Growing up, my body shouted in a world of whispers. This is the story of finally feeling pretty, not by shrinking, but by defiantly taking up space and seeing myself.
In this world — especially in a woman’s world — prettiness is not just a trait. It’s a form of capital. A kind of privilege that opens doors, softens blows, and makes people kinder without even realising they’re being kinder. Pretty privilege, they call it. A hierarchy masked as admiration.
To be conventionally pretty is to be believed faster, forgiven quicker, protected more readily. It grants softness, even mistakes. You are considered before you speak; assumptions of goodness, delicacy, worthiness precede you. In a society like mine — steeped in patriarchy, moral performance, and aesthetic obsession — this privilege amplifies. Appearance isn’t decoration; it’s currency with a narrow exchange rate.
Slimness. Lightness. Symmetry. Femininity that fits into a particular mould. The further you drift from that ideal — the darker your skin, the thicker your thighs, the louder your presence — the less of that softness is afforded to you. You are no longer “just a girl”. You become something to survive. You are scrutinised. Policed. Mocked. Or worse — made invisible.
And so many of us, especially those who grew up in bodies that challenged that standard, learned early that to exist outside the bounds of “pretty” was to exist at the margins of worth. We were told, often subtly and sometimes explicitly, that beauty was not a right — it was a reward. And it could be withheld.
I grew up within that system. I measured myself against its impossible yardstick. I tried to earn my way into it, spending hours in front of the mirror, pinching the flesh at my waist, arms, and thighs, willing it to disappear. And this is the story of how I found my way out — of how I reclaimed the right to see myself, outside of anyone’s permission or preference. It’s about the first time I felt pretty, not because I fit the mould, but because I stopped shrinking for it.
Growing up, I was always a head taller…
I was always a head taller than the other girls — and most of the boys, too. I didn’t grow into my body; I arrived in it. Even as a three-month-old baby, I looked nearly a year old — a sturdy, well-fed presence like those beautiful Samoan babies people now fawn over on TikTok, their coos and gurgles echoing with life. My infant arms were thick, my cheeks full and soft against my mother’s touch, and even then, a mischievous glow danced in my wide eyes. I came into the world fleshy, expressive, and unapologetically visible.
Genetically, none of this was surprising. My father was a 6’4″ biracial man whose bellowing laugh vibrated through the walls before he even entered a room. He had a brightness that felt warm on your skin — he didn’t just occupy space but owned it with an easy confidence. I inherited this from him. His mother, my Oma, was tall and warm, her hugs enveloping you in a comforting scent of old spices and love. She made you feel held even before the feast of schnitzel, meatballs, and pizza appeared. The women on both sides of my family were curvy and full-bodied. Our flesh is an ancestral inheritance, not an accident, evident in the sway of their hips and the soft weight of their bosoms.
But no one at school cared about heritage. No one explained to the other children that my shape was a lineage, not a lapse. The fabric of the uniform felt tight across my arms and thighs, a constant physical reminder of my difference. The small plastic seats in the classroom dug into my wider frame. The world around me had its own quiet rules about what girls should look like — and I broke all of them. The whispers followed me like a shadow, a low hum of “big” and “different” that I could feel more than hear. Sometimes, the laughter was sharp and sudden, aimed just close enough to sting.
I was called mama before I even hit puberty. Biggie. Orobo. Amazon (derogatory). Each nickname felt like a small stone thrown, chipping away at something tender. I was rarely asked how I felt — only what I ate, if I exercised, if I planned to “do something about it.” Compliments came with disclaimers. “You have such a pretty face…” The unspoken ellipsis hung in the air, the rest of me a shameful secret. And slowly, I began to internalise it. My body — so vibrant, so inherited, the scent of my Oma’s kitchen still somehow a part of me — became something I feared. I stopped seeing it as mine. I started to believe that shrinking it was the only way to be seen fully. Or worse, loved.
But the truth — which took me many years to find — is that my body was never the issue. It was the gaze. The world didn’t know how to hold a girl like me, so it asked me to fold myself in half. And for a long time, I tried.
Yearning, desire and the father-wound
I grew up loved. I need to start there. My home was not a place of absence — it was warm, loud, abundant, with joys I carry with me to this day. I was a child who had love poured into her, consistently, in ways I now recognise as extraordinary. The kind of love that sat beside you on the floor to breakdance after dinner. That brought home steaming packs of jollof rice and chicken from Mr. Biggs or Tantalizers just to see you smile. The kind of love that drove long hours every weekend just to visit a daughter in boarding school — so often, the school security half-joked about whether my parents — specifically my father — planned to move into the compound themselves.
