I am a monkey that draws ninja cats

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

"There are no mountains in Saskatoon."

Source

and like. do we have to keep gently phrasing things to protect naturally-thin people's feelings. in my life it has never been fashionable to be fat. "fat" is still a bad word. there has never been institutional power pushing people to gain weight; no trillion-dollar industry to "fix" skinny people. a larger body type has never been over-represented in models, influencers, celebrities. sure, people might say "i'm worried for your health," but they do it with respect and gentleness, like they're talking to a scared deer.

every single fucking time i talk about this, i have to be so careful with what i say, in case i offend even one skinny person. it is just true that skinny people have social capital across many cultures. there is a reason you almost never hear someone say "i wish i was fat," but you will constantly see people say "I wish i was thin." and yet inevitably some skinny person will tell me: i thought you wanted body positivity. it is the same fucking attitude as when a cis man says "when you say men have power, well, i've been bullied for being a man. i thought you believe in mental health awareness. don't you know men have a higher suicide rate?"

two things can be true at once: your experience being bullied for being thin was terrible. and people with larger bodies probably have it worse.

i have been big and small. i know many other people who have been big and small. trust what i'm about to tell you: being small is much easier. the world is kinder to you. people treat you better. honestly, this pattern occurs pretty much regardless of gender - my guy friends have confided that they'd rather be bullied for being thin than be bullied for being fat. if you're skinny, the pressure might be to gain weight, sure, but it's often to do so in a way that keeps you skinny - to gain muscle, specifically.

thinness is seen as innate and natural, genetic. whereas carrying any fat - that is a moral failing. it is assumed to be related to your character, your personality. i have seen people equate it to discipline, to hygiene. that bias is why we need to talk about this.

I know some of you get tired of me talking about this, but when we talk about eating disorders and disordered eating, the conversation and connotation is almost exclusively on women. And absolutely-- certain types of disordered eating are generally more likely to affect some genders over others.

But ALL genders are being affected by this-- now more than ever before.

As I have pointed out before, over the last 10-20 years, there has been an extensive rise in the absurd expectations over men's bodies to look more and more sculptured. For 16 year old boys to have six-packs.

The Marvelisation of masculine bodies are absolutely going to kill people, and we need to address that.

This is still an eating disorder. This is still disordered eating, even if it's so-called 'bigorexia' versus anorexia.

Please remember that we are bags of mostly water and a handful of chemicals. It serves one purpose-- to give you a physical form as you go about your short life on this tiny little water planet. Destroying your body so you can fit into absurd standards that someone just invented is utterly absurd. Damaging your body so you can fit into this size of clothing or have that fetishised image just hurts you.

eating disorders kill. disordered eating-- ANY form of disordered eating-- kills people.

Try to be as healthy as you can be, but starving yourself to fit into a 00, over-eating and over-working out so you can look like a marvel character-- this will absolutely destroy your metabolism and will cause you very severe issues later in life.

I was a model. I was forced into disordered eating and pills because they were trying to force my body to look small and child-like. Which--side note, yes, we absolutely need to ask ourselves why we keep making people look so waif-like that we can wear children's clothes and be confused as children in our 30s and why society finds that specific body type attractive!!!!!!!!!!. why is someone looking so small and CHILD-like attractive? yeah, there's something going on there that people do NOT like to talk about but we need to.

I NEVER had as much attention from people wanting to date me or sleep with me as when I looked like I was 12 years old because of disordered eating. I was in my 30s-- but all the people leching after me had no idea about that. And yeah, absolute lechers.

I am now 'enjoying' the consequences of this in my later life. For example, constant blood tests and doctor appointments monitoring organ failure and being on a waiting list for a couple of new organs. The pills they gave me and the restricted dieting for so many years destroyed my metabolism but also several of my organs and my system at large. My heart isn't doing great, either.

I have been informed by doctors that I will probably die before I hit 50, and it will be a miracle if I hit 60 because I have so much internal damage to my organs. And that's actually not that far away. I am in my 40s. I’m already suffering quite a lot because of this, doctors have warned that it will get much worse. I take a dozen different medications just to keep my body functioning as best it can right now.

And one of the biggest reasons for all this organ failure? yeah. All the diet pills and restricted eating when I was younger.

And the likely-hood of me getting organ transplants for ALL of the organs I need in the time frame I need them? VERY unlikely. And whatever time I have left, I am living a very disabled life-- in part, largely, because of all of this -- and getting more disabled every day.

So i'm begging you. Stay off the steroids, stay off the diet pills, the restricted eating, the protein powders, ozempic shots, all of that shit.

marvelisation is just as serious disordered eating as more traditionally recognised eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, and it can be just as dangerous.

talk to nutritionists and doctors whose primary concerns are HEALTH and not a certain body type or size. ALL forms of disordered eating are dangerous, and all forms of disordered eating can kill. Please, please get help if you are struggling with disordered eating of any kind.