The most body-positive place I've ever visited
I just got back from Grenada, and it changed how I experienced my body.
For the first few years after I stopped dieting, travel was a trial. It brought questions, uncertainties, insecurities. Not because of the logistics of unfamiliar places, but because I didn’t know, and didn’t trust, my new body. Every trip came with a set of questions I had never had to ask before.
Would the airplane seatbelt fit?
Would I still be able to do the things I used to do?
Would I ever again feel like myself, even in a new place that was unfamiliar?
In those early years in my new body, travel wasn’t just travel. It was a series of tests I wasn’t sure I’d pass.
I was steadily gaining weight and didn’t know when, or if, my body would level off. For the first time in my life, I had to think about whether the plane seatbelt would fit. I was hyper aware of my hips, holding my breath each time I eased myself into the seat and felt them brush against the arm rests. I exhaled in relief each time that seat belt clicked, but then the worries crept in. Would I fit next time? Would I eventually need an extender?
Different planes meant different seat configurations. Different unknowns. My personal expansion coincided with rising aggression for people who lived and dared to travel in larger bodies, and yes, I’ll admit there was and probably still is my own fat phobia here too. I had read about people who traveled with their own seat belt extenders, because they couldn’t rely on the airline to have one. Although I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, I vowed I would do the same if I needed to.
These were thoughts I never had to consider before. Signs, I see now, of the thin privilege I had taken for granted in my previous sizes, even while still feeling “fat.” But fat is not a feeling. Not when you’re actually fat or perhaps just at the upper limit of midsized. (I still struggle with what to call myself, though I use fat here as a neutral descriptor and not a negative.)
Once off the plane and in the destination, it quickly became clear I was also testing the physical limits of my new body. I didn’t know if I could still do the things I had always done on vacation. The hikes with giant step-ups and steep descents, that occasionally ended in swift-water swims. The general strength and physicality that I had always assumed would be there. My girls liked to do horseback rides along cliffsides and beaches, which I had always agreed to, despite my fear of horses, but now I had a new terror: would I be too heavy to ride?
Layered on top of that was the normal body image travel anxiety, the kind that I’ve come to understand most of us Western women feel no matter our size: the fear of being somewhere new, more visible, more aware of ourselves and everyone else.
Body comparison is a real vacation joy kill.
Eventually, I came to expect this body image anxiety. Every trip would bring some form of it.
Strangely, expecting it helped.
The times I struggled most were the ones where I thought I had finally figured it out, where I believed I was in a “good place” and wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. No matter how good I’m feeling in my body, I’m no longer foolish enough to believe it’s forever. It sounds jaded, but it’s protective. It’s how I’ve learned to move through a world that isn’t built for bodies like mine.
Settling into my body during travel
But something has shifted as I’ve settled into this body.
My weight has stabilized. I mostly know what to expect when traveling in this body.
I mostly know the seatbelts will fit—minus having taken an older, six-seater recently and finding myself at the very end of that sucker!
I know I need to pack every piece of clothing I could possibly need, because I’m unlikely to find anything in my size. (And by the way, I don’t view this as my fault anymore. Progress.)
So, I’ve adjusted in ways both practical and mental. And while the body image stuff still comes up, the hard edge around this has softened.
Including my recent trip to Grenada with my husband and our youngest daughters.
What felt different about traveling to Grenada
This place felt different immediately. It’s a little less touristy, a little harder to get to than many Caribbean islands. And perhaps because of that, it was more real. We were there during our spring break, but it felt like we were a world away from the madness.
We did a split stay, first at Spice Island Beach Resort on Grand Anse, and then at Six Senses La Sagesse. Both are firmly within the luxury category, so I’m not going to pretend we had an authentic stay. But what struck me almost immediately had nothing to do with the hotels.
Up and down the glorious Grand Anse, which often lands on those lists of world’s most beautiful beaches, it was uncrowded. It felt unspoiled. People weren’t there to be seen.
There were women of all sizes in every kind of swimwear. Not just among the locals, but the visitors too.
We didn’t encounter many Americans in the first half of the trip. There was no spring break energy. Even better, there was no undercurrent of hyper-controlled bodies that I’ve found in certain resort-heavy destinations (here’s looking at you, Ka‘anapali).
Women of all sizes, but especially the biggest, proudly wore their thong bikinis, in bold colors. At Annandale Waterfalls, no one was shrinking while on full display to everyone waiting their turn to go under the falls and cooling off with a drink at the next door bar. No one was hiding from photos.
Body image, culture, and what we consider ‘normal’
Some of this, I’ve realized, is the body norms of the Caribbean. It reinforced one thing for me: just how much what we consider “normal” about our bodies is shaped by cultural beliefs and environment. We know from research that body ideals shift across cultures, and there’s less singular emphasis on thinness in at least some Caribbean locales than there is in the U.S.
I was hoping to experience more body positivity first-hand when I went to St. Lucia a few years earlier, having read a first-person Lonely Planet article about a woman who found the courage to embrace her curves and proudly wore her bikinis there. I didn’t see it the way I had hoped to in St. Lucia, but it was there in Grenada, which is similar in geography and culture.
Some of it is me, of course. Unlike that writer, I’ve never shied away from bikinis, nor has nudity ever been an issue. Ironically, in my smaller days, I used to shrink away when partners touched my stomach, but I don’t care with my husband. Some of that is comfort with my body. Some of it is comfort with him.
Body ease in Grenada
But in a place like Grenada, where everyone seems to be so at ease in their bodies, it feels like relief. I walked around in my bikini without a care, throwing on a see-through lace or crocheted coverup, on my way to the beach or breakfast.
During my visit, I learned about Spicemas, Grenada’s Carnival held in early August, where over several days masqueraders wear everything from chains to feathers. Playing Jab Jab, or the devil, they cover their bodies in oil or charcoal and wear chains, reclaiming symbols European colonizers once used to dehumanize African slaves.
The celebration culminates in a parade known as Pretty Mas, where people take to the streets in feathered, glittering, often barely-there costumes. It stands as a powerful expression of resistance and freedom, a celebration of resilience.
I don’t pretend to fully understand the cultural and historical context of it, but it felt powerful to be in a place where bodies are part of that kind of bold expression, rather than something to control or minimize.
A moment of body relief in Grenada
I didn’t go to Grenada to have a more liberating experience in my body. I hoped I might, just as I do every time I leave the U.S., and I was pleasantly surprised. There is something about seeing other women embracing their curves that allowed me to do the same. Usually, it feels like I’m the one leading the way. In Grenada, I didn’t have to.
I allowed myself to be just for those moments.
I’m not naive enough to think I’ve had a body image breakthrough that will sustain me. It just doesn’t work that way. But I’ve had enough of these moments now to understand that some places are more supportive than others, and we have to try to hold onto those moments even when vacation is over.
I’d love to hear from you…
Have you ever traveled somewhere that changed how you felt in your body, even just for a moment? I’d love to hear about it.
