Simone Reddington

Last week, I experienced something that, as a society, we have been conditioned to believe is one of the worst things that can happen to a woman.  When trying on a pair of denim shorts in a high-street changing room that I thought were my size, I discovered that they were too tight.  This must mean that I have gained a bit of weight and therefore ruined my life. 

Obviously, I am being sarcastic as weight gain is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of at all.   However, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t bothered by it. Like nearly every single woman I know, my relationship with my body image is not simple. Although I have never been fully satisfied with my physical appearance since I was a very young child, I have never considered myself to be fat.  Since going through puberty as a teenager, I have always fluctuated between a UK size 12 to 14 which is considered to be a medium size by most clothing retailers. In my teens and early twenties, I felt social pressure be thin and have a conventionally attractive body shape to suit the male gaze and to comfortably wear bodycon dress and skinny jeans, which were very trendy in the 2010s.  However, as a girl who loves her food and whose traumatic experiences in school P.E lessons left her hating physical exercise for years afterwards, I never did anything to drastically change my body shape.  I would occasionally waste money on a gym membership that I’d quickly cancel as I could never be bothered to go, or tell myself that I would go on a diet once I ate all the chocolate in my snack drawer before heading to Tesco’s confectionery aisle once again to turn to comfort eating when I was stressed/sad/bored.  

It was during lockdown when I completely changed how I viewed my body.  Like a lot of people, I was comfort eating more than ever during those unprecedented times and I certainly wasn’t being very active.  However, as the news reported how the virus was killing thousands of people every day, I finally started to give my body the kindness and respect that it deserves for keeping me alive and healthy during a global pandemic.  While I still advocate for being as active and healthy as possible, I no longer felt guilty for indulging on a chocolate brownie if I fancied one, and I simply stopped wearing skin-tight clothing that I didn’t feel comfortable in if I bloated after enjoying a meal. Life was simply too short.  I would be lying if I said that I don’t feel any envy whatsoever when I see photos of Dua Lipa’s washboard abs on Instagram, but I don’t let those feelings bother me and instead remind myself that I am extremely privileged to have access to nearly any food I want, and to be able-bodied with no serious health conditions.  I wouldn’t tell somebody who was bigger than me that they should be ashamed of their body, so why should I allow myself to feel that shame? 

At the end of last year, I found myself unintentionally losing a lot of weight. I had started a new job in a popular local restaurant, which was much more physically demanding than any other hospitality job that I worked in.  During the extremely busy festive period, I would be rushing around on my feet for over 40 hours a week, with no time to snack.  I don’t weigh myself, so I can’t provide a figure of how much weight I lost but I could fit into size 10 clothing for the first time since I was in school.  Around me, some of my other colleagues who had worked there a lot longer than me were also losing a lot of weight.  However, they were not dropping the pounds simply from working hard; they were also taking weight-loss injections.  These self-administered ‘skinny jabs’ contain medication such as tirzepatide (known as Manjouro) and semaglutide (known as Wegovy or Ozampic), that were originally designed to treat people with Type 2 diabetes.  They work by helping the body to release more insulin, which regulates our appetites and makes people feel full for longer.  Since 23^rd March this year, Manjouro can be prescribed for weight loss to people in the UK with a BMI of over 40 by a medical professional.  

However, the people whom I know are taking them aren’t clinically obese, nor do they have any health problems.  They were already slim, and they were buying the medication from unlicensed sellers to quickly lose a dramatic amount of weight, essentially starving themselves.  Not only is selling weight-loss injections in the UK without a prescription illegal, but it is also incredibly dangerous as the products have not been verified by a medical professional.  I found it depressing when I listened to my colleagues boast about losing a stone within a week, or how they could fast for days without eating any food. To me, their lifestyle choices appeared to be a socially approved form of eating disorder as they seemed to forget that food is a human essential that provides us with the fuel that we need to survive and should not be treated as a sin.  The popularity of these skinny jabs shows that society has unfortunately rejected the ‘body positivity’ movement, which celebrates all shapes and sizes, and reverted to the toxic diet culture of the early 2000s that promoted being thin as the only way to be viewed as attractive.    

