Hot Girls Eat Habaneros
Women: our bodies go through the most and yet there is the highest expectation on our bodies to appear like they haven’t.
This tee is meant to be tongue in cheek of course - if you eat a habanero your body will heat up. But even so, wearing a shirt that says HOT GIRLS when you identify as a girl takes some level of confidence.
Our first merch tee being symbiotic with female confidence was no mistake. Neither is the fact it very much is in line with my own personal journey at present: finding peace within my soft girl era.
Cos all women’s bodies change on us whether it’s through baring children, hormones, or plain ol’ natural-as-the-trees aging. And it comes with a dance they never tell you about of just enough surrender, acceptance and doing.
Feeling hot is not about being thin, or being male-gaze / Hollywood attractive, it’s about feeling sexy in your own skin. I think a lot of us lose that feeling. And that feeling is not even about sex, it’s about being proud of your body, and comfortable in your own epidermis.
“Feeling hot is not about being thin, or being male gaze/ Hollywood attractive it’s about feeling sexy in your own skin.”
I’ve been on a wild ride with this the last year or so. The way I’ve dealt with it is by solidly making fun of my softer body, solidly hating on it, and bullying it from the comfort of elastic pants.
For me, growing a big baby for 9 months, having him delivered via a slice to my abdomen, then breast feeding him for almost 3 years was nothin. A drop in the ocean; I re-donned my fav denims within a month after childbirth. (Maybe it’s thanks to the chilli?) Anxiety medication on the other hand, totally floored me. In just 3 months it was able to take the body I knew, that had been through so much and bounced back like a champ — and claimed it as it’s own.
Only after a very short stint on SSRI’s I was left with close to 10 extra kgs. It wasn’t just weight gain, it was the reshaping of the whole coastline of my silhouette. It was enough to change my face, the way my legs felt when I walked, the way I felt about myself. I was left after I came off them not only having to manage a severe anxiety disorder but doing it in someone else’s body.
I was no stranger to anxiety when it took over my life 3 years ago, but it was more like an acquaintance. I knew it, I’d had a few convos with it. Shared an Uber with it, but didn’t really know it-know it.
This changed in a big way after I had a baby. It’s funny, my midwife who did home visits for the month after Maggy was born picked it up straight away, like a frogs tongue to a fly. I brushed it off while Maggy latched onto my nipple as we chatted away in my lounge room, well because on top of recovering from major surgery, being a first time mum, and being kicked out of our rental the day I got out of hospital — Maggy had colic and didn’t sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time. I couldn’t actually take on a postnatal mental health thingie too.
Maggy’s sleep never improved. Not that whole year, or the next. At the worst I was up to him 22 times a night, at best 10. The blur they speak of directly in postpartum: the reason why everyone is there bringing you lasagnas, well that felt like it lasted 2 years. Except I was alone with a baby A LOT. Trying to buy a house to get out of the rental shitfight that had left us homeless 3 days after our baby was born meant my partner Matty was working round the clock. Covid meant the borders between my family and I were shut for almost the first whole year of my baby’s life. It meant that I was largely isolated from even the community around me.
And then the flood came. We evacuated with Maggy strapped to me and flood waters rising. I would lay awake in our flood accomodation for the weeks after and smell the flood waters going out to sea on onshore wind and relive it again and again. My symptoms, my head, the way I worried— everything could be explained away by the extreme sleep deprivation, and the trauma. Waking in your house on a hill with your young baby, to water all around water that never in history had been there, is still the most terrifying moment of my life.
Maggy was 2 when he first began sleeping longer stints. Although I was getting more sleep than I’d had since the whole time I’d been a mum I was mentally, at my worst. I took myself to the doctor. He said anti depressants and I was like yeh of course you’d say that mate. Then I started seeing a psychologist and she said anti depressants too.
But I wasn’t going to touch that shit. So I kept to my fortnightly psych sessions. Kept pushing on, smashing the CBD, worked on my breathing, cut my alcohol intake, kept active, lay in the sun, practiced gratitude, chatted it out with anyone who would put up with me.
