This is Meagan Kerr

Setting body boundaries

Even though it’s 2022 and by now we should all know better, some people insist on making comments about other people’s bodies. How big or small they are, how they’ve changed, unsolicited opinions … yuck. Can we just not? Over the years I’ve gotten better at setting boundaries around how other people talk about my body, and how they talk about bodies around me. Part of this has come around from being a parent, and part of it because I got to a point where I realised that I don’t have to tolerate other people disrespecting my body.

We are heading in to the holidays and some of us will be seeing family members who like to make comments about our bodies. We are also heading in summer in Aotearoa New Zealand, and on top of that a new year. Basically it’s prime time for diet chat, unsolicited comments and general body bullshit. View Post

Fat Shaming and Family

Meagan sits at Wagamama restaurant wearing a black dress with hot pink piping around the collar. In front of her is a table with various dishes of food

A lot of people find the holidays incredibly stressful for many reasons, and one of those is the time they spend with family. If loving your body or finding body peace/neutrality wasn’t hard enough, the added influx of body negativity from others makes it doubly hard. Comments about weight gain/loss, equating weight and health, comments about food eaten/not eaten, diet talk, negative comments about our bodies, fat shaming … it’s exhausting. I’ve got a few ways of dealing with this, not just for the holidays but all year round, so I thought I’d share them with you – let me know if you’ve got anything to add. View Post

Ditch the doubt

Meagan Kerr for Special K - Ditch the doubt and #ownit

CW: Weight loss, eating disorder, body shaming, body image

When my photo was shared on the Special K Facebook page last week there were lots of people making comments and (inaccurate) judgements about my health, my lifestyle, what I promote etc. It seems that there are a few people completely missing the point of Special K‘s #OwnIt campaign, and why I’m involved, so I thought that it was important for me to write a blog post to give you all a bit of background about me and why I was so keen to team up with them. View Post

Real women have curves

One thing that’s been really getting me down lately is how often I see people putting down one body type in order to raise another up. Comments like “real women have curves”, are commonly said with the intention of celebration more voluptuous women with fuller figures, however they imply that women with smaller body types are somehow lesser. Seeing as there is so much conversation about beauty standards, body positivity and body shaming lately, I thought this might be a good point to add into that discussion.

You can tell who the strong women are. They are the ones you see building one another up instead of tearing each other down. View Post

My body is not your business

As a woman*, people seem to think that your body is a free for all discussion topic. They give you their opinion on your weight, on their perception of your health; they share unsolicited “advice” about what you should/shouldn’t be eating, how you should/shouldn’t be exercising, what you’re wearing and how you treat your body in general; and if you are pregnant everyone is going to touch your belly whether you want them to or not. In fact, stories from friends indicate that people might try doing this when you’re not pregnant, just fat. Awkwaaaaard.

I want to start out by saying that unwelcome comments about your body and health are not limited to fat women – but I write about this from the perspective of a woman who is fat. Women of all sizes get comments about their bodies (and their health): there’s catcalling in the street (and on the internet); there are snide comments about how she looks in that red bodycon dress; there are thousands of magazines and websites that pass judgement on women’s bodies every day – too fat, too thin, cellulite, weight gain, weight loss, pregnancy… We need to learn that it’s not okay, and we need to start making a change to the culture we’ve created.

More often than not, these kinds of comments can make us feel like crap. I’ve had times when passing comments from strangers have reduced me to tears … and when it’s my own family? That’s a thousand times worse. So I thought I’d share a few tips I’ve picked up along the way about how to deal with situations like this. View Post

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