"I am proud | Olen uhke" - Marita Liivak

Marita Liivak

Oil and Acrylic on canvas

130x150cm

It is a type of grief that hides behind your inner bad feeling, when, in reality, I should be thankful for the moments when nothing is "really" wrong – when I am physically healthy. Today, I mourn all these moments as a young teenager when I avoided mirrors because the sight of my body made me nauseous. I probably related to the women around me and their relationships with their bodies.

I was 13 when I started dieting and weight-watching, influenced by my family member and my classmates. If I am not mistaken, my classmate and I even tried eating cotton wool, as it was supposed to reduce appetite. My classmate was inspired by her older sister to become a model. She also took her first headshots for an agency at that age. I was a girl who had grown taller at an early age but wanted to weigh the same as my smaller classmates. I remember that, in addition to weight-watching, I used to bind my breasts with a bandage when I was one of the first to have them. It was so embarrassing to wear the gray and pink bra my mother had bought me, but it was even more embarrassing to see the contours of my breasts under my favorite T-shirt.

I stopped weighing myself when I was 14, and I have never had a scale in my home. Weighing in the last 13 years has taken place in the doctor's office. I came to this solution through understanding: if I feel healthy and happy in my body, then there is no difference in the numbers on the scale.

Except for some isolated episodes, I never restricted my diet in my 20s. Still, I have experienced the happiness of weight loss for ethical reasons after adopting a vegetarian diet. Unfortunately, I must say that appetite loss due to medication or illness has also brought me a moment of joy as my dimensions decreased.

Today, I can usually remain neutral when my friends or family members praise me for losing weight. I understand that they are mostly thinking of their own bodies. Still, it makes me sad sometimes. I empathize with the younger me and all others who experience eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder.

Let me add that I have never been obese or overweight, more like tall and zaftig. But in my youth, I aimed for a body mass index of 17. Still, this spring, at the age of 27, I felt a moment of pride looking in the mirror and seeing that my body had grown. I was proud of regular eating times, taking care of myself, and love.