Although my weight-loss was completely unintentional, I do admit that being around people who openly spoke about taking weight loss medications did make me succumb to diet culture.  I didn’t count calories or how many kilograms I weighed, but I religiously tracked my daily steps on my Apple Watch (which I still do) and occasionally skipped a meal if I didn’t feel hungry as I was curious to see how much weight I could lose.  I would get such a kick out of seeing my slimmer stomach when I showered and I genuinely felt more attractive than I had in years.  The irony, however, was that nobody else saw me when I felt so good, as I spent most of my time during the festive period wearing an unflattering work uniform.  I am proud of how incredibly hard I worked last December, as I regularly worked 6 days a week, and took minimal breaks during my 10 hour shifts. I joked that I might as well pay rent to my manager as I spent more time at work than I did at home, which I didn’t mind as I don’t have a lot of friends or family outside of work to socialise with, and I also had my eyes set on a promotion in the new year.  On one rare day off work, I went Christmas shopping and chose a glamorous size 10 outfit to try on in a changing room. I had no intention of buying it, as I didn’t have an occasion to wear it, but I felt so excited that I could see how much weight I’d lost. I envisioned my first weekend off work in 2025, where I hoped to show off my slim frame and impress my friends who I hadn’t seen in ages by telling them about my promotion. 

However, the promotion never came and my first weekend off was a huge disappointment. I went for an afternoon bottomless brunch in Newcastle with a group of friends whom I have known for decades but no longer have anything in common with.  I couldn’t find anything in my wardrobe that I wanted to wear, as all my party frocks were too big for me.  The food and drinks at the venue that the group had chosen were completely overpriced and then to top it off, one of my so-called ‘friends’ made a sly dig about me still working in hospitality several years after graduating from university and nobody had my back when I defended myself.  I left the function early and felt like crying on the bus home.  The next day, I went to the pub with a couple of colleagues in a bid to make myself feel better, only to overhear one of them slagging me off which made me feel even worse.  Kate Moss may have once infamously stated that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” (which she later publicly regretted saying) but ultimately losing weight didn’t make me feel any happier, nor did it earn me any real respect from the people around me.  

In the six months since that dreadful weekend my mental health has not been great, and I have found myself returning to my old comfort eating habits.  I’m not working as many hours because the restaurant isn’t as busy as it was during Christmas. It therefore didn’t come as too much as a surprise last week, when the size 10 shorts that I tried on in New Look changing rooms felt too tight around my waist.  I haven’t put on a dramatic amount of weight, as the clothes that I already own still fit me and I don’t appear any bigger when I look at myself in the mirror; but I can’t help but feel like a failure.  In the past year, I haven’t made any advancement in neither my professional nor personal life, so dropping a dress size did feel like my biggest achievement.  It especially feel more embarrassing when, everywhere I look, everybody else has continued to lose weight from taking the skinny jabs.    

However, in the grand scheme of things, is putting a bit of weight on that much of a big deal?  I would much rather be able to enjoy delicious food than pay a considerable amount of money to inject myself with drugs that would make me feel sick if I was to eat a normal adult sized meal.  Our bodies are not fashion commodities, to fit in with the latest trend.  We need to look after them so that we can live, love and grow in them. Weight-loss jabs may be the big trend now (causing a shortage of the medication for people who genuinely need them), but it wasn’t too long ago when women were risking their lives for Brazilian Butt Lift surgery to achieve a curvier body shape. We simply cannot win as capitalism always ensures that that toxic diet culture is maintained in all areas of society.  Manjouro and Ozempic are just the latest in a long line of products designed to make a CEO somewhere very rich by trying to make another generation of women miserable about their bodies.