The funny thing about weight loss is that it's the one type of loss people get really excited about. Generally speaking, if you’ve lost something you then have to experience a series of negative follow-up emotions, ranging anywhere from the inconvenient rage of losing your keys moments before you were set to step out the door, to the paralyzing emotional process of learning to live without someone. Of course, there’s a range of negative loss emotions between those two: Losing your job isn’t necessarily as painful as losing your spouse, but the stages of grief that follow aren’t actually all that dissimilar. Losing your credit card may have less severe implications than losing your passport, but the lesson you learn (and grief is all about lessons) is exactly the same. And before you say that losing your keys for more than five minutes doesn’t require a grieving period, I ask you: Have you ever really lost your keys?
The point is, there’s typically no expectation that weight loss will be mourned, or grieved, or really thought of as loss at all, except for maybe weight loss that comes as a result of illness, and even that might get you a “congratulations” from someone who doesn’t know any better. Most of the time, losing weight is a cause for celebration, a reason to feel good about yourself, and maybe even sorry for other people who couldn’t do what you did. Sometimes, I do a fucked up little exercise in my brain where I imagine weight loss narratives being applied to other types of loss.
I lost my grandma, and I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t.
I lost my keys because I found SoulCycle.
I lost my job, and the only reason anyone else has a job is because they didn’t switch to high raw vegan.
I’m aware these are false equivalencies (they’re my private lil’ brain exercises), but they do make my larger point clearer, in a way:
To lose something is mostly never good, unless the thing you’re losing is weight.
I recently got a reminder of this when I revealed to my Instagram following that for whatever reason, I’ve started losing my hair. I’m not talking about a little bit of late-thirties all over shedding, either: I’m talking big ass bald spot at the crown of my head, plus some other small but pesky supporting spots in various locations. I don’t know why my hair started falling out — at this point, all I have are suspicions and doctors appointments.
I suppose since I first realized I was losing my hair, I’ve gone through the typical stages of grieving. When I noticed the initial bald patch (much smaller than it is now), I assumed I’d done something totally normal and accidental, like ripped my hair out in my sleep or burned it off with my shitty hair dryer without noticing. Of course, that was denial, and as the spot and then spots got bigger, I tapped into an emotion I am intimately familiar with and got fucking pissed. Suddenly the hair falling out of my head was the cause and perpetuator of all my life’s problems, each strand exacerbating my frustrations at work, my sense of post-pandemic loneliness, my life-long depression. Fuck those fucking fuckers, I would mutter at the wisps clotting my hairbrush, then immediately feel bad because I thought maybe the dogs thought I was talking to them. Then came the bargaining period, where I bought expensive supplements and treatments and reached to doctors and talked to one of my very best friends who has alopecia and is truly the one person in the world who I believe when she says “It’s just hair!” I suppose I’m still in that period, though the depression stage has certainly arrived, and with such force that I finally stopped letting my regular low grade depression stubbornness talk me out of getting a therapist.
To lose something is mostly never good, unless the thing you’re losing is weight.
And throughout all of this, I keep coming back to the same thought: How different would this experience be if instead of losing my hair, I was losing weight? What if I woke up every morning with a sad little nest of pounds on the pillow, and instead of more of my skull being exposed, you could see my ribs? What if instead of styling my hair differently to hide my hair loss, I was adjusting my clothing to show the fresh new lines and curves of my body, previously ensconced in fat? If my fat was melting away as rapidly as the hair on my head, how many people would kindly tell me they were sorry this was happening to me? Would anyone on the planet send me links or resources on how to get my fat back again, despite the fact that just like my hair, it’s been with me my entire life?
The answer, of course, is no. Losing weight is exempt from the grieving process, and in fact comes with something of a celebration mandate. Maybe that’s why on top of everything else, the siren call of the motherfucking Wegovy whispering to me from my fridge on a shelf it shares with my various hair treatments feels so unsettling and unfair. On the left, I have a collection of pungent oils and tinctures, the recommended treatments that will supposedly, in time, reunite me with something I’ve lost. On the right, I have four long, beckoning plastic fingers with subcutaneous needles for nails, the recommended treatment that will supposedly, in time, help banish a part of me forever.
And there I am, just standing in front of the fridge with the door open, not totally sure what I have left to lose.
Read part 2 next time, here in fat hell.
I love this newsletter so much. I often have had the same thought, except about weight, or heft or whatever. Like a heavy bar of gold, or the solid weight of a nice piece of crockery, whatever, rarely, except with the female body, does weight = failure/horror