Losing weight is so difficult and my mentality makes it even harder for me to do so. As an African woman I have always believed that being curvy and bigger was a good thing, African men like that and even though I see these images thrown at me by the Western world to be skinny or to look a certain way. I always had this sense of comfort knowing that African men will want me because I'm bigger and curvier. So this post is on my experience and how my views have changed this idea I've grown up with.
| Try to get me...if you can by Luca Faedda May 16 2009 CC BY--NC-SA 2.0 |
I went back to Zimbabwe in July 2014 and it was a huge contrast to when I went in 2008. Even though things are better now than they were then in terms of environment and financial situations. I realized that in 2008 my figure was celebrated and I felt more comfortable as a big girl than when I went back in 2014. I'm not saying everyone was skinny and there were no big girls in site, but I guess I was more self-aware about what people said and how people viewed being bigger. When I went out whether it was going to dinner, shopping or clubbing, I noticed a real shift to the fashion and the way of being for youth into a more Western, African American type of feel.
Reading this short article on size in Africa it asks the question, Does size matter in Africa? Now this was written in 2006 and I think I would have agreed in 2008 but now that Africa is becoming more Western, this is starting to change. Women are now wanting to lose weight and fit into the new way of being. Now I'm not saying this is a bad thing because it's important to be healthy. What I'm saying is that security that I had about being big and African is gone and instead of relying on others to determine my size or to use being African as an excuse to stay big is gone.
Now more than ever, I rely on what I think is healthy and losing weight is not to fit society standards because this seems to change frequently and beauty or attraction is in the eye of the beholder.
This idea that many big African Women have that being big is what African men want and therefore we shouldn't worry about that, is wrong in my opinion as well as feeling like we need to lose weight because now African men want Nicki Minaj lookalikes is also incorrect and damaging to us as African women. We should stop relying on African men to determine our beauty and our health and look within and take care of ourselves. #FightingtheFat
Tell me what you think? Is this just my opinion, please share your experiences.
