
00:09I literally, I can't be bothered.
00:12All that energy, you could have taken it
00:14and gone to medical school and gotten a PhD, but you didn't.
00:16You're here shaming me.
00:18I feel happy when I look in the mirror.
00:19I see strength and I see progress and I see beauty.
00:23It's not easy being a black, fat Muslim, divorced,
00:27definitely not privileged in a marginalized body basically.
00:30When I look into the mirror, I feel like a queen.
00:34I feel like a drag queen.
00:36I feel like Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga all mixed into one.
00:41I love my big cheeks.
00:43I love my thighs.
00:45It's difficult sometimes getting them in some jeans,
00:48but look, as soon as it hits 75,
00:52that tank top and that shorts is coming out.
00:55You're going to see the thighs, you're going to see the arms,
00:57you're going to see everything.
00:58My hips, well, they're hidden now, but they're a little wide.
01:01And sometimes, you know, I knock kids over.
01:03I, you know, knock glasses off tables, but it's okay.
01:06Also, I love my eyes.
01:08You know, I have like dark brown eyes that are very expressive
01:11and I like those too.
01:13When I used to look at my stretch marks,
01:14I used to feel embarrassed by them and just,
01:17they were really triggering to me.
01:18And now I just look at my body in a sense of,
01:22with a sense of just respect for it and just understanding
01:24and just saying to my body when I had some health issues,
01:28instead of my body giving up on me, it stretched for me instead.
01:31And my booty.
01:32I like that too.
01:33I mean, people think that we can't exercise.
01:36We can't hold plank positions.
01:38We can't go a flight to stairs.
01:39We can't run.
01:40We can't have like a healthy sex life.
01:42There's so many different things that people think big bodies can do.
01:46And sometimes in certain situations, big bodies can do it better.
01:49Okay.
01:49Fat bodies are constantly under attack in the meat of fat black bodies.
01:54I'm not just fat.
01:55Like I, I've been this way for a long time.
01:58And you know, um, I have been in this fat black body my whole life.
02:03There were diet, I was on diets.
02:04I was counting calories.
02:07Like I, but they got to a point, honestly, you know, in college,
02:11a little bit after college that I was like, I'm over this.
02:15I don't, I'm good.
02:17Like my doc says I'm good.
02:19So I don't know what the rest of y'all are worried about.
02:22Um, I remember going to the doctor and my doctor had asked me, um,
02:25well, what medications are you on?
02:26And I named him all the medications.
02:28And he was like, those are far too many medications.
02:30You're only 19.
02:31Um, like you need to get your weight together.
02:32And with my own personal experiences, um, in college, I gained a hundred pounds.
02:36And so, um, I was dealing with a lot of anxiety, depression.
02:39I was in a really bad relationship that everyone's body is different.
02:42Everyone's body can handle different things.
02:43And I know many, um, plus size women who, um, do not have health issues.
02:47So I don't want to make it seem like that's everyone's experience.
02:49But my body was literally telling me, this is not okay.
02:52And we're not happy with where you are.
02:54I want to give myself a fighting chance to, you know, live.
02:58Black culture has defined like how, how I see and how I view my body,
03:02especially now with the manufactured body look,
03:06there's definitely this thing of what's the right kind of curve
03:10or like what's the acceptable kind of curvy body.
03:12And we talk about thick and people, you know, that desirability.
03:16When people say they want a thick woman, they're usually talking about
03:19someone with a slim waist, flat tummy, maybe a little pudge,
03:25thick thighs, big hips, and a big, you know, bust area.
03:29They say they like big women, but they ain't liking the big women
03:32that are not what I described earlier.
03:35Women that don't have no fat in their stomach.
03:40In the black and brown community, we, um, we're not careful with the way that we speak
03:44to our children about their bodies.
03:46My father actually has an eating disorder, especially having a black man,
03:49like having an eating disorder growing up, just the conversations that he would have with me,
03:53they were a little graphic.
03:55Um, he would say things, you know, like, you know,
03:57you gotta, you gotta lose weight.
03:58You can't be a big girl.
03:59Big girls gotta give head.
04:00Big girls gotta give it up.
04:01Like, so you can't be a big girl.
04:02Um, and for me, I realized like later on in life that, um,
04:08that he wasn't trying to body shame me by any means,
04:10but just because he had had really horrible, ugly experiences growing up.
04:14I tried for so many years to basically squeeze myself into this box of what it is to be a
04:20good Muslim,
04:20what it is to be a good fatty, what it is to be a good black person.
04:25And at a certain point, especially when I got divorced, that was a turning point.
04:28I was like, for 10 years, I tried to be this person and you're still not happy.
04:34What's on the other side of fear is greatness.
04:36I worked so hard, so hard internally to bring myself to a point where I'm able to even look at
04:45myself
04:46and actually touch my stomach and feel my rolls and hug myself and to really like feel myself
04:54and really embrace the parts that I hated of like about my body for so long.
04:59So I am my own body. I do.
05:01Honestly, the healing and the getting to a better place with my body, that's for me to do.
05:05It's not for anyone else to do despite the trauma, despite the things that I feel.
05:09Um, it's up for me to heal myself.
05:11So I don't have to be having this conversation with my kids 20 years from now.