My father loved food, movies, and music as I do today. He let us play with his hair when he was tired, and he let me sing to him like it was the best part of his day. He was my daddy. Not just in the biological sense — but in the soul-binding, heart-defining, this-is-home sense.
And then, on 28 May 2008, he died. A car accident. Sudden. Brutal. Unfair. The world split open that day. It never closed back. Of all the abundant things life has laid at my feet, the one thing it felt cruelly snatched off was him. I haven’t fully healed from his absence. You don’t heal from a wound like that — you just learn how to carry it. You learn to breathe around it. But it doesn’t stop bleeding. Not really.
And yet, what happens when the first man who ever made you feel adored is taken from you — suddenly, violently, permanently. This is even before you understand what it means to be desired by others. I didn’t know it then, but I spent years trying to recreate that love. Not consciously. Not deliberately. But there was a hunger in me — a longing to be cherished with that same intensity, that same joy, that same quiet safety. And in the absence of language for what I was feeling, I reached for the only thing that seemed remotely close to love: attraction.
The first time I realised I could desire, and be desired, something shifted inside me. Puberty arrived with all the fireworks and none of the direction. I had this big, soft body and an even bigger, softer heart. But the world didn’t quite know what to do with girls like me. Especially when desire entered the equation.
The boys my age didn’t want me. Not in the loving, romantic way I longed to be wanted. They desired me sexually, but for love, they considered me too tall, too big, or simply too much. So I learnt to quiet my longing. To shrink it. To make my hunger for connection less obvious. To make me less obvious. I confused being chosen with being worthy. And when I wasn’t chosen, I assumed it was because I lacked something. That something must be wrong with me. That I was not small enough, not pretty enough, not loveable enough.
But what I was truly aching for — what I had been aching for since 28 May 2008 — was to feel seen, safe, and held. The way only my father had ever done, before the world became so noisy.
The unfounded battle against my body
The rejection of teenage affection, layered onto the foundational loss of my father’s adoration, created fertile ground for a different kind of hunger to take root within me. It wasn’t a hunger for food, though that would become a significant battleground. It was a hunger for acceptance, for the effortless belonging I witnessed in those who fit the “pretty” ideal. And in a world that equated thinness with that ideal, my teenage years became a relentless pursuit of a smaller self, a dangerous descent fuelled by desperation.
This led to reckless experimentation – the jittery anxiety induced by appetite-suppressing coffees, the gnawing emptiness countered only by the hollow praise that followed even the slightest weight loss. Slimming pills became a forbidden secret, a quick fix that left me dizzy and nauseous, a cocktail of chemicals no sixteen-year-old should ever subject herself to. Yet, in those moments of induced shrinkage, the compliments would roll in, a toxic validation that felt momentarily good even amidst the constant starvation and the incessant thrum of a headache.
This pursuit became a vicious cycle. The initial, often drastic, weight loss brought fleeting moments of a hollow victory. A fleeting glance held a fraction longer, a casual compliment that felt like a lifeline. But these moments were always ephemeral. The unsustainable nature of extreme dieting, compounded by the artificial effects of pills and potions, meant the weight would inevitably return. Each pound gained felt like a personal failing, a loud confirmation of my inherent inadequacy. The scale became a judge, its numbers dictating my worth for the day. Each failed attempt wasn’t just about a number; it chipped away at my self-esteem, solidifying the cruel belief that I was fundamentally broken, a body destined for the margins.
Even now, the memory echoes of a story my mother once shared, a chilling parallel to my own struggles. In her younger years, she had possessed that much-lauded “ideal” slimness, a physique that drew admiration and praise. She recounted feeling beautiful then, almost glorified in her size. But a routine doctor’s appointment had revealed a starkly different truth: she was severely underweight. That contradiction, the dissonance between feeling adored and teetering on the brink of malnourishment, left an indelible mark on me. It revealed early on just how deeply distorted our cultural lens is for beauty and health. How thinness, even to the point of medical concern, could still be romanticised, how fleshlessness remained the goal.
This obsession with thinness, initially a misguided attempt at self-improvement, morphed into something far more sinister within me. It eclipses any semblance of self-care, twisting my perception of my own well-being. The anxiety around food and weight became a constant hum beneath the surface of my days, dictating choices and stealing joy.
