Wearing Colours Taught Me To Love Myself
Last week, I made a post about how I’m not setting as many goals for this year. One, because most of my goals just felt disconnected from the real world. Two, because this year is probably going to require you to vibe with it just like last year. The list I had shared felt just right for such an uncertain year; it was comfortable and I was happy with it. Interestingly though, it took me a minute (minute being an understatement of the decade) before I realised something way, WAY more poignant about my 2021 goals list: this was the first year I didn't set ANY goals about weight, diet, working out, or anything along that line in a long, LONG time. For as long as I can remember, probably since I heard about the concept of New Year’s resolutions, “lose weight” topped my New Year’s resolutions list. I had all the unrealistic targets and goals you can think of that crashed and burned well before the Tamil New Year rolled around in April. I never made any progress and at my lowest, unable to bear the taunting that felt like it was on a daily basis, I Googled “safest” cancers and diseases. Because I didn’t know what else to do or how else I could lose this excess weight that every single person in my life was making me feel inferior for. As far as I was told, running was the ONLY way to lose weight. As cruel as fate could be, I couldn't (and still can't) run because of an ankle injury - a "fat" girl talking about injuries is just seen as excuses. Yet, I set weight loss goals every single year because it's what everyone was doing and everyone told me to.
Fast forward a few years and a miracle happened. I found workouts that suit my metabolism and my body saw actual results. I started setting more realistic goals about my weight. Things like “drop a size” and “workout 3 times a week” still topped my New Year resolutions as of 2020. But somehow, last December, nothing weight-related came to my mind as I was making goals for 2021. From "Right, so we have the weight goal, what else should I work on?" I went to "I think I would like to take on life as it comes by?" Subconsciously, I didn’t even consider it. I only realised it nearly a month later in a "Hey! WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS GOAL I USED TO SET?!" state of disbelief. Even then, it didn't occur to me that I should make such a goal! Here's the thing, I’m not someone who can just let things be, whether it’s good or bad. I tend to pick them apart. And of course, this crazy side of myself wanted to know why EXACTLY I didn’t set any weight loss goals for this year. I needed to know what was different this time round.
Some of you who follow me on Instagram may have seen the colour journey I went on last year for clothes. Because as of April 2019, my wardrobe was blacks, greys, and the rare pop of forest green. This was very much intentional, I was leveraging on the concept of how CEOs have “uniforms”. As someone who just didn't like seeing myself in the mirror, I thought if I had a mostly monochrome wardrobe, I didn't have to think about my outfits and thus, how I look in them and how I look at all. On top of being "fat", I have a darker skin tone and I've heard more about the colours and prints I shouldn't wear than the colours and prints I should. And that's how black-dominated my wardrobe came to be. It's universally slimming and who doesn't look good in black? I saw this as an absolute win-win situation. Spoiler alert, I had the whole thing wrong. Because I looked at other people. I latched on to the colours and prints they wore and it only made me feel shittier about myself because I decided I wasn't going to look good in them without ever giving them the chance. Plenty of times, I looked at my black clothes and wondered if I looked too plain or dull. I didn't feel like an accurate representation of myself. My clothes felt sad, uninspired and plain boring. And I like to think I’m none of those things!
But then somehow, having an all-black and grey wardrobe pushed me to the extreme of the colour wheel, and for the first time since memory serves, I bought a pastel green dress in May 2019. I don’t know what drove me, but I saw the dress on sale and just went for it. I tried it on and it felt MAGICAL. I didn’t know I could pull off pastel because at the top of the list of colours I shouldn't wear, dictated by even random sales assistants, was pastel as it could apparently wash me out. But the pastel, floral, and as much as I hate to say it because I don’t like to tie gender to these things, extremely feminine dress proved all of them wrong. And! It made me so happy! I didn’t think a simple dress could have SUCH an impact on my mood. I always thought it was makeup that would bolster my self-image and confidence. Not clothes. But, there I was in my pastel green dress with floral prints feeling like I was in a fairy tale and all romantic! Regardless, pastel green was pretty extreme for me. And I didn't want to deal with trying a different colour and feeling like crap all over again, So, I didn’t venture any further in the colour wheel and stopped purchasing there.
