What Do I Really Look like?
Trigger Warning: This article mentions weight loss, weight gain, and relationships with food.
What do you see when you look in the mirror? Are you sure it’s accurate? Do you like it? Is there anything you want to change?
I have been several different girls (and women) throughout my twenties. The woman I am right now happens to be the smallest I’ve been since 2018. At each stage of my life, I’ve experienced different types of treatment based on my appearance: the state of my skin, my hair, and my size (depending on my geographic location). Now, having achieved what I believe is complete self-awareness, I understand that being Black and a woman, regardless of where you are in the diaspora, everyone will have an unsolicited opinion about the way you look.
I recall that during my early years, many of the clothes I received or was given had to be adjusted because I was so small for my age. I didn’t think anything of it until one day, around the age of four or five, I was trying on clothes for my mom to see how they fit. One skirt hung so loosely on me that my mom, out of frustration, exclaimed “Why can’t you just eat? Like all the other children?” If it wasn’t obvious, I didn’t like eating very much. Now as an adult, I know it stemmed from a mental aversion to the texture of onions, a staple of my mom’s cooking. But at the time, for parents who were doing everything possible to make ends meet, in an area where one just had to look out the window to see hungry children, it must have been hell to deal with. Thus began my tumultuous relationship with food.
© Folabomi, Childhood
My family and I ate dinner together every night, and I was always the last one at the table because I struggled to finish my food. Most nights, I wasn't allowed to leave the dinner table until I did. It’s only in recent years that I learned to listen to my body’s alerts, knowing when I’m full and can simply save the rest for leftovers.
I went through puberty at a surprisingly early age—it felt like my body transformed overnight, both exciting and terrifying. At 9 or 10 years old, I found myself in the body of a young woman, and everywhere I went, I felt it. During a family trip to the U.S., my mom had to chastise two older male waitstaff who were apparently staring at me inappropriately (of which I was unaware). From then on, I started paying closer attention to how I was treated, and it began to feel as though my body was the only relevant part of me. Following this experience, my parents, out of concern, began taking extra measures to police what I wore in ways they didn’t with my leaner, less curvy sisters. While they intended to protect me, it left me feeling somewhat ashamed of the way I looked.
When I was 12, I felt as though I liked my body enough, I assumed thin but slightly curvy was a beauty standard I managed to meet. But when I went to a boarding school in Nigeria, I was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of girls, all different shapes, colors, and sizes. I realized that while I was the “right” size, my shape didn’t fit the conventional mold. Coupled with being an undiagnosed neurodivergent person, I became an easy target for relentless bullying. I began to wonder whether or not I was as attractive as I thought.
Photo Credit: simplehappyart via iStock
When I was 15, I moved to the U.S. to finish high school. Relocating brought about a whirlwind of changes, including an uncontrolled diet but I picked up ballet and a few sports and had a massive campus to walk around. For the first time in my life, I gained some muscle. I loved how it felt, how my clothes fit, and how my friends constantly told me how beautiful I was. However, I was surrounded by people who didn’t look like me and I was reminded, that I fell short of the beauty standard once again. When I went home to Nigeria for holidays like Christmas and summer vacations, the comments from relatives started. They would say things like, “You’re putting on so much weight. Be careful so you don’t become fat like me,” and “Folabomi, is this you? Thank God you’ve finally put on some weight.” The weight in question? I went from being a size 0 to being a size 4. Wild, right? The thing with Nigerian beauty standards is that no one will ever meet them. You can be just slim enough or just curvy enough, have flawless skin and someone will still tell you what you can do to look better.
Fast-forward to my freshman year in college, I found myself on a large, diverse campus and I felt beautiful. However, a traumatic event during the fall semester left me sedentary for most of the time, and I quickly put on (and exceeded) the dreaded “Freshman fifteen.” The realization of my weight gain didn’t dawn on me until I returned home for the holidays, where seemingly everyone felt compelled to comment on my changed physique, except my sisters.
Standing in front of the mirror, I took a good look at myself and didn’t think that much had changed, everyone was just being dramatic. As the months passed and the spring semester of my freshman year started, my health went downhill. I seemed to fall ill at least once a month, culminating in what doctors described as “a terrible case of pneumonia.” My appetite fully disappeared for weeks, and I had to force myself to eat at least an apple and some yogurt daily.
Upon my return home for the summer, my father burst into tears because I was extremely thin. Stepping onto the scale revealed a whopping loss of 40 pounds from my weight during the fall. While I tried to enjoy my weight loss, my body felt weaker, my jeans were loose and it seemed like all my friends were fuller-figured with curves in the right places. I proceeded to put some of the weight back on the following year and maintained it until the pandemic hit, and I became sedentary once again. I was the largest I’d ever been and didn’t even realize it till all my clothes were suddenly too tight. I had a friend Facetime me once and tell me I needed to “grow my hips,” I refused to take pictures of myself, feeling disconnected from my body. Whenever I went out, I made a conscious effort to avoid looking in mirrors. Catching a glimpse of my reflection, had the power to ruin my entire day, as the sight only ignited a profound sense of disdain for the person staring back at me.
© Folabomi, July 2023
After I completed my graduate degree, I moved to New York and felt like everyone was thinner than me, so I started going to the gym and fell in love with weightlifting. My weight was always on my mind, even when I actively wasn’t thinking about it. Once, I was cuddling with an old boyfriend, he laid his hand on my stomach, and suddenly tensed up. “Did you just suck in your stomach?” he asked me. We both laughed it off, but I hadn’t even realized I’d done that. In the summer of 2023, I attended a friend’s birthday celebration with five other girls. All five girls were a size 4 or smaller, while I was pushing a size 10. Feeling self-conscious but not wanting to be a buzzkill, I posed for pictures alongside them, and a random group of strangers stopped to watch us. One tapped me and said, “You have really beautiful friends.” I went home shortly after.
Until late 2023, I found myself grappling with the same 10-pound fluctuation that had persisted for some time. It was then that two pivotal life changes occurred: a diagnosis of pre-diabetes, and I lost my job. My life changed completely in the following months, I lost 30 pounds and am back to a size I haven’t been since my freshman year of college. And yes, once again, my well-meaning father worries that I’ve lost too much weight.
© Folabomi, February 2024
I used to think losing weight and being able to shop more easily would make me happy. However, even after losing 30 pounds, I still struggle with several of the same insecurities I had before losing the weight. I still hate having my picture taken, unless I can control every aspect of the process—, the angle, the lighting, and how I suck my stomach in just right—I end up hating pictures of me. My body shape has always made me self-conscious as I carry more weight on top than on the bottom. My weight loss meant the loss of the glutes I’d worked so hard to build, and thus the vicious cycle began again.
A truly bittersweet part of this process is I notice how differently people treat me, except my amazing friends. In the past, men used to let doors slam in my face, but that doesn’t happen anymore. They don’t wait until no one is looking to approach me. The type of people who show interest in me on dating apps is… different. People are just kinder to me and while it’s nice to be treated nicely, my heart breaks for who I was last year because she deserved to be treated nicely as well. The main issue, however, is that I have no idea what I truly look like. Depending on who’s taking my pictures or who I’m spending my time with, I feel like a different person. Does anyone else not know what they really look like?
