Maybe...
Dear Diet Culture
Maybe it’s not your body.
Maybe your clothes suck.
Maybe it’s marketing & diet culture.
Maybe your body is beautiful as it is.
Maybe it’s not you that hates your body.
Your voice would never be so cruel.
A poem: Dear Diet Culture, I'm breaking up with you. Fuck your advertisement. You sell the dream well, and I believed you when you said my body was supposed to be smaller, that my hunger was making me stronger—just eat the damn salad. Fuck the scale. I don't need to "lose" the weight to impress someone I used to know from some other day, some other year, some other me ago. I will no longer shrink myself, waiting for someone else to tell me my body is worthy of love. And fuck your sweet, false promises. Sometimes, they're all I ate in a day, convinced that my body was too much yet never enough. Choosing you meant losing me. But now it's time I choose myself. When I look in the mirror, I only see my body reflected back. The mirror does not tell me what I'm worth or who I am. It doesn't tell me who I love or who loves me. It doesn't tell me how my body is home or how it carries me still despite years of abuse self-inflicted from the battle that raged in my mind. I hope people see you for what you are: a grifter, a swindler, promising happiness if we sacrifice our bodies to diet after diet after diet. You give nothing but self-hate and leave destruction in your wake. May we all wake up one day and bid you adieu. As for me, this is not a sad goodbye. This is a hallelujah. This is a freedom I forgot existed. This is me taking my body back.