Even when faced with the need for mental health support, the ingrained belief that thinness was the ultimate solution often took precedence. Medication that might lead to weight gain was refused, the potential for a slightly larger body deemed a greater threat than the burgeoning darkness within. My body, once a source of comfort and pride, became the enemy, something to be punished into submission. Exercise transformed from joyful movement into a form of penance, a way to atone for the sin of taking up too much space. I was waging a war against myself, fuelled by the desperate hope that victory lay in vanishing.
The COVID years: Medication, weight gain, and body positivity
The years that followed were a blur of heartbreak and the slow, arduous climb back towards solid ground. A brutal breakup, laced with betrayal, had left my sanity teetering on the fringes. In the suffocating anxiety of that time, medication became a lifeline. I took antidepressants to quiet the relentless despair and antianxiety pills to soften the sharp edges of panic. And as the world outside retreated into the uncertainty of the pandemic, my body began a transformation of its own. The medication, while essential for my mental survival, brought with it a significant weight gain – forty kilograms that settled onto my frame, a visible manifestation of an invisible battle.
This shift in my body felt like another betrayal, another way I was failing to adhere to the unspoken rules of womanhood. The cultural silence around weight gain linked to mental health treatment felt deafening. It was as if this particular form of fatness was doubly shameful – a byproduct of needing help, a visible sign of vulnerability in a world that demands constant strength and aesthetic compliance. There were no celebratory posts, no mainstream narratives normalising this particular journey. Instead, there was a quiet shame, an internalised fear of judgment layered on top of the already heavy burden of healing.
But within the confines of those isolating years, something began to shift. Scrolling through the endless feeds, I encountered the curated aesthetic of “body positivity.” At first, it felt like another trend — psychobabble engineered by conventionally attractive, slightly larger women to seem palatable. But then, I stumbled upon voices that resonated with a different kind of truth – a body positivity that wasn’t about achieving a certain look, but about radical acceptance. Also, about reclaiming agency in a world that profits from our self-loathing.
The breaking point came during one of those endless lockdown days. I was looking at a photo of myself – heavier than I’d ever been, the lines of anxiety etched on my face despite the medication. And a thought, sharp and clear, cut through the noise: this isn’t about finding the perfect angle or the most flattering filter. This is about survival. This is about refusing to shrink myself any further for a world that has never truly seen me. It wasn’t about aesthetics; it was about resistance.
And in that moment, a profound truth settled within me, a truth that felt both like a revelation and a homecoming: “I am a fat woman. I’m a big girl. There’s never been a time when I haven’t been.” It wasn’t a confession or an apology. It was a statement of fact, and within that fact lay a challenge – not to the world, but to myself – to finally see myself, truly see myself, without the distorting lens of societal expectations.
Scars, surgery, and the lovers who saw me
In June 2022, I underwent an appendectomy, a seemingly routine procedure that unexpectedly altered my relationship with my body yet again. I reacted severely to the epidural. It caused a lasting numbness in parts of my right leg—a constant, slightly alien sensation. The surgery, intended to leave a single, neat scar, instead gifted me with a constellation: one on my back, another on my stomach. These visible marks amplified my desire to hide my body. For nearly six months after the surgery, I avoided physical intimacy. Even the first time I was with a lover again – a sweet, tender soul – he could sense my unease at being seen, soothing my anxieties between kisses as I remained on my back, unable to fully relax.
This intense discomfort with my visibility wasn’t entirely new. Before this, my lovers had often loved my body more than I did at the time. Its softness caught their attention, its inherent acceptance, its very presence. Even some found beauty in the thickness of my thighs, the gentle curve of my belly. One, I remember, would lovingly trace the lines of my back rolls as we lay together, a gesture that spoke of intimacy and acceptance. Many saw beyond the physical, complimenting my intelligence and humour. They value the quality time we spent together and express their affection through touch — my primary love language. I often felt seen by them, even cherished. However, there were stark reminders of objectification – the casual reference to me as “meat” by one partner was a violation that ended our connection.
The scars and the numbness forced a stark confrontation with a permanent change. This wasn’t something I could diet away or exercise into oblivion. My body was different now, marked and with a persistent altered sensation. Yet, as I navigated daily life, I also began to recognise its resilience. Despite the complications, it continued to function, to carry me forward. A sense of gratitude for this incredible vessel started to bloom where resentment had once festered. The unexpectedness of the multiple scars and the lingering numbness also played a significant role. It shattered any lingering, subconscious ideal of a “perfect” or unblemished body. The reality etched onto my skin declared a new truth: loved bodies don’t need to be perfect; they simply need to be loved.
