I don't talk much about being fat. Not here and not in real life. I wasted so much of my precious time from the age of 10 to 30 on this topic, I am loathe to give it another minute. But it's an important part of who I've become, so here goes.
If we took all the creative energy poured into conversations about dieting, exercise and corrective clothing, if we re-channeled all the self-loathing women heap on themselves into positive endeavors, if we redirected all the money and time spent on punishing ourselves for not being model thin into some other passion, we could conjure up a modern Renaissance. I'm not fucking exaggerating.
The cultural/social control over our bodies, self-images and confidence is second only to religion in it's ability to make us feel unworthy. I am talking about women but more and more I see men being squeezed into this impossible form as well. But I'm going to reference women because the control men have over our bodies is just one more manipulation heaped on the pile and we desperately need to recognize that.
I started dieting when I was 10 years old. 10. What is that, fourth grade? By the age of 10, I was so self-conscious and disgusted with my sweet and beautiful body, I put myself on a diet. Nobody told me I was fine the way I was. I was fully supported in this dieting endeavor by my parents. They agreed (in my mind) that my body was definitely not okay.
When I was little, my father called me "cherub." That was code for fat baby. Baby fat is almost cute until you're not a baby.
Age 10 was around the time my mom had to buy me clothes for pudgy kids. The clothing line was called Chubbette (thank you, marketing assholes) and my dad thought that would double as a funny nickname. He also armed my siblings with it (children can be so cruel to each other, myself included).
In middle school I had a biology teacher. I don't know what this guy's problem was but he liked to debate with me about Mormonism in front of the other students. I was, what 12? 13? A veritable theological scholar, right? Anyway, he also thought it would be hilarious to call me Chunky in front of the other kids. That stuck for quite a while.
Needless to say, the self-imposed dieting never stopped. Stupid, punishing diets that left me faint or nauseous. Family members watching what I ate and asking me "didn't you already have two cookies?" I developed a predictable shame/pleasure cycle about food. Food was disgusting/food was comforting. I went through a period where I tried to train myself to be bulimic but learned that this digestive system has an iron-clad one-way rule. For the life of me, I can NOT throw up. I have never spontaneously thrown up–not ever. If I am extremely sick I can occasionally make myself throw up but I practically have to shake hands with my epiglottis to do it.
For a time I liked to joke that there was a straight man out there crying about how cruel nature was to give a lesbian (for all intents and purposes) no gag reflex.
When I went through the custody battle, I gained 80 lbs in the first year. I went to the doctor and said, "Listen, I'm not proud. If I'd been downing a box of Oreos every night, at least I would have gotten something to show for it." But I hadn't changed my eating or anything. They chalked it up to stress. When the stress of that insane legal fight ended, of course the weight didn't reverse itself. I was up 100lbs.
But I was happier than I'd ever been. This woman had become a part of our family, she loved my kids and she loved me in ways that I could not believe. My size didn't matter. At all. It took me years to believe that she meant it. Suddenly, being obsessed about my size seemed like the fucking last thing I had time for. I was about to finish my degree, I had two young children to raise and a relationship to dedicate time to. I gave up dieting. I gave up talking about body size. I began to cull out the self-hate from how I spoke about myself. I aimed for zero fucks to give about how people saw me. I began to heal.
Society, naturally, reminded me at every turn that I was repulsive. My father claimed he was worried about my health (I was perfectly healthy: normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol, normal blood sugar, etc.) which I called bullshit on. Then, he said he was concerned that I wouldn't be able to find a job. What? Of course, I found jobs. I was smart and talented. By the end of my career, I'd be paid more than I'd ever had anticipated. Certainly more than he would have believed. One time he made one of his usual comments about my weight and lack of self-discipline, and I told him this wasn't about me. This was about him not liking that he had a fat daughter. That shut him up for a minute.
For many, many years I have just focused on being healthy. Exercise, sane healthy eating and watching portion sizes, especially over the past few years as the Saint and I aged. Then, during the pandemic, an unexpected thing happened: an unplanned dietary experiment. For the first time, the Saint and I ate the exact same things. We exercised the exact same amount. We worked at our desks for the same amount of time every day. It was a controlled experiment that I didn't even realize was happening for months. She is 6" taller than I am and while she carried extra weight, I still weighed more than she did. At the end of 9 months, she had dropped 40lbs. Me? I'd lost 13lbs.
For the first time in my life, I realized that my body just doesn't shed weight like other people. And I'm not talking a slower metabolism–if I had dropped 25lbs to her 40lbs...then, sure, it's just the difference in our metabolism. But 13lbs? Something was wrong but not about how I was eating. The day I realized this, I had my first and only meal where I knew that there was nothing wrong with the way I ate. I had been blaming myself subconsciously for most of my life for my weight "problem." And for that one evening, I ate blamelessly. If I was wont to cry, I'd have wept.
I don't think they'll figure this out in my lifetime (all the standard tests have been run: thyroid, hormones, diabetes, etc.) and I don't care. I told my doctor and said I wasn't looking for her to solve the problem but she needed to understand that something was definitely wrong. But this is just the way my body is.
The increased consciousness of fatphobia damage (see Ady Bryant in Shrill) and numerous options in clothing for larger women have made all this a bit better. Gone are the fat clothes that employed large diagonal graphics or cabbage-patch-kids-like round collars over sack-dresses ablaze in flowers. But I don't think for a moment that being fat is acceptable here or in most countries.
Our culture's grip on our self-image is firm and unforgiving. I do wish women would stop it. Stop doing penance at the gym. Stop eating salads in public because you're afraid someone will come along if you happen to be eating dessert in public and say, "See? That's why you're fat." I wish women would stop apologizing for what they eat or worse, bragging about how little they ate that day. Just stop. It's a catastrophic suck on our energy. Our creativity. Our confidence. And we give it an outsized place in our lives.
Take up space. Spend your energy on things that delight you. Tell anyone who has an issue with your size to fuck off in every way.
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