I emerged into this world a nice big baby girl and I remained so throughout my childhood. Even as a toddler I was always chunky. I had plenty of baby fat.
I’ll never forget the first time someone told me I was fat to my face. It was a boy at school and he was rating us to determine whether we deserved to be a member of his snow fort at recess time. I grew up in the prairies so when the snow flew it was all about whose fort you belonged to. The mere fact that I remember sitting on a wall of snow while he went up and down a row of us calling each of us fat even though many were just thin girls is pretty telling about the impact it had on me. We all laughed but I wonder if anyone else remembers the feeling they had in that moment.
I was an inactive child. I had short little stubby legs and no passion for being pelted with plastic balls and so I was among the last chosen for team sports in phys. ed. I hated gym class especially because I already hated my body as a child. I accepted my fat to be part of my identity and I saw myself as huge, though looking back now, I was no more than a bit overweight. I sometimes wonder if I hadn’t learned so early in life to identify myself as fat if I’d have developed such an unhealthy emotional eating problem.
In my teen years I learned to distinguish myself as “the funny one” in order to find my value in the social order. I wasn’t going to be “the pretty one” and I wasn’t disciplined enough academically to be “the smart one” and, well I just hated exercising so there was no way I would have tried to be “the sporty one” and so I resigned myself to being the funny one and I enjoyed making people laugh. In fact I needed to make people laugh. But being “the funny one” is a self-fulfilling prophecy and I longed for the people around me to see me for more than that so I threw myself into the arts and became “the funny artsy one”.
I resigned myself to not date. I can tell you now that I was twenty five years old before I started dating. I explored my soul as a young person and devoted time to my passions of music and volunteer activities within my church community. If young men showed interest I had several devices created to push them away because I was so self-conscious about my body that I didn’t understand how they could be attracted to me, and I felt as though actually dating me would somehow open their eyes to what I was and they’d dump me because I was so fat.
One day at church a group of new immigrants had moved in from a tiny tropical island in the Indian Ocean far off the coast of the African nation of Madagascar. Having always been obsessed with the world and its inhabitants, I was glad to make fast friends with a group of young men who couldn’t wait to share all the things about their island that they missed, namely their wives and children, who they had left behind until immigration processed their applications. As I was living so far from my own family at the time, these men became as close as brothers to me. They loved to go dancing and we went out lots with a group of friends. We’d enjoy their amazing culinary offerings and a few drinks and then dance the night away at whatever club we had chosen. When I walked in all dressed and ready to go out they would hoot and holler and compliment my looks and I started to feel good about myself. I started to dance and wear skirts and do my hair and have fun. Though I never would have had any romantic involvement with these married men, we had all the fun we could singing and dancing and enjoying life as much as we could, but I was very aware of all the people who didn’t enjoy seeing a big fat girl being that free and expressing herself on the dancefloor and being given so much attention.
About five years ago I caught a wind of fierce motivation, was gifted with a gym membership from a dear friend and worked out like a beast for months. I lost about fourty pounds. I’m incredibly sad to tell you now, that in my whole life I had never been treated as well as I was when I lost that weight. Sales people would go out of their way to help me when I was fairly used to many of them trying to pretend I wasn’t there so I’d go away. Men started paying a lot of attention to me and I was intoxicated by it all. Things were even better for me at my job. It was during this period of time, one day at church, that I met the man who would become my husband. Understand at this point I was still about 70 pounds overweight, but I looked and felt so good compared to what I had been, that I exuded this massive amount of confidence.
My husband met me at my smallest. Now he knows me at my biggest. Unfortunately we have gone through a few of the hardest years of our lives together and my emotional eating habits returned. Circumstances had us getting engaged and then cancelling our wedding, my father passing away, and a slew of immigration backlog problems that we are still battling to this day. Though I am currently extremely happily married and enjoying life’s offerings, I have gained back all that I had lost the years previous and I added another twenty pounds to the mix. Hormonally, I have an imbalance that makes it super easy to gain weight, and super hard to lose any. How wonderful for me.
