I’m tired of talking about my body. It seems a very strange thing to declare because I am often perceived as transparent, but I just reached a point where I became tired of talking about my body. I think about my body often and I perform spoken word pieces about it. It is all done in an effort to relate to other women and make men aware of the depth of our insecurities but honestly, I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY BODY!

When a woman larger than a size six—maybe even a size ten in communities of color—talks about her body she is forced to make excuses. Women of a certain size have to jump on the defensive and spend a lifetime explaining their bodies and convincing others to find it acceptable. Women of a certain size have specific hashtags as a disclaimer to pictures of themselves indulging in regular ass every day activities. Selfie = #CuteintheFace, full body pic = #FluffyGirlsNeedLoveToo, bathing suit pic = #ThickThighsSaveLives. Well, here’s a personal message from myself and my thighs: we are not here to save you! I am not fluffy, I am not a ball of fat that should have to refer to myself as such, I am a person.

Several years ago I wrote I Hereby Submit My Resignation As Advocate for Plus_Sized Women and I meant every word of it. Since then I put it out of my mind and made a decision to care the least amount possible because in the grand scheme of things I don’t want to be the poster child for body positivity. Cheers to the amazing women fighting that fight, but it is not mine. I am not strong enough to be a contender in that fight. My weight is a result of all the big picture shit I would rather speak about. My weight is ovarian cysts, stress eating and depression, two babies, hardly any time to exercise and/or too much time sitting on my couch staring into space willing myself to LIVE. My weight is naked, staring into the floor length mirror forcing myself to look, it’s catching my breath when instructed by deep voice to take off all of my clothes. My weight is my body, it is me and it is personal. At a certain point on this very personal journey, I decided not to care and to stop oversharing about it all the damned time. I decided not to nitpick, talk down or degrade myself any more than society and wack ass shallow people already do.

I watch social media, I know the popularity of Instagram models and memes shitting on women who fall outside of the “acceptably pretty spectrum”. I have been the recipient of comments about my body – it is bullshit perpetuated by weak ass men and most of the time I refuse to show that I am bothered. But please know, I.AM.BOTHERED! I am angry because I know the truth. There are men out there who have physical preferences in their mates and want nothing to do with a plus-sized woman, but eighty percent of you niggas do not care. Eighty percent of you punks care too much about the opinions of others and you like to make women feel bad because you know you bring nothing to our table. You are egotistical, cowardly and just one of the reasons I feel so unprotected and betrayed by you. The faces of these light-skinned women with “perfect” bodies and curly hair are not the faces of the women who have raised you and held it down for you. Miss me with the “black queen” nonsense if you are only praising a certain type of black woman because there’s something in your corny ass nature that makes you think you need to condescend to us to make yourself feel better.

What I am never going to do is allow myself to be treated as less than a person over size. I am not the middle school girlfriend sworn to secrecy because she’s not popular or pretty enough. As far as I’m concerned I am the trophy—I am too busy to text you, I am working, I am raising children and making moves while you’re touching yourself on mom’s couch and posting memes about plus-sized women you cowardly pieces of shit!

Miss me with the black don’t crack beauty standard. Miss me with the expectation that my booty must be big and my tummy small, I have shit to do and worrying about your sexual attraction to my body is not IT! If size is becoming an issue of public humiliation on social media then by all means let’s throw down the gauntlet. Please post the grey sweat pants picture so I can insert laugh emoji and comment about your small dick print. If size matters and we want to make a thing of it then all women should post every single dick pic they’ve ever received and let the chips fall where they may. Even still, why are we wasting our time with short, beardless men with no hairlines?

If size matters, miss me with the oh so creative “wyd” and “you up?” texts if your dick is the size of my daughter’s number 2 pencils she uses for school. If it matters, where is your gym membership or better yet, where are your balls? Where are they and why won’t you use them to stand up for your women instead of shitting on us because we go against the grain of what sheep wish to worship. Are we all truly this weak and shallow?

I’m tired. I’m exhausted from the knowledge that I may never reach my full potential because I don’t look like what people want me to look like. When I go the gym I am angry and rebellious because I don’t want to be there for them. I have to go because I am seeking healthier ways to deal with my mental anguish but I don’t want to give in to the ridiculousness that is the constant shaming of my body. I reject it, I hate it and it is a struggle every day not to hate myself. Let that be mine—let that be personal. Let me hate ME, I don’t need it to come from anywhere else. In my darkest moments I hate me the most—and it’s true for a lot of us. So…just leave us alone.

It is a very unique experience to live in a world where men are constantly in your face, your DMs and your phone telling you you’re beautiful, wanting every piece of you, touching you and tasting you then denouncing you in public for the very things they claim to love. It is very damaging to face abandon from men in relationships, to endure lies and deceit while wrestling with hating everything about myself. Rising from the ashes to be strong is not an easy feat when the fire is still a scalding simmer. The pressure on black women to be strong, to be knocked down and to rebulid, to avoid shitty men and their careless intentions, to wear our hair the right way to work or to dare feel sexy while avoiding being sexualized and degraded and talked down to or even, worshipped—it is all E X H A U S T I N G. Please, if you can’t build us up, just let us be.

And as for my FUPA—my “fat upper pussy area”—I don’t call it that. I call it Naomi. It is me, it is mine and I hate it in my darkest moments but I rise above hating pieces of myself. I have to love all of it no matter how difficult it is for me. If you have a problem with that you are a piece of shit and I will go out of my way to call you out as such. If my size matters, so does yours and you are a very small, limp-dicked and sorry individual for going out of your way to make yet another woman– who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders for you, and life in her womb—feel less than worthy because her body doesn’t match the measurements of your favorite porn star. Women are real. Women exist to be more than your objects of sexual desire and if this realization bothers you, the solution is to literally go fuck yourself.