In May 2016, actor Gabourey Sidibe had weight loss surgery.
As Sidibe explained to People publication, the decision to go through with the procedure was both difficult and personal.
Now, a year after the surgery, Sidibe is opening up about the reactions she’s get for her visibly smaller size.
While you might think that losing weight would earn her nothing but praise from the thin-obsessed world we live in, it turns out people’s reactions haven’t been too great.
As Sidibe explained to NPR, before the surgery, people liked to tell her that she needed to lose weight. Now that she’s had the surgery, people have felt compelled to warn her not to lose too much. It’s < em> literally a lose-lose.
No matter what her body looks like, she’s noticed, people feel they have a right to tell her what to do with it.
As the actor explained 😛 TAGEND
“It’s important because I don’t happen to have the type of torso that we usually realize on television and in movies. I am plus-size, I have dark skin, and I am 100% beautiful, but I get a lot of flak. ‘Oh, you are able to lose weight.’ And now that I have lost weight I lost weight for health reasons I get, ‘You appear good, but don’t lose too much weight because your face is starting to sink in.'”
Sidibe also noted the awkward comments she’ll get from others celebrating her weight loss for the incorrect reasons 😛 TAGEND
“Literally someone told, ‘Congratulations, I see you lost weight. Congratulations.’ And I say, ‘That’s a weird thing to congratulate me on because this is my body.'”
Sidibe’s experiences exemplify the impossible charm criteria women face and why when it comes to weight “youre supposed” “mind your own torso.”
All of us( but particularly women) are relentlessly pressured had acceded to absurd criteria when it comes to appearance. These expectations are ridiculous when it comes to defining “real” beauty, of course, but they’re also ridiculous when it comes to defining our health.
A person’s weight, generally speaking, truly doesn’t tell you all that much about their health, many experts say . And even if it could, what someone else does with their body is their business and their business alone. A person’s weight, in and of itself, is not something to be congratulated for.
Every torso looks differently, runs differently, and serves the person who occupies it differently. And that’s important to remember if we’re considering the size or shape of someone else or ourselves.
Sidibe gets it.
“This has been my torso since I was 5-ish, you are familiar with? ” she told NPR. “It’s been a 30 -year thing of other people putting their own material on my torso. But it’s mine, so I will police it, thank you.”
Read more here: http :// www.upworthy.com /~ ATAGEND
