Taking Up Space

Alice Petch

I grew up to believe that taking up space was a crime. This was not what my parents taught me, not what my teachers or what my friends taught me. I learned this from the magazines I read as a teenager. I learned this from the silent but piercing look strangers would give the slightly larger woman who stepped onto a bus. I learned this from a constant stream of ads for weight-loss shakes and low-calorie meals, and celebrities sharing their weight loss tips or the diet they used to get their figure back so quickly after having a baby. As women, our value comes from being likeable, attractive and sexy, and sure, smart and strong…as long as it doesn’t make us take up any more space in a room – vocally or physically.

I recently had dinner with my family and was confronted with an unexpected conversation about my body. All of these lessons I learnt as a child instantly resurfaced. My dad, in a well meaning attempt to compliment my muscle growth, used the words/phrases “weight”, “shoulders”, “big” and “substantial.”

I am now 23 years old and I am stronger and healthier than I have ever been. I am also heavier than I have ever been. Why is this so hard for me to rationalise? Muscle takes up weight and space, as does the fat I am biologically designed to carry. I know my dad’s comments were not intended as criticism. In fact, his intention was to comment on my strength. The most concerning thing, however, is that I am scared to be seen as strong (and ‘substantial’) because that means I am not thin.

In an emotional conversation with my friend the next day, she pointed out that I can currently do more push-ups and run further than ever before, and I probably wouldn’t be able to do that if I weighed any less. More to the point, the number of the scale does not tell me how healthy I am, or what my body can do. I have never once been happy I stepped on a scale, much less has it ever provided me with any truly useful information.

So yes, I am stronger (and more ‘substantial’) than I have ever been before. Why does the thought of this make me feel so ashamed when I am healthy and can do so much with my body?

Because…women have been conditioned to believe taking up space is a crime.

In the 1500s corsets were designed to make women appear smaller. So many workouts and fitness guides market themselves as helping women lose weight, get a ‘bikini body’ and be ready to showcase it in summer. In recent years we have been encouraged to ‘grow’ our booties, boobs and lips, and that’s about it. These parts of our bodies that are allowed or encouraged to be bigger are coincidentally those that are sexualised and considered ‘attractive’ according to the modern-day heterosexual male gaze.

The costs of taking up too much space for women are high. If we are loud, we are arrogant. If we are leaders, we are bossy. If we are muscular, we are unfeminine and butch. If we are confident, we are full of it. If we are emotional, we are crazy. Our fear of taking up physical space is just an extension of this.

Where women silently cross their legs on crowded trains, their male neighbours, praised for their broad shoulders and muscularity, spread their legs wide. Because why should a man not take up two seats? They are, after all, supposed to be big and strong. Conversely, for a woman to be large, loud and confident is embarrassing at best – how dare we not fit the neat frame society has granted us?

I think my family held up a painful mirror to my deeply ingrained beliefs about my body. I know if I were to be smaller, I would be less strong, I would be able to do less, and I would be less healthy and happy. Yet, being told I was no longer skinny reduced me to tears.

So, having looked myself in the eye through this painful mirror and confronted these lessons and the consequent resentment with which I approach my body, I will resist the urge to purchase bathroom scales. I will resist the urge to shrink myself and to let these internalised lessons make me feel that I must speak less, eat less, feel less, and weigh less.

I will take up the space that I do because I deserve it just as much as the man sitting next to me on the train. I will let my body change as I grow muscle and lose it, as I menstruate and ovulate, as seasons change and as I hopefully someday use it to grow and nurture a new life.

And I may not love it through all of this, but I will appreciate it and I will care for it. And I will allow it to take up the space that it needs.