For as long as I can remember, I’d been overweight.
As a result, I was always subjected to comments from people, especially family,
Comments about how fat I was,
Whether as a child, teenager, or young adult.
I was always told that I needed to lose weight,
That I was not nice to look at,
And that I would never find a husband because of my body.

Due to a hormonal imbalance,
My breasts got really big.
Too big for a 21-year-old.
And since my lactation hormone levels were high,
My sister would tell mama,
“Don’t buy milk.
We’ll milk her every morning instead.”

My mom: “Do another protein treatment to straighten your hair, it looked nice on you”
Me: “Protein treatments are harmful, they could lead to skin cancer.”
hair, body image, bullying, beauty standards

I just finished reading one of your stories,
About a mother who body shamed her daughter.
My relationship with my mother has been traumatic.
My mother always did the same thing:
She’d make fun of how I looked generally,
Not just my weight,
Even though I wasn’t fat before I got married,
But she always said I looked poor.

Every single day,
People passing me by in the street,
Shout insults at me:
“Blackie!”
“Shikabala!”
“Why’s it dark all of the sudden?”
“Disgusting!”

My cousin came to visit us one day.
“Why does your hair look like a toilet brush?”
he asked me when I opened the door.
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying

I always hated my curly hair.
Looking back at my pictures when I was a baby, I always had this halo of baby hair that looked like I had just been electrocuted.
It was always tied up in a bun or a really tight braid, which caused my hairline to shift back a bit.

I am a curly-haired girl.
Everyone calls my hair scraggly.
Everyone insists that I should straighten it,
But I don’t want to.

I have always been a little chubby, ever since I was a little kid.
I started to develop breasts as a teenager.
The condition I have is called “gynecomastia”, or “enlarged breast tissue in men”.
Although it’s prevalent among men, I was subject to a lot of ridicule from classmates.

When I was in the 7th grade,
My gym class teacher told me in the playground in front of all of my classmates
“Look at how big your boobs are? Are you not wearing a bra?”
She made fun of me and they laughed.
Even since then I genuinely hate my boobs.
body image, bullying