January is the month of body shaming. I'm tuning out.

I refuse to beat myself up this year

A woman on a scale.

I used to make New Year's resolutions. Well, one resolution specifically. For most of my adult life, I've been unhappy with the size of my body, and disappointed by the numbers on my bathroom scale. So every year, I would vow to myself come January 1st that this would be the year. The year I lost the weight, and kept it off.

If American news media is to be believed, I'm firmly in the majority. On lists of the most popular New Year's resolutions, "lose weight" is almost always at or near the top. And it often shares space with its cousins, like "get in shape" and "eat healthier," which seem innocuous and even empowering on the surface — but what are we really picturing as the outcomes of those goals? More often than not, the mental image is the same: a visibly slimmer body.

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Zoe Fenson

Zoe Fenson is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing has appeared in Longreads, Narratively, The New Republic, and elsewhere. When she's not writing, you'll find her doing crossword puzzles in cocktail bars or playing fetch with her cat.