Looking back, I realise that while I often believed their affection was genuine and holistic in those moments, that belief was fragile, constantly undermined by my own deeply ingrained self-criticism. I accepted their adoration, but it didn’t solidify into a knowing within myself. I believed they found me beautiful, but I did not yet know I was beautiful. Their love acted as a temporary balm, an external validation that hadn’t yet taken root internally.
The scars from the appendectomy, both the visible marks and the lingering numbness, became a strange catalyst. They forced me to confront the reality of my body – not as an abstract concept to be judged, but as the vessel that had carried me through pain, through trauma, through life. And in that stark confrontation, a truth began to emerge. A truth that those lovers had echoed, but that I had to finally claim for myself: “You cannot awaken in your power until you see it and feel it yourself.”
The reckoning
It was a reckoning, a long-overdue moment of acknowledging the battles I waged against the very form that housed me, the relentless pursuit of an ever-shifting ideal that was never truly mine. I needed to account for the starvation, the times I denied nourishment in a desperate attempt to shrink into an acceptable shape, the gnawing emptiness and weakness I endured in service of a phantom image. The punishment came in gruelling workouts fuelled by self-loathing, pushing limits not out of love, but from a belief of inherent flaw. There was the literal and figurative contortion, the desperate moulding into a shape that might finally earn the longed-for affection and acceptance. Folding myself in half, as the world once demanded, was a profound act of self-betrayal against the magnificent, resilient being that my body truly was.
I had allowed the harsh words of others, the casual cruelty of nicknames, the subtle and overt messages of a world obsessed with a narrow definition of beauty, to permeate my perception. My body became an adversary, a constant source of shame, rather than the miraculous vessel that carried me through every experience. Its strength, its resilience, its inherent beauty – all of it existed long before any attempt to alter it.
There was a time of seeking solace in fleeting affections, a hope that someone else’s gaze would finally validate worth. Allowing myself to be seen – and judged – in the eyes of others became a pattern, chasing a reflection that was never truly my own. But somewhere along the winding path of self-discovery, amidst the scars and the lingering numbness, a quiet revolution began. I turned inward, listening to my body’s whispers, acknowledging its needs, honouring its strength. And finally, I granted myself permission to truly see myself – the real self, the one that had always been. And in that seeing, in that gentle acceptance, the healing truly began.
And finally, I felt pretty
The first time I felt truly, truly beautiful wasn’t a fleeting moment caught in a mirror’s reflection, the kind I used to chase, hoping for a glimpse of the “acceptable.” Nor was it the echoing affirmation of another’s gaze, the external validation I once craved like air, a temporary fix for a deeper wound. This wasn’t a passive receiving of that sought-after approval. This was something far more profound, a slow, triumphant, defiant awakening from a long slumber of self-rejection. It was a dawning awareness that bloomed not externally, reflected back at me by someone else, but from a deep, unshakeable knowing within.
The thought arrived not as a whisper, a hopeful plea for agreement, but as a quiet, solid declaration, spoken first to myself: “This is my body, and I love the way I look.” And then, without a hint of apology or a plea for external acceptance, the truth resonated: I am beautiful. It wasn’t a conditional beauty, earned through shrinking or conforming to someone else’s ideal. It was an inherent truth, a birthright reclaimed from the outside world and finally owned within.
This love for my body wasn’t born from transformation, from finally fitting some arbitrary measure dictated by magazines or fleeting compliments. It blossomed because I had changed. I had shed the layers of self-doubt, the ingrained belief in my inadequacy that had made me so reliant on external approval. I had untangled myself from the suffocating expectations of a world that tried to dictate my worth based on my circumference, a world whose fleeting approval I once desperately sought. The scars, the lingering numbness, the very softness and fullness of my form were no longer marks of shame. They have become testaments to a life lived, a body that had endured and persisted, for my own sake.
This is not just about finding peace with a reflection, the same reflection I used to scrutinise for flaws. This is about a fundamental shift in being, a turning inward for the source of my own worth. It’s a declaration of freedom – not just from the tyranny of societal beauty standards, whose ever-shifting rules I once tried so hard to follow, but from the insidious belief, fuelled by that external pressure. The pressure that I was ever unworthy of love, of joy, of simply taking up space in this world. The first time I felt pretty wasn’t about fitting in to someone else’s view; it was about finally, gloriously, arriving in myself, for myself.