It got to the point though that even making Maggy breakfast or cleaning the house felt entirely overwhelming. Like I can’t explain it but they felt as if the biggest mountains to climb and I couldn’t actually see my way up to get there. I was so full time obsessed with doom thoughts of everyone I loved dying, I couldn’t shake the feeling and every little cough, mark, lymph node on Maggy had me spiral completely out of control. Beyond burnt out, I made the decision to go on them for 3 months and treat it as a reset.
“I got to the point that even cleaning the house was entirely overwhelming. I was so full time obsessed with doom thoughts of everyone I loved dying.”
My 12 week “mind vacay” as I called it, left me with another body. But it certainly made me fight even harder when I got off them to not have to ever go on them again. I threw absolutely everything at my disposal in this season of obstacles at every turn (including becoming a full time caregiver to another child - though this time not through birth) in managing my issue naturally. I pulled through without falling apart completely for 6 months, despite double being on my plate to what was there before. But in the end, it got too much. Even my acupuncturist gave me that concerned look.
It had gotten to the point it wasn’t just my brain being silly anymore, it was my whole body, night sweats and pins and needles in hands and feet, blurry vision, headaches and back aches and waking up gasping for air. I got stuck not in fight or flight but in a whole other gear: catastrophic event mode. My nervous system just couldn’t take anymore.
I had to get really honest with myself about why I was so opposed to anti depressants. Though I hated the idea of putting any kind of pharmaceutical medication into my body, it wasn’t just that, or even the weight gain. I realised such a massive part of my hesitation in doing what I knew would take it all away was perhaps locked in the conditioning from generations of martyrs by the women in my family. Gritting your teeth through things. Not giving in. Seeing getting help as weakness. Admitting you’re not coping as failure. I cried for days before getting that script filled. I was literally crying outside the chemist because I knew this wasn’t going to just be a mind vacay this time, but an indefinite thing. I walked in, feeling so many things all at once and among them, that I was damn stopping a generational cycle.
I’ve been on Lexapro for 6 months now and I feel so incredibly grateful. Grateful to have access to medication. Grateful that it works, that it’s been able to turn my life around, return my quality of life, return my focus to the most important place in the world: being a present mum.
I’ve realised that being an organic girlie and taking prescription meds absolutely can co exist without you being a fraud. And yes it’s been the most odd feeling being in a body that doesn’t feel like yours. But a body that doesn’t feel like yours sure as hell feels better than a brain that doesn’t feel like yours.
“I’ve realised that being an organic girlie and taking prescription meds absolutely can co exist without you being a fraud. A body that doesn’t feel like yours sure as hell feels better than a brain that doesn’t feel like yours.”
This time it’s been easier - I’ve been armed with knowing exactly how my body responds to these meds. I now know the stuff that was left out of the brochure: how they send your metabolism to sleep and entirely alter your body’s capabilities of burning calories. And with that I’ve had to be less of the intuitive eater I’ve always been, and more purposeful ie doubling my protein intake, eating less carbs.
With Maggy now going to preschool 2 days a week (he doesn’t last there long and I have to stay with him for the first part but at least it’s something) I’m getting a little time to myself after all these years. For the first time since having a baby I have been able to regain sovereignty over my fitness. I am loving weight training and zoning out during exercise, having something that’s just for me. I’ve had to be so creative with movement since Maggy was born: walking with him strapped to me, then pram pushing, then bike riding with him on the back, building a whole Lego kingdom to award me 10 mins of uninterrupted yoga. But it’s always been chaotic, completely at the mercy of Maggy, and would mostly make me far more dysregulated and anxious; what I was throwing everything at to try and combat.
I am much kinder to my body now. Rather than seeing my softer body as my failure, I’m seeing it as the champ that’s taking one for the team. My body has been through so much, it’s brought our son into the world, it’s raising 2 of the world’s future men, it tends to the land daily, animals, our home we’ve made, a chilli farm, and an ethical business. It’s strong, it’s healthy, it’s hot.
Medication is not my long term solution, but it is the solution for this season where I feel entirely overwhelmed and mostly unsupported. I’m sure hormones from having a baby played a part, but I don’t believe they are fully responsible for what has happened to me. I think my story is just a version of a story for so many women, having a baby in this day and age without the village, the pandemic keeping her more isolated, a climate crisis keeping her traumatised, a cost of living crisis keeping her unsupported and left holding far too much on her own.
Quite frankly habaneros got nothin on all the beasts us girls slay. xx
