Didn't we do this already?

A brief hello

Hello! If you’re reading this, you probably subscribed to a previous version of this newsletter on tinyletter and, given that I haven’t written anything for four years, presumably you’d forgotten that this newsletter existed.

I’ve now moved the newsletter and the archive to Substack (and created a slightly less blurry email header) with the plan to write at least somewhat more regularly. If you subscribed a while ago and no longer want to receive ramblings from me at irregular intervals then I completely understand! There should be an unsubscribe button at the bottom of this email but if not, simply reply to this email and I’ll remove you from the subscription list.

For those of you who are new, I’m Claire and emotional whiplash is a newsletter where I write about the things I think which are too long for a social media post and the things I like reading, listening to, and watching. I don’t have a posting schedule or a paywall, just too many thoughts!

The return of skinny or my complicated feelings about body image

[Content warning: this section includes discussions of weight, body image, diet culture etc - take care of yourself if these are sensitive topics for you. Please also note that I am writing as a straight-sized white woman with all the privilege that entails.]

Like many people, my body increased in size during the pandemic. This is undoubtedly a combination of many things: getting older, moving less, not training for any major races, and the stress induced by a global pandemic not to mention a minor health crisis and subsequent operation in 2021 (I’m fine now, fibroids suck). I kind of thought it would change back once the crisis had passed but it never really has - I’m just bigger now than I was before. Which is something I can know intellectually to be fine but yet still struggle with on a daily basis.

I’ve been on a long journey with body image. I grew up in the 90s when diet culture seeped through everything, particularly when you’re an insecure teenage girl. Whilst I never had an eating disorder, my relationship to food and exercise as a teenage was definitely disordered - avoiding eating, going to the gym every day, doing hundreds of sit ups because I wanted a flat stomach like Britney Spears. Things got better over time - I was still a calorie counter and avid gym goer in my early 20s but not to the same extent. It wasn’t until I took up running and triathlon the year I turned 30 that my relationship with my body started to change - I started to focus on what my body could do and the types of food I needed to eat to ensure I could do all the big challenges I was taking on. No-one ever got through a marathon or a century ride with just water and an apple!

It also helped that the culture had changed quite dramatically since the 90s (not dramatically enough it turns out) - much as I dislike the Kardashians, they were one of the driving forces behind the increased popularity of a curvier aesthetic. The rise of social media platforms like twitter (RIP) and instagram also made it possible to hear from a much wider range of voices and see a wider range of bodies. Not least, it made it possible for me to learn the term diet culture and to start to understand why I had felt the way I had about my body despite being very thin for pretty much my entire life. The work of body positivity activists, diluted as that term has now become, enabled me and many others to think in new ways about the ways we’d been taught that bodies should be.

As with many things (racial justice, women’s rights, the rights of queer and trans people to exist) though, we seem to be in a moment of huge backsliding - the hard won “progress” seems to have just been a mirage. The launch of drugs such as ozempic, originally designed to treat diabetes but now lauded as a “cure” for obesity, has turbo-charged this return to fetishing and demanding thinness. I’m not a huge consumer of celebrity culture but I’m struck by how tiny Ariana Grande is in the press tour for Wicked and how unaccustomed I’ve become to seeing impossibly tiny women everywhere in the press.

At times over the last few years, I’ve simultaneously been proud of myself for how much more healthy my relationship with my body had been become and ashamed of myself for wanting to be thinner, despite how much I’ve learned about the science of body size and weight loss. But the truth is there’s no way to not be sucked back into this diet culture vortex - it’s everywhere from the Wicked press tour to the friend of a friend who’s lost a ton of weight after taking ozempic. And for me personally, it’s so hard to resist the siren call of my brain telling me “well you’ve been skinny before, you barely used to eat and you were fine, you just need to have more willpower”. Which is a pretty ugly thought to have on a loop in your head.

I don’t know where we go from here - I have to hope that it’s just a fad albeit an incredibly harmful one - but if you’re struggling with this shit too you’re not alone. I did look at a photo of myself at 18 the other day and think “I don’t want to look like this again” which is progress of a sort. As difficult as my relationship with my body is at the moment, I’m proud of the weights I can lift and the miles I can run/bike/swim - and I know that’s a better investment in my future health than starving myself to hit some arbitrary number on the scales. The truth is that being thinner doesn’t equate to being healthier or happier and I really wish that people could get their heads around that rather than suggesting weight loss as a cure for everything.

For more on diet culture and body positivity from the POV of those in larger bodies I recommend the work of Stephanie Yeboah, Virginia Sole-Smith, and the Maintenance Phase podcast amongst others. There are so many people out there with more knowledge and lived experience than me who are discussing these issues.

Cool stuff you should check out

Things I’ve been reading:

I’ve read a lot of good books recently but this newsletter is already too long so here’s one serious and one frivolous recommendation from the last month or so:

• The Shoulders We Stand On by Preeti Dhillon

This book does an incredible job of summarising some of the key anti-racist movements in the UK between the 1960s and the 1980s, telling stories that are seldom told not just about the Black and brown people who were involved in these movements but about the deep institutional and societal racism levelled at them. I finished this book a month ago and am still thinking about it.

• Consort of Fire by Kit Rocha

A verrrry different tone here! This is a romantasy book about a dragon god, the princess who’s required to serve as his consort, and her girlfriend who’s a trained assassin. It’s a great, fast-paced read with absorbing characters and a lot of smut - if you like fantasy books but wish they had (lots) more sex this is the book for you!

Things I’ve been watching:

Supacell (Netflix): a really incredible British sci-fi drama, following the stories of a group of Black South Londoners who find out they have supernatural powers. The five main characters are all strikingly different and the first series mostly follows their individual journeys, weaving their stories together subtly to bring us to a grand finale when our heroes finally come together. I finished the end of series one last night and am still a little shell-shocked by the ending (in a good way) - I’m very glad this is one of the few great sci-fi shows that Netflix haven’t cancelled after one season! [No, I have not forgiven them for cancelling Kaos or Half Bad or Lockwood & Co…]

Things I’ve been listening to:

Vibe Check is currently my absolute favourite podcast, combining culture, politics and unapologetic Black queerness. The three hosts (Sam Sanders, Zach Stafford and Saeed Jones) are friends in real life and it really shines through in every show - a true model of how to hold space for those you love. I’ve been a fan of Saeed’s writing since he was at Buzzfeed in the 2010s and his poem on the show’s first episode following the US election was electric. The show is topical so you can dive into the most recent episode without needing to listen to the back catalogue but I’ve linked to some of my favourite recent episodes below:

• Democracy TBD: a post-US election reaction episode featuring the amazing poem I mentioned above
• One Hell of a Contradiction: a non-politics episode where the hosts recommend some of the works of art and literature they turn to for inspiration
• Hey Sis with Morgan Parker: an interview with poet and writer Morgan Parker whose most recent book I am dying to read

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading. I promise not to leave it four years before writing anything else!