2004-01-21 - 7:40 p.m.
The first time anyone ever called me fat was in grade one. A boy named Arthur, who I had never particularly thought of as fat himself, came up to me and said, “I was sick and lost five pounds and now you’re the fattest kid in the class!”
When I look back at pictures of myself at that age, I can see that I wasn’t particularly fat. What I had, and had had since infancy, was a small round pot-belly. But apparently that was enough. The word had been said. And sometimes it feels like people have been saying it to me ever since.
In my experience, when someone calls you fat as an insult, they’re not just describing your body. There are lots of other things they’re saying about you, and you can hear them all pretty clearly in that one word and the way they use it. They’re saying: you’re lazy, have no self-cntrol, no willpower. They’re saying: you’ll never truly be one of the cool kids – your fat will always serve as a qualifier – a *disqualifier* - no matter how funny or smart you might be, no matter how well you use what you’ve got. They’re saying: you’re unattractive. Not just *not* attractive, but actively repulsive. No one wants to look at you. They’re saying: no one will ever love or desire you. And please don’t have the effrontery to love or desire anyone yourself, because, well, that’s pathetic at best, and actively disgusting at worst, because it reminds us that you have a body, and your body repulses us.
These were the messages that I heard loud and clear from the people around me, there in all the scorn that was heaped on my fatness, in the incomprehensible level of vitriol and malice with which people used the word fat.
For a long time I felt like I was being punished. Being punished by the universe for some unknown crime by being given a body that, right from the beginning, was the ‘wrong’ kind of body, naturally plump and round and pot-bellied. And then being punished again by everyone around me for that body, punished by being told no, you can’t eat that – I know the other kids get a full slice of pizza, but I think you only need half. Yes, I know, the other kids get to have pop, but you could stand to lose some weight, how about a glass of water. By Christmases where the other (thin) grandchildren got candy in their stockings and I did not, by certain birthday parties where the mothers of friends would eye me and then choose the smallest piece of cake to give me. Punished by being ignored, left out, laughed at, insulted.
Under that kind of pressure, I guess some girls would have given in, accepted what they had to give up, and gotten thin. I didn’t. Partly I was fighting a body whose natural state was heaviness. Partly the fact of not getting the same treats as the other kids got all tangled up with not getting the other things I didn’t get, like popularity or respect, and there was a part of me that thought, “You won’t give me what the other kids get? Then I’ll take it. I’ll be clever and careful and I’ll get it for myself. I’ll charm it out of you. I’ll sneak it when you’re not looking. I’ll steal change from your pockets and your dressers and I’ll buy it. And if you try and make me feel bad for doing it, I’ll take double or triple what you give the other kids so freely.” And I did. What they wouldn’t give me I took for myself, that and more, until, after years of being called fat, I truly was fat.
I’d like to think that by now I’m past being so filled with rage and self-pity, that I’ve had a chance to recognise that everyone has things they struggle with and that mine could be far worse. But I’m beginning to suspect that I’m not. That a huge part of me is still that angry little girl, and that this is why the dread question of weight loss fills me with such rage. Because dieting feels like admitting that they were right, that all the things they were saying about me when they called me fat are true, like agreeing and saying “yes, I am a bad, disgusting, weak and lazy person and no one could possibly love me the way I am.”
Even though I can rationally recognise that staying at this weight is not in my own best interests medically, I can’t quite let go of that feeling. Even while I’m nodding and agreeing with my doctor, inside I can feel myself crossing my arms and thinking “Fuck you, I’ll do what I want!”
And as much as I try to move on, I don’t want to totally disown that angry little girl, because she was the one who kept me alive and some version of proud through what were some pretty bad times which could have done me more damage than they did. So how do you keep the good and discard the bad?