Every week I struggle with choices that will help or hinder my attempts to win the battle of obesity. The battle is in my own mind as well as my hormones. Every bite I take is either a celebration of my will-power or a concession to my enemy, fat. Every time I take a cheat meal to the grocery store checkout I imagine what the person behind me is thinking, “maybe you should be buying some celery instead”. A constant stream of degrading comments rolls through my head because I know what society thinks when they look at me. I know when I wear leggings my legs jiggle and people probably think I have no business wearing fun leggings…those are for skinny girls.
But I love myself too. Even though I’m my own worst enemy most days, I love who I am and I don’t mind expressing myself through fashion or movement. I don’t feel like I should be put in a special room so that the rest of society can breed the fat out of this world without having to look at us big people.
Yesterday I saw a video about obese people dancing in their underwear in an attempt to normalize big bodies. Some of the comments on the video were…heinous. I get the feeling that many in this world would like to see us all thrown over a cliff for our lack of will-power. As if seeing big bodies moving freely is somehow so offensive. What I saw was people not celebrating obesity, but celebrating life. And any movement when you’re a morbidly obese person is great.
The video made me wonder, at what percent body fat did I cease to be a human being and begin to be merely “fat”. I have hair but I am not hair. I have eyes but I am not eyes. I have feelings but I am not feelings…but because my body is carrying a certain percentage of fat…I AM FAT. Say that to yourself. I AM fat. That is what I’ve been told by this world since I was a very young girl. Not that I have some extra fat, but that I am the fat that I carry. This is the sick and twisted notion that we are hanging on people from very young. If you eat nothing but junk and have the metabolism to stay thin then you are perceived as somehow more healthy than a person who is naturally prone to retaining their fat cells even though they may be trying very hard to get healthy. The thin, unhealthy person is simply known for other attributes, while I AM my fat because I carry it on my body.
We don’t love our fat. I don’t want to be in this big body. Don’t you think I want to jump on my husband’s back on the beach in a little bathing suit or wear shorts that don’t leave my thighs to rub together or dance without seeing a disgusted face out of the corner of my eye? I have an addiction to food and an unhealthy mental relationship with food. There is a voice in my mind that reasons that I might as well stay fat because I suppose a part of me believes that’s all the world will ever see me as. A part of me hates the idea that when Adele makes the cover of a magazine, they only show her beautiful face and not her body…and that part also hates that a thin singer/actress almost always needs to be posed in a sexual manner because after all, we are our bodies aren’t we? Adele has the soul and the voice, Britney has the abs, and don’t think for a second that I consider that problem any less horrifying.
I think it’s so sad that we’re living in a society that would rate the value someone simply because of the size of their body. Young girls longing to look like the airbrushed women on the magazine covers often believe that all they are is their looks and the label on their clothing and some hate themselves so much that they use the derision of others to give themselves some sort of pat on the back. We’d rather not see what makes us uncomfortable…and the sight of an obese person enjoying themselves has become a complete offense to those who have health and fitness all figured out.
We all play a part in either building up or tearing down the people we encounter. You can choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution.
I’m going to continue to work toward health, but I know one thing for certain. I will never try to intentionally tear down an obese person. That serves no purpose but to further encourage the emotional issues that lead us down this path. Some people smoke, some people drink, some people buy expensive toys, some yell at their family members or ignore their loved ones entirely. I eat. We are all flawed and it just so happens that you see my flaws wherever I go because they are on my body. Imagine for a second that you had to wear your flaws on your shirt; maybe a sweater that says “I lose my temper over nothing and scream at my family” or “I can’t make it through a day without a whiskey” or “We are drowning in credit card debt but these shoes temporarily made me feel better about myself because at least I look rich” or “I’m make racist remarks because I hate immigrants”…I wonder how readily people would judge the obese. How easy would it be to tear down someone because of their size, if they could take one look at you and lay all your flaws bear?
Like I said before, we all play a part in either tearing down or building up the people we encounter. While I continue every day to battle my issues with food and fitness, I know that I am not the fat I carry on my body any more than I am the skin or the toenails or the hair on my body. I am me, and that’s pretty great. 🙂
Happily Mela After 