«Comoda, that’s how I feel. And who would have thought that I would have used this word: once upon a time, just by hearing “plus size”, I would change my path. Now, at the gates of 53 years old, I am in the midst of my “comfort-size-life” and I no longer run away». Rossella Vigevano is a manager who lives in Verona. She invented the concept of “comfort-size-life” to be comfortable in the size of his waist. “I am happy. Convenient is how I live today. I feel at ease in front of the mirror just like my hips inside my clothes: I am serene and they are free (to move). I’m tall, wide. Big and bulky perhapsbut no longer fragile: if anything powerful” says Rossella.
Loving each other, free from sizes
«I have a new inner strength that makes me free to refuse the diktats around me and the compressions due to modesty or tight zips. I became aware of this after a course “Iyengar yoga”, a practice that aims to align body, mind and spirit. Those asanas were effective, sure, but in the end I felt strange. Inadequate. I accumulated a mix of tension and stress that after four months pushed me to give up: yoga had been important, but now I needed something else. To find a path, mine. Until one day I discovered tai chi. Marvelous. For the first time I no longer had to concentrate on an external movement of the body to cause internal effects: the journey was reversed this time, it was the journey of freedom.
It is true that over time the skin begins to stretch downwards a little and the shapes widen: youth is behind me but I have serenity ahead. And I have a power, that of one who expands and flourishes.” «It’s fabulous, I have an intimate lightness paced by my own rhythms» she concluded. And even when lightness becomes tangible thanks to a halved number on the scale, what matters is something else: it is loving your body.
In a “secret place” where the perception of who you are and who you would like to be makes peace, it exists. You can love yourself
“That body no longer represented me”
«My weight is half what it was six years ago but only one detail of my revolution remains» he says Francesca Rodella, 42 years old, from Milan, a job as a press office for publishing. «It all started when I resigned as an employee and opened my own communications agency. More changes have arrived, until the circle was closed by the perception I had of myself: I had profoundly changed and that body no longer represented me. From that moment on, life began to send me signals: after some time I found myself in the right frame of mind to choose the path of bariatric surgery (operation to resection a portion of the stomach).
I wanted to reclaim my body, take care of my health and I had to get moving. I started to read up, to manage mistrust and fears (I had never undergone operations until that day). Everything I read, for me, in the end only had the sense of hope. The turning point came when I met for dinner with a friend I hadn’t seen in fifteen years and who had opted for bariatric surgery. I therefore also embarked on the process of preparing for the surgery and deciding to do it for myself was a gift to myself. Which I would do again a thousand and a thousand times. And not because of the kilos lost but because by deciding to embrace the surgery, I basically decided to become the best version of myself.
After losing so much weight, I could have resorted to cosmetic surgery to act on sagging skin but instead I invested in myself, leaving my body free to express itself and change again. I focused on working hard and sweating. I chose good products to help my skin and started body building again to replenish and increase muscle mass. I have decided not to resort to cosmetic surgery for the moment but it is an option that I have thought about for a long time and I think that, all things considered, it is essential to identify your own path and inform yourself well. If a cosmetic procedure can really help you feel better, so be it. And maybe what happened to me could happen: while I was building a new identity, I rediscovered my essence».
A question of success
What importance does the silhouette have, then, if you feel good about yourself, if you have learned to know yourself and found your own wellness routine? «The body image that we develop from an early age is a mirror of the functioning of our self-esteem and our mental state” he specifies Sara Bakacs, psychotherapist and head of the Alicanto Trauma Care Center in Rome. «Social standards or the responses we give to profound discomfort caused by trauma can influence why we want to change something about our body. Why we accept ourselves for who we are, however, depends on the individual path of building one’s own identity” adds Bakacs, who created the first psychological support group for women victims of damage from cosmetic surgery.
«The use of cosmetic surgery is a growing phenomenon and to understand it it would be more correct to think of it in cultural terms. Retouching, also thanks to the multitude of non-invasive techniques, has become part of social “normality” because it is accepted and encouraged. Aesthetics is part of the concept of “success”» reasons Bacaks.
Refrain from returning daffodils
«The result is that the age of those who choose it has dropped and more and more men are involved in this practice» he adds. According to the 2022 survey of the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery on aesthetic procedures, an increase of 41.3 percent is estimated worldwide in the last four years, with the USA leading the ranking and Italy eighth (with 747,391 treatments aesthetic). Next to the numbers, the phenomena: that of body positivity, for example. «We are faced with a counterculture that was born in response to the tendency to consider standardized aesthetics as an element of social value. But it is also the response to the widespread mockery of non-conforming bodies, the so-called body shaming. Luckily, knowing how to live outside the most shared canons, accepting and liking oneself is something that more and more people know how to do” concludes Bakacs who cites classic films such as Little Miss Sunshin and, the vicissitudes of a very unconventional family to accompany their daughter to the national finals of the beauty contest, or the most recent Dumplin (I want a life shaped like me) which always deals with non-standard bodies and beauty queens, and the TV series Dietland.
To love yourself takes courage
Fromactress Rebel Wilson to singer Lizzo, the parade of women proud of their shapes is crowded. «Body positivity is a position that risks slipping into rhetoric because it is something easier said than done» notes Rossella Ghigi, sociologist and professor at the University of Bologna. «Someone adopts this new language to sell more, given that it then bombards us with “change, lose weight, transform, etc”. It remains an ambivalent phenomenon, given that there are curvy models today, but no one dares to use the word “fat” anymore. We live in a lipophobic society, it’s obvious. If anything, body positivity is an opportunity to talk about topics that would remain hidden. The same thing goes for “hair”: no one uses the word “hairy” even if abroad you can also see women with unshaved legs in advertising. We must also pay attention to who the message comes from: from the brand of a product, from a famous YouTuber or from a women’s association” adds Ghigi, also author of Please. Cultural history of cosmetic surgery (The Mill).
«The women I interviewed for my research, who have undergone cosmetic retouching, never declare “I did it to hold on to my husband” or “to find a soul mate”. They all say they did it for themselves, is it true? We tell ourselves that it is more important to be beautiful on the inside even if…», he adds. So alongside the ambassadors of body positivity, those of body neutrality are now emerging: there is no need to fall in love with how the body appears, but rather to like what the body can do, we read in Escape from the mirror. Practical guide to liking and loving your body (Feltrinelli) by Emanuel Mian, psychotherapist with twenty years of experience in the field.
The democratization of beauty
The real change in any case has to do «with the democratization of beauty which has become an increasingly transversal social need» underlines Ghigi. «Once upon a time it was the richest women who felt obliged to take care of themselves, today it is the youngest, and it is to them that anti-aging creams are sold already at the age of thirty. That said: Societies in which the body is not aesthetically manipulated do not exist. However, I recommend seeing The Disappearance of My Mother where a former model like Benedetta Barzini comments on what beauty is. It is a documentary made by her son and it is touching but it is also a courageous manifesto against conformism » she concludes.
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