Shh… no body talk
I'm not demonizing the desire to feel hot, but oftentimes that trails a lot of body talk centered around thinness.
I’m back!
I missed you all. Thanks for sticking around while I navigated some personal things last month. It means a lot. Let’s dive right in.
This week, I was at my usual Pilates class, but the air was charged with that energy that comes with every new year in a fitness setting: Palpable desires to get hot. I’m not demonizing the desire to feel hot*, but oftentimes that trails a lot of body talk centered around thinness.
(*Note: For me, feeling hot is not synonymous with looking a certain way. It’s feeling healthy, strong, confident. Which is really hot.)
Within minutes of sitting down on my reformer, I overheard the women next to me talking about how much weight they want to lose this year. An unexpected “I want to lose 30 pounds” can impact everyone differently. Maybe it washes right over you as white noise. For me, it snapped me out of a body neutral headspace.
Now I was thinking about my body in terms of pounds, and how much space it takes up, and how much space it should take up.
It was easy for me to bounce back from, but that isn’t the case for everyone. And these flyaway comments about our bodies from a purely weight-based standpoint happen all the time, but especially in the new year.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to lose weight, as long as you have a healthy relationship with your mind and body. But we could all stand to be more self-aware when it comes to the ways we talk about weight in our daily life.
It’s not always as overt as someone in your workout class proclaiming how much weight they want to lose. It could be mentioning a friend or acquaintance and sprinkling in a physical qualifier. “She’s so cute! So sweet and so tiny.”
It could be wondering amongst your friends if someone (a friend, a celebrity, doesn’t matter) is pregnant because their body looks different. It could be the way in which someone describes how much they need to workout, not for their mental health or even their physical health, but that more insidious undertone, because they need to be thin. Or because “they have been eating so much.”
It could even be a compliment—”You look great, did you lose weight??”—whether overheard or directed at you.
It isn’t a simple ask, to be more mindful of the hidden undercurrents of the way you talk about yourself or other people in the context of their body. I was raised at a time when Slim Fast was shilled to the masses like Ozempic is to Hollywood, and it requires a lot of conscious rewiring (and therapy) to remove the subtext of weight loss from everyday chatter.
But you don’t know who might overhear you, or who might be secretly struggling with body image themselves. And so this is just a reminder to decenter thinness from your body talk.
The $1,800 facial. Injectables are like the basic, archaic cousin to new skincare treatments that treat your face like clay that can be manipulated to stay forever young, so long as you’re willing to drop hundreds and thousands on the latest non-invasive ways to lift your face. I remain deeply anxious by how casual and mainstream these treatments are becoming, if you can afford them. The amount of money we spend to keep our flesh full and doughy in some places and taut and hollow in others haunts me. The question remains — at what point are we allowed to age? Allowed a wrinkle? I have some and they’re not so bad.
Consumers report infections and deformities from med spa injections. If you follow enough wellness influencers or reality TV, you’ve likely seen the casual IV bag and a host of other injections promising things like rehydration, healthy skin, detoxification, and even fat-melting. Many of these shots and injections aren't FDA-approved, and the med spa facilities aren’t overseen by federal health regulators.
Nonpregnant women in the US are stocking up on abortion pills. Unsurprisingly, requests for medical abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol catapulted after a Supreme Court opinion draft voting to overturn Roe V. Wade leaked in May 2022. Even more so in states likely to ban abortion.
What gym you should go to, based on your zodiac sign. This is not me declaring astrology a proven or meaningful path to self-discovery on your fitness journey. I just think they’re fun, like when you take a Buzzfeed quiz to find out what sandwich you are and you get BLT because you’re stylish and carry yourself with confidence. Based on this one article, I should try a rock climbing gym, because my sign is a goat, and goats like to climb mountains.
Equinox knows you’re using Ozempic. "There are scenarios where people are either losing weight too quickly, or they're unhappy with their bodies after they've been on the drug for a little bit, or they plateau on the drugs," Equinox club coach Michael Crandall told People. "And that's really where Equinox coaching can help build better habits and teach them what maintenance of weight loss actually looks like." I’m not mad about this strategy, since it’s meeting people where they are and not selling Ozempic dupes in their shop. Yet.
In honor of Dry January, an explainer on why alcohol gives you the runs. If you’ve hunkered down on the toilet after a long night of drinking and experienced the rush of liquid poo, that’s just science.
Wellness influencers that don’t believe in pasteurization: In other words, they want you to take your milk and dairy raw. Paul Saladino, M.D. is one of the louder proponents of raw milk, exalting it as a miracle cure for things like asthma and respiratory infections. (He has a medical degree in psychiatry and is a board-certified physician nutrition specialist who, on his website, states that he can’t give medical advice.) Anyway, pasteurization is a century-old process that helps prevent foodborne illnesses, and while I agree it’s important to minimize how much processed food and drinks you consume with a focus on whole food ingredients, I am anti-salmonella.
January Empties 💞
Or all the healthy & healthy-ish things I’ve been using to the last metaphorical drop or want to try
🦋 Making my way through the OLIPOP flavors and cherry cola is my current favorite
🦋 Very into padded/quilted clothes right now and so when I discovered (read: was targeted on Instagram by) this scarf with a pocket?? Instant wish list. I want to put a book or some puppy treats in there
🦋 Just gifted my mom Joggy’s Joy Stick which she’s been really enjoying as a soothing recovery balm
🦋 I’ve slowly stripped away most of my skincare routine with the exception of Yay For Earth’s sensitive skin face lotion, which does all the things I want a face lotion to do
🦋 Unfortunately, I stepped in such a massive dog poo a few weeks ago that I had to discard of my heavily worn HOKAs. (I’m so mindful of not wasting, but these shoes were lost to the poo.) Which means I just got a brand new pair of the Bondi 8s, which I like to get in the wide style so they’re easier to slip on and off
Thank you for reading this issue of Un/well. This is a reader-supported newsletter and I appreciate you.
Melanie
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Header and illustrations by Olivia Fu