October 11, 2000
Confessions of a Fat Chick
I wanted to share most of an email I sent today to an email list I recently joined through NAAFA , or in case you haven't checked the bio page or heard my soapboxing, the National Association to Advance of Fat Acceptance. I've poked around the list for several days now, with varying responses. To my horror, one of the first responses I had was a bit of smugness when someone would post their weight and I'd know it was more than mine. Once I realized that nasty bit of sizism still lurked, I started trying to stomp it out. I'm getting better. The most reassuring, was that I started to realize, there really are people out there like me, fat and trying -- to varying degrees of success -- to be empowered about it. Anyway, here's what you won't find on my bio page:
Hi everybody. :) I've been lurking for several days now. I'm 28, divorced, and live in the Southeast Michigan area with my cat. I've been fat almost all of my life. The joke I make is that after I got my tonsils out when I was five I just never stopped eating all the ice cream I wanted. ;) (Yes, it's a bad joke.) Like most of you, I went through diet after diet, even as a kid. I first joined Weight Watchers when I was eight.
Finally in 11th grade, when I was 15, I followed a high-protein low-carb diet and lost 80 pounds in nine months, going from about 260 to about 180. Within three years, it was all back and then some. That was my last really serious diet effort. I got married, got divorced, went through some serious struggles with depression, and here I am.
I don't know how much I weigh. I don't really care. When I left my ex-husband, I weighed around 400 lbs. Two years later, I probably weighed about 250, just due to some dramatic lifestyle changes, no conscious effort. Now, some four years after /that/, I'm probably back up around the 400 mark.
My self-esteem fluctuates almost as dramatically as my weight, although the two aren't linked. I find myself attracted to larger women and larger men, but find it hard to believe that they would be attracted to /me/. On some days. On other days, honey, I'm all that and a side of beer-battered onion rings, a large Coke and a piece of apple pie. ;)
I know I need to be more active. Right now, I'm incredibly lucky to be in a good health, because I /don't/ live a healthy lifestyle. If y'all want to blame somebody for the stereotypical 'sits around all the time and eats junk food' fat person, it's me. Sorry, I'll try to improve, I promise, just so y'all don't get dirty looks at the grocery store. ;) (Yes, I'm being tongue in cheek.) But I /do/ need to improve, and I'm working on that. As an office drone and a freelance writer/web designer/computer junkie, it's hard to remember to get off my cushy butt and go do something.
Oh. And I love to talk. In case you missed that. ;) Nice meeting you all.
So. There you go. You have no idea what it took to post the numbers, particularly. There's a part of my brain that screams, "YOU CAN'T TELL PEOPLE THAT !" As if, somehow, just by seeing those magical numbers, my friends will stop loving me, or my readers will be disgusted and stop reading. Or whatever. And maybe you are disgusted, friend or relative or casual reader or whoever. But see, here's the definition of empowerment for me: your disgust is not my problem. I might find it disgusting that you love anchovies or watch pro wrestling or clip your toenails in public or whatever. And my reaction wouldn't be your problem either.
I'm not going to debate the issue of how controllable weight is, and if diets work and whether or not I should change for the sake of societal expectations or whatever. If you email me on that subject, I'll read it, and then politely delete it. Don't expect a response. I have my opinions on the above matters, but you could probably figure that out. ;-)
Here's what it's all about for me. I admit, I am not the world's happiest person. My brain chemicals see to that on a regular basis. I further admit that I have body image issues. Oh children, do I. All women (and a lot of men!) do, it's impossible not to in this society. Hell, wouldn't you, if you'd grown up being told over and over and over that you were unacceptable, ugly, a loser, a weak, self-indulgent thing that no one could possibly ever love or find attractive? And I'm not just talking about subconscious societal messages. I'm talking flat out, to my face comments. A good example: "You have such a pretty face." (Well what about the rest of me? There's plenty there, y'know!)
Even worse than the comments are the subtle things, the things you're never quite sure are based on your size or not. Follow the month ago link. That was a date. The first and only. Never heard from again. I've joked with people that the quickest way for me to get rid of annoying net geeks is to send them a picture when they ask for one (which is usually the first thing they do). It's a joke, but it happens. Time and time again. Most of the time, I can laugh it off. However, when I've spent weeks getting to know someone, chatting and hanging around online, and then they vanish without a trace as soon as I send them a picture -- I can't ignore that. I can't laugh it off. And I can't help but wonder if it was because I'm fat.
It's easy, if you're not in the middle of it, to just say, "Ignore them! They're assholes!" And yeah, they are assholes. But when you run into enough of them, you start to wonder if the assholes are right, even though everything in you tells you they're not.
Let me tell you what I see when I look in the mirror. I see bright, beautiful
blue eyes. I see the long hair I've always wanted, long and flowing and a
lovely warm reddish brown. I see a double chin, ticklish and protective of a
supersensitive neck. I see my father's nose, slightly hawkish. I see my
mother's mouth, a similarity that goes beyond skin deep. I see the scarred,
split eyebrow from when I fell against a coffee table as a toddler.
I see my body. I see plump, rounded, slightly sloped shoulders and fat upper arms (arms I'm often ashamed to show). I see full, heavy breasts (that I worry about being too saggy). I see a tummy with rolls of fat (and yet how is that a bad thing? I have a marvelously comfy lap to hold people of all sizes on). I see wide hips (hips that I sometimes have to worry about fitting into restaurant booths, airplane seats, armchairs). I see powerful thighs and calves that take me where I want to go, and have the potential to dance for hours (and yet, my thighs rub together when I walk).
I see... me. Most of the time I look at myself in the mirror, even naked, and I am at peace with what I see. Sometimes even happy. When I am not, when I look in the mirror and feel despair or even disgust at what I see there, I do not think, "I hate what I see, I'm hideous." I think, "If anyone else could see me right now, they'd be grossed out. They would find me ugly. They would hate what I see." It's a small but very vital difference.
Diet programs always tell you should have a goal. Something concrete to keep
you focused. Something to work towards. My goal is not a size 10. My goal is
not a number on a scale. My goal, if you'll indulge me a moment, is in the
second poem over on the sidebar, a poem I
haven't quoted in about a year. My goal is to feel this way, all the time. I
think I'll be more successful with that goal than I ever was with a number on a
scale.
Posted by Lisa at October 11, 2000 02:40 PM
