Q Dear Auntie Pearl, I am feeling stressed.
The thing is I am so dik and ongeskik and summer is around the corner and I don’t have a beach body so it’s gonna be another summer where I am shy and feeling uncomfortable in my clothes at the beach.
I love being outside and at the beach, but my body, aai tog, that’s a different story.
Lockdown really didn’t help – ek het my bodyweight in chocolates gevriet, Auntie.
Things were fine before lockdown, but you know mos how it went.
I am so shy for my lockdown vetjies. Even my boyfriend has said I’m lekker dik nou.
How can I shed this fat? I need a quick fix.
Please help me, man, don’t you have a lekker huisraadjie?
From Lekker Dik.
A Hayibo meisiekind, gaan was jou mond uit met daai seewater that you like so much!
This kind of negative body talk stops right here, and now, today!
And you tell your outjie to keep his mouth off your body.
You are more than just a body, you are a beautiful person and a unique soul.
So if he doesn’t love you for that, then he can f*k off!
Listen up sweetie pie – all bodies are beach bodies.
No matter your shape or size, all bodies are beautiful.
Do you want to know how a beach body works?
You take your body, you go to the beach. En daar het jy dit. You have a beach body!
But all jokes aside nuh, there is honestly no space in this world for negative body image and fat jokes anymore.
Thick is beautiful, boude is nice, love handles are sexy and djy’s lekker!
Healthy also doesn’t mean skinny, and fat doesn’t mean you are unhealthy.
We are all different, and we all have different bodies.
Mine can’t look like yours and yours can’t look like mine.
Have you not seen the movement sweeping across the world?
At last big is beautiful, meisie! Don’t be skaam of what you got, flaunt it.
There is, however, a moerse difference between rond en gesond, and an unhealthy expanding waistline.
If it’s just that the winter comfort food vrietery, lockdown stress and a lack of exercise has made you pack on some vetjies it means you have been unhealthy stress eating during a world pandemic (which many of us did!) and need to relook at dinge.
It’s time to ditch the chocolates you inhaled over lockdown and get with the summer program meisie – and no, Auntie don’t believe in quick fixes and huisraajides and strange concoctions to lose weight.
What you need is a healthy balance and a lifestyle change, not a quick fix.
Those quick fix diets and dinge are unhealthy, leave you as hungry as a stray cat and you will just pick up the weight you lose again when you start eating like your old self.
You can still have slaptjips and chocolates, but maybe just once a week.
Rather fill up on gesonde kos like fruit and vegetables.
And start moving meisie! Walk, jump in place, dance, pole dance, vas dans, jazz, go for a walk or run, Zumba in your lounge, but you need to move that body!
The most important thing is that you live as healthy as you can, because then you will be confident in the body you have, no matter if you have put on a little or a lot of weight.
Confidence is key no matter how big, small, thin, or wide you are – love yourself.
Q Dear Auntie Pearl, I am in matric and it is almost the end of the year and then I will be done with school.
I am so sad that we won’t have a matric dance this year because of lockdown.
I am miserable about it and I can’t even sleep.
How am I supposed to go on with my life?
I hate this virus and the lockdown rules.
A Oh sweet child, Auntie feels very sorry for you and other matrics.
The matric dance is a big deal for any high school learner, but as you know hartjie, the whole world changed this year.
Everyone and everything has been affected and will never be the same again.
And that goes for your matric year and dance dreams as well.
To lay awake at night wondering about this won’t do anyone any good – and definitely not you.
Your focus should now be on hitting the books and studying hard so you can pass your matric and go out there and help make the world a more beautiful and brighter place.
Yes, a matric dance will be a jol and it’s always nice to dress up and feel special, but as you grow older you will find that there are so many bigger issues to worry about.
If you have already bought your dress, why don’t you dress up and have a photoshoot just for yourself and your family to remember your year by?
You can also use the money you would have spent on matric your ball to invest in your future – pay your college registration fees, or use it as a deposit for a good second-hand car.
There will be time again for dressing up and looking lekker, but for now we all have to work to keep that dreaded second wave of Covid-19 at bay, and that means no large gatherings.
Also, everyone hates the virus and the lockdown angel, least of all this Auntie!