Quarterlife Diaries: ‘Weird that others can pay so much attention to your body while you're not really focused on it at all’

In Quarterlife Diaries neem ik je wekelijks mee in alle dingen waar ik als bijna 30-jarige tegenaan loop. Om mijn hart te luchten vooral, maar ook om iedereen die samen met mij in het Quarterlife-bootje zit een hart onder de riem te steken. Je bent namelijk absoluut niet alleen. Deze week: when your body changes.

I used to be a huge twig. I wasn't very interested in food and although I did eat normally, I had a limited taste and generally ate a lot of the same things. Fortunately, that's different now, but as a child, that meant that, in addition to my skinny build, I also stayed very thin. Other kids teased me about the fact that I wore size 164 for ages, while they could already wear women's clothing, and I jumped for joy when I saw that my feet were finally big enough to no longer have to shop in the children's department. Kids can be terribly mean to each other. They often made me walk through small passages in class, then made a big deal out of the fact that my ‘chicken arms’ and I fit through. I begged my mother to let me wear long sleeves to school, even in the middle of summer. Just in the hope of reducing those comments a bit.

As I got older, I didn't mind it as much. Suddenly, I reached a point where I liked everything and I discovered that I could eat whatever I wanted. However, it was regularly concluded that I must have been exercising a lot, otherwise I couldn't possibly look like that. I didn't mention that at that point in my life, I had never set foot in a gym. Not that I cared what people thought of me, they had a harder time with it than I did. Once, I was called in by my mentor because they suspected at school that I had an eating disorder (which I didn't) and my terrible ex would often say that I looked like someone who ate one cracker a day. Yeah, nice guy.

It's strange, isn't it, that others can pay so much attention to your body while you're not really thinking about it at all. That changed when I got my first job. I had just moved out on my own and was somewhere in my 20s, an age and life stage where you suddenly can't eat everything without experiencing the consequences. I hadn't quite realized that yet, until my (female) colleague suddenly exclaimed: ‘Wow Sophie, you're really putting on some weight, huh? I saw you walking away and thought: she's getting a butt!’ So incredibly inappropriate. I remember walking to the bathroom after that comment to look at my body in the mirror. Where then? I thought. And is it never good enough?

From that moment on, I started looking at my body differently. I did see it changing, but my colleague's comment insinuated that it was something to be concerned about. The first time I thought I was fat didn't come long after that. When I look back at photos from that time, I spontaneously burst out laughing. All I see is a healthy girl of 26 at most size 38. Nothing fat about that.

By now, I think I'm about twenty kilos heavier than I was ten years ago. That has to do with various things. Partly hormonal, partly because I ate for way too long as if there were no consequences, and partly because I just don't know what works for my body. And you know what, that's completely okay. I notice that now that I'm turning 30, I'm finding more and more acceptance in being who I am and in the fact that it's very normal for your body to change with you over the years. Maybe I'll even gain a bit more or lose some soon, but your weight, clothing size, and waist circumference will always be changeable. What doesn't change is how you treat other people and how kind, fun, and thoughtful you are. Take it from me, that's a lot more important than chicken arms or a nice butt.