When Community is Toxic

We lionize community. Sometimes we'd be better off without it.

Content warning: diet culture, eating disorders, and fatphobia

You never quite unlearn what 200 calories looks like. You never quite unlearn the vestiges of pride when you can feel your jeans fitting more loosely—or falling off your hips entirely. You never quite unlearn how to ignore your hunger, and how to prize leanness above life. Or, at least, I haven’t. I make very different choices now and I see the world quite differently. But the new ways are an overlay against the old ones, and the old ones never disappear entirely.

I had an advantage though in resisting diet culture that many young women today lack: I never had a community of other women expressly urging me to shrink myself.