For as long as I can remember, I 

have always been fat. For me, self-
love could never be a matter of 
“you’re not fat” or “it’s all in your 
head” because through my daily 
interactions with other people, 
I’m often reminded that others 
see me as fat even when they mean 
well and especially when they 
don’t. As such, I had no choice 
but to confront fatness itself and 
accept myself as I was. However, 
loving my body was much easier 
said than done, because fatphobia 
is so ingrained in society that 
unconscious 
bias 
is 
accepted 

as reasonable and almost never 
challenged.

When I was a young teenager, 

I sunk many hours into scrolling 

through 
Tumblr 
and 
my 

Instagram explore page (that 
exclusively consisted of reposts 
from Tumblr) in order to find some 
sort of inspiration to love myself. 
While I waded through a flood of 
posts, I saw countless variations of 
“you have to love yourself before 
you can love someone else.” At the 
time, I didn’t think critically about 
these statements. They promoted 
self-love, which I recognized as a 
good thing even if I didn’t really 
know what that was supposed 
to mean to me personally. Yet 
reading these quotes never left 
me feeling inspired to solve my 
internal problems. At the time, 
they all sounded as if they were 
trying harder to sound deep 
than to actually be insightful. 
None of them helped me reflect 
on my approach to self-love, or 

even define what self-love is. I 
was drowning in this ocean of 
insecurity, and all these vague 
quotes 
were 
like 
defective 

liferafts. Now that I’m revisiting 
these quotes, I’m honestly glad 
that I didn’t really pay attention 
to them before, because I think 
they’re not only unproductive but 
wrong. I know many people who 
do not love themselves but have 
developed healthy relationships; 
is their love invalid? If I have only 
ever given “fake” love, then what 
is “real” love? How can I love 
myself when I’ve apparently been 
doing it wrong for my whole life? 
The sentiment behind this quote 
may be pure, but its language is 
unproductive at best and harmful 
at worst. 

Several years later, I watched 

Lizzo’s NPR Tinydesk concert 

from 2019, and at the end of her 
performance she said, “If you can 
love me, you can love yourselves 
too.” Her wording sounded so 
similar to the numerous self-
love statements I’ve read before, 
but she inverts it. Her rhetoric 
doesn’t imply that an insecure 
person is devoid or incapable of 
love; love, rather, is just hiding 
inside of ourselves. She’s telling 
us that precisely because we have 
so much love for others, we have 
the capacity to extend that love to 
ourselves.

When I first saw Lizzo and 

started listening to her music, I 
greatly admired her because I was 
so insecure. Even though I didn’t 
discover her Tinydesk concert 
until rather recently, I think I 
coincidentally followed her advice 
anyway. Compared to other self-

love affirmations, I think Lizzo’s 
quote is the most productive and 
actionable. By identifying the 
things I love about other people, 
I could develop the same qualities 
for myself. Lizzo is gorgeous, and 
I realized that if I could see her 
for her beauty, I could see myself 
as beautiful too.

I’ve realized that self-love is not 

merely the absence of sadness, but 
rather an endless pursuit of fully 
actualized potential. While I may 
love myself on a physical level, I’m 
realizing that I could be working 
to improve my confidence in other 
areas of my life. However, I strive 
to improve, not because I hate my 
current self, but rather because I 
love myself and want to see myself 
achieve my full potential. I know 
that even if I’m not perfect, I am 
still worthy of love.

6

Thursday, May 27, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Living as the exception

Cuz I love you

ANDREW NAKAMURA 

MiC Columnist

Design by Marina Sun

MICHIGAN IN COLOR

Every so often I hear about 

Hazaras 
in 
Afghanistan. 
I 

just did last week — it was 
mostly children who died. I 
remember how Khaled Hosseini 
so beautifully and eloquently 
painted 
a 
heartbreaking 

picture of the recent history of 
Afghanistan in his novel, “The 
Kite Runner.” To this, students 
at my high school analyzed 
questions such as, “Why did 
Hassan and Ammar get treated 
so differently?” and, “What was 
the basis of discrimination and 
subjection for Hassan and his 
family?” 

