Taking Up Space as a Plus Size Woman

Nobody ever told me directly to be smaller. It arrived gently, over years, in the form of concerned advice, clothing suggestions and the particular silence that follows a photograph.

Confidence is a practice, not a feeling

I did not wake up confident. I did a series of small things repeatedly until they stopped costing me anything: wearing colour, standing at the front of a photograph, saying my full title out loud.

• Stop qualifying your own sentences with an apology.
• Take the seat at the centre of the table.
• Wear the thing.

Nobody grants you permission. You start behaving as though you already have it, and the feeling follows several months later.

The stage was a shortcut

Walking a ramp in front of an audience compressed years of that practice into a few minutes. Once you have been looked at that deliberately and survived, ordinary rooms lose most of their power.

What did not change

The comments did not stop. Strangers still have opinions about my body and they still arrive in writing. What changed is that they no longer set the agenda for my day.

Why I keep saying this publicly

Because my students are watching, and because a woman who is told to shrink usually needs to see someone who did not, rather than be told it is possible in the abstract.