The comedian and podcaster revisits her teenage diary
WORDS BY SOFIE HAGEN, IMAGE BY MATT CROCKETT
I recently found an old diary I wrote when I was 13. Like most teenage diaries would, it portrayed me in a rather unfortunate light.
Amongst complaints about the girls in my class – and embarrassing amounts of Westlife fanfiction – I made lists. Lists of the sexiest things about Mehmet from my year (eyes, sweat, voice), pros and cons if I ever became famous (pros: journalists ask you questions all the time, cons: the paparazzi) and lists about my life after weight loss.
I was on a constant diet from the age of eight to 21. Every week, after I had failed, I would make a new plan towards the inevitable: me being thin. But we now know that 95% of diets don’t work. That’s how the diet business has become a 70.3 billion dollar industry. I was never going to be thin. Yet my whole life surrounded that. I found a list in my teenage diary called, “When I am thin…” and it listed my new life.
1. I will wear shorts and crop tops.
2. I will have my hair up.
3. When my friends say they like me, I will believe them.
4. I can eat in public.
5. I can have lesbian sex.
Read the rest of this exclusive feature in the May 2019 issue of DIVA, available now via the links below. Sofie’s new book Happy Fat: Taking Up Space In A World That Wants To Shrink You is out 2 May and available to pre-order here.
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