Every so often, I hear about 

a blast in Pakistan and, every 
so often, I meet a family friend 
whose uncle, cousin or sibling 
was killed in these blasts. Just 
yesterday, I found out about the 
Gilgit massacre of Shia Muslims: 
initiated over a difference in 
Eid dates. I stared blankly at my 
laptop screen wide-eyed, shocked 
at the abhorrent events and 
appalled that I just now heard 
of them. When thinking about 
the intra-religious persecution 
of Shias, especially in my home 
country of Pakistan, I think about 
my privilege to freely practice my 
Shiism here. But then I wonder: 

Is it really freedom when yes, I 
openly use a sajdiga for my daily 
prayer, but still have to hear the 
classic “Why do you pray on a 
rock” joke? Is it really freedom 
when I have to feign toleration 
upon hearing Sunni Muslims say, 
“We’re allowed to marry Jews 
and Christians, just not Shias”? 

Every so often when I hear the 

news, I turn to the only method 
of denoting solidarity in this 
day and age: Instagram social 
activism. This metric is by no 
means indicative of genuity, but 
it is telling enough in the sense 
that many Muslims will post 
about all social justice issues 
— only until it comes to Shias. 
Ironically, these are the same 
Muslims who retweet, “When 
it’s Muslims, the world is silent,” 
as though oppression is even a 
competition to begin with. For 
me as a Shia and my best friend as 
an Ahmadi, there’s another layer 
to that silence; when it is us, even 
fellow Muslims will be silent. 
The sense of solidarity that every 
so often arises among Muslims 
is always amazing to see, but a 
disquieting part of me feels like 
an outsider looking in, knowing 
that this same unity will never 
be granted to persecuted Muslim 
minorities.

Although 
these 
creeping 

realities often surface, being in a 
subgroup affords one the clarity 
of noting not only hypocrisy, but 

logical 
inconsistencies. 
When 

you exist at the intersection of 
multiple identities, it becomes 
almost 
a 
habit 
to 
attempt 

mentally checking off the boxes 
when evaluating the validity 
of activism: If advocating for 
women’s rights, does it only center 
white women? If uplifting Muslim 
perspectives, 
is 
it 
complicit 

in silencing Shia and Ahmadi 
voices? On the other hand, while 
minority 
communities 
focus 

on 
marginalized 
voices 
that 

are buried under these grander 
narratives, they also dismiss 
overarching 
issues 
such 
as 

sexism and racism that still arise 
within these smaller spaces. Yet 
at the same time, every so often 
I’ll hear or read, “YOU CANNOT 
BE PROGRESSIVE WITHOUT 
SUPPORTING 
_____.” 
The 

text is right — claiming to be 
a progressive can’t stop where 
discomfort begins. It can’t stop 
at what was preached to you at 
a Friday night khutba or who 
your parents told you were kafir. 
Muslim activism must push itself 
beyond the bounds of looking 
outwards. Sooner or later, our 
“one ummah,” one community, 
must begin looking inwards, 
where so frequently, we commit 
the same acts of abhorrent 
oppression against each other 
that we lament are inflicted onto 
us.

This brings me to the tragedy 

of Aya Hachem that occurred 
in the spring of 2020. In what 
was likely to have been a hate 
crime, Aya was shot in the chest 
and died at only 19 years old, 
only one year into law school. 
Immediately, 
graphics 
were 

sprawled 
throughout 
social 

media and donation links were 
shared once news of the event 
travelled. Then, a halt. In a 
series of anxiety-riddled tweets, 
Twitter 
user 
@humbleakh1 

wrote, “I didn’t know she was a 
Shia… no way do I want to be in 
a situation where all this cause 
could go against me on the Day of 
Judgement.” The online Muslim 
community had found out that 
Aya was not merely Muslim, but 
Shia Muslim, and that modifier 

changed everything. Donations 
were rescinded and fundraisers 
were frozen — the predominantly 
Sunni Muslims organizing and 
donating wanted to rid their 
hands of connections to the 
Shia rafidis, “rejectors.” After 
observing this discourse, I turned 
to hear the thoughts of my own 
Sunni friends, expecting a similar 
sense of the seething anger I 
had. In response, I got either 
radio silence or the occasional 
“Yeah, that really sucks.” It felt 
like screaming into an abyss that 
would awkwardly shuffle at my 
volume, uncomfortable probably 
more at its own complicity rather 
than the situation at hand. 

Read more at michigandaily.com

ELIYA IMTIAZ

MiC Columnist