Until last year. Last year was a trying year for all of us. Being in lockdown for a good portion of the year meant I didn’t have many opportunities to be out and about in shops, around clothes, or just think much about dresses either. But again, I don’t know what snapped in me in July. I don’t know if it was the random rust coloured skirt my mum found for me earlier that month that pushed me in that direction – a skirt I would never have chosen for myself because of the colour, style, and length. It turned out to be one of the best clothing items I had ever tried! So one day, when bored and looking for things to do, I hopped on ASOS and looked at dresses. Hours later, I was still looking at all the different colours and styles. Between July and December last year, I had a MAJOR wardrobe overhaul. Bar a couple of dresses, the clothes I had were from 2015 to 2017. By the time I decided "Okay no, enough. Let’s WEAR these a few times first, we are still in a pandemic!", my wardrobe was as colourful as colours could be – whites, yellows, reds, greens, blues, blacks, all jump out at me every time I open my wardrobe. I don't know how weird this sounds but on more than one occasion I’ve simply stood there, looking at my clothes and marvelling how different my wardrobe looks, and how much more it truly feels like me. Something about trying on different colours, different styles and just having fun with my wardrobe brought out this side to me I didn’t know I had. I like my clothes now. I like how I look in them. And sometimes, they even make me feel GREAT! I didn't know any of this could be possible!
Clothes proved to be another way I find necessary in how I present myself to the world. Just like how I used to reach for lipsticks to match my mood pre-Covid times, I now reach for different colours and prints. Feeling fun? Polka dots! Confident? A muted red! Neutral? Floral prints! And somehow, liking my clothes made me start to like myself. It made me pay attention to my features I like and made me think about how I can put them forward. Whatever metabolism shift that happened to me around 2015 and motivated me to work out was the first step in stopping the hideous way I used to talk down to myself. Trying out different colours and styles and expressing myself in a way that felt true to me through clothes pushed me further and tipped the scale from "neutral" when it comes to my self-image to "very slightly positive". What proved to that I do in fact see my body in a better light now was the ironically, the pandemic.
I was working out pretty intensively between 2016 and 2017. I got a good idea of the kind of workouts my body responds to, and I felt ashamed that I once thought being sick could be the only way I lost weight (Tapeworms? Seriously? TAPE. WORMS?). I came to see how much of it was actually in my control and I found it WAS something I could achieve when I had the right resources and mindset. Then 2020 hit us and there was quite a bit of emotional eating. Working out got less intense. But contrary to my own expectations, because of the way I would have reacted if it was 2013 me or even 2016 me, I couldn’t care LESS about the fitness competition many seemed to take part during the beginning of the pandemic. I didn’t see the need to shame myself about how much of a sloth I had become over the year. I have a healthier relationship with food and I know full and well when I’m being an actual slob, rather than calling myself one simply because I didn’t fulfil some impossible ideation of beauty and what a woman should look like. If anything, I'm less fit than I was in 2017 and I kind of like myself more now.
It goes without saying that for the longest time, I truly believed there was everything wrong with the way I looked. Things felt even more distorted when I see someone I would consider skinny, have their “flabby stomach” or “chubby cheeks” pointed out by someone else. Which is why as much as I wrote “lose weight” under my list of resolutions every single year, some part of me already knew I was going to fail. Because the way the world was, it never seemed like you could “win” with the way you look.
I remember when I was first starting to truly drop in sizes, I was willing to be seen. I wanted to be seen. I felt ready to be seen. Because I was feeling my best. I gave the grand flip off to slimming posters and societal standards and focused on how I felt. Having fun with my wardrobe only amplified that by magnitudes. And more importantly, it managed to give me a sense of balance as well. Something about my new clothes gave me a “Yes, I can work out enough and look like an Amazon one day, but I like how I look now too!” perspective to life. It was like a switch had been flipped– kind of like how a bigger girl in a movie would fall, hit her head and suddenly believe she’s beautiful. Except mine wasn’t so instantaneous. It took time, but I’m so glad I got here.
If you ask me, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to work out or to appear more toned or perhaps even get something done. But it just shouldn’t be the norm that we are all unhappy with the way we look and we want to change it. There’s a difference between wanting to do or be better and in internalising that everything about you is inadequate or just wrong. And for the longest time, I was trapped in this frame of mind. To be honest, it still sneaks up on me at times too! Just yesterday, I caught a glimpse of myself in the train reflection and thought "Oh my god look how this side of the dress is straining over my tummyyy!!!" So yeah, I have my moments. But overall, like Tracee Ellis Ross said, “In real life, I like what I actually look like!” I turn 30 this November and I’m finally happy to be where I am emotionally, mentally, and of course, physically with my body. If I didn’t stop to assess this and force myself to see my beauty (literally cringing as I type that word because I still have a hard time putting anything synonymous with beauty next to a first-person pronoun), I don’t think I ever would have. I’m at peace with the biggest, single most insecurity that haunted me, taunted me, and made me disrespect myself for nearly two decades. What a freeing way to start this year!
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