Fat girl, writing

There’s a good post over at BlogHer right now about the importance of a fat woman being able to call herself “fat.” I’m not going to summarize it in depth other than to say the author, Angie Manfredi of Fat Girl, Reading, urges us to look at the word not as an insult but as an adjective. It’s just a word and nothing more, she says.

Since this sort of goes along with my last post, I’m going to add my two pennies and say that while I agree with the sentiment, it’s a difficult one for all fat women to adopt. I think the comfortable self-acceptance that allows a woman to rightfully and accurately use the word “fat” to describe herself is born out of maturity and hard-won confidence. Not all fat women get to that place and I think those who can look at that word as just a word are in the minority.

When Autumn called me “fat” last week, it wasn’t the first time she had made a comment about my size. She made the first comment nearly a year and a half ago, referring to me as a “big lady”, and as soon as she said it I immediately thought of all the other big ladies out there who might be offended by a similar observation about their girth. Maybe I’m projecting too much of my own past angst onto those faceless obese whose feelings I didn’t want my kid to hurt, but I remember all too well how the weight of that one three letter word used to crush me. All through my childhood and into my teen years it was used as a weapon and it took a very long time for me to be able to call myself “fat” without feeling shame.

I remember one night about sixteen years ago Nathan and I were working third shift at Target with another guy named Nate (not confusing at all, right?). This was at least a year before Nathan and I started dating, and while we did indulge in a little playful flirting, he wasn’t even a blip on my radar. He was married to someone else at the time, and as I later found out, he possessed a talent for putting his foot in his mouth that nearly killed our relationship before it ever got started.

That particular night Nate, Nathan and I were sitting around a table in the break room completely punch drunk and hopped up on Mountain Dew. We were giggling like fools about who knows what when Nathan made a completely innocent comment about my weight and how he probably weighed the same as me.

The atmosphere in the room immediately changed. I stared at Nathan for a moment, pushed my chair back from the table and left the room. At that time I probably weighed 180-190 pounds, a good hundred pounds less than what I weigh now, and all 180-190 pounds of me were pissed off. Who was this guy to make comment on how much I weigh? Seriously, who does that?

My husband did, or rather the man who would one day be my husband did. For the rest of the night I gave both Nathan and Nate the silent treatment, leaving them to wonder what the hell had happened. And while the incident was only the first of many times my husband would open his mouth without thinking, he lost my trust that night and I wound up going out of my way to avoid him whenever possible.

What hurt most about what Nathan said to me was that he confirmed what people, and what men in particular, saw when they looked at me. I could look in the mirror and tell myself it wasn’t so bad because the mirror didn’t show me how the weight affected the way I moved through the world. I hid behind big hair and large, loose clothing in order to draw attention away from my flawed body, but once in awhile someone would call me out and it hurt. Whether it was a harmless comment like Nathan’s or a mean-spirited jibe meant to insult, I was forced to look at myself through someone else’s eyes and I didn’t like it.

Ironically Nathan is probably the biggest reason I now have such a healthy attitude about my size. He has seen my weight go up and down over the years and not once has he even hinted that the added pounds were a turn-off. Everything about the way he looked at me and held me indicated he found me just as attractive at 356 pounds as he did at 200 pounds, which is what I weighed when we started dating.

And when you have someone in your life who continually tells you how sexy you are, you sort of start to believe it. The trick, of course, is learning to accept the compliments.

Back when I was single, I used to joke that any man who wanted me was a man I didn’t want. Any man’s willingness to date an overweight woman was viewed as a serious character flaw. I figured they were either chubby chasers, who I found repulsive simply because they wanted their women fat, or they were hiding something like a brick-lined pit in the basement or the carcass of a dead mother drying out under a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I never believed a man could love me in spite of my size and that my wit, my sense of humor and my independence were the most valuable and most attractive parts of me. My husband has seen me at my worst. Clothed and unclothed, he has seen every side of me. He knows what sags, what flops and what parts of me continue to move even after I stop moving. He’s been with me through depression, frustration and various sexual droughts. I’m not always nice to him, not nearly as nice as he is to me, and yet he’s still there.

Either he’s a glutton for punishment or the dude really loves me.

And when you find that kind of love and open yourself up to it, loving yourself is so much easier.

I never really considered myself a fat advocate. To sit squarely in the camp of size-acceptance, to me, meant preaching to others that being fat is okay. I never thought being fat was okay because all I’ve ever wanted is to not be fat anymore. In every one of my fantasies in which I am a beautiful, successful woman, I am also a thin woman who can walk into any store and buy clothes off the rack.

I’ve gotten to the point where I realize I may never be thin and I’m okay with that. I’m going to have to fight with this weight for the rest of my life and the end result may never be me slipping into single-digit pants sizes. The end result may be a happier, healthier woman whose knees don’t creak every time she gets up from a chair and who can chase, and maybe even catch, her child in a game of tag.

Size-acceptance isn’t about getting others to see your beauty so much as it is opening your own eyes to it. It’s about forgetting everything you’ve ever been told about how there’s no place in this world for fat women and realizing there’s an entire universe of worth and value contained within your heart.

So yeah, I guess I am a fat advocate.

And I’m also fat.

I’ve earned the right to say it, so much so that I’m going to say it again.

I am fat.

But I am also awesome.

Tagged as: beauty, self esteem, size-acceptance, weight