Lessons from a Fat Girl

I just read a blog post by my friend Nance about the politics of food. I found it intriguing because I had never given much thought to there being a political aspect to what we choose to eat. However, I think Nance presents a point of view that appropriately stirs up the brain cells; check it out.

I was rolling along just fine until I got to the image that Nance posted at the end as a sort of what not to look like. I know Nance, and she was merely illustrating her overall thesis about food, the environment and health. Still, give her an Afro and a really good tan and the woman in the photo could be me.

I'm fat. As y'all regulars know, I don't like the word obese; it sounds like some greasy substance you sell in a can. Weight  is a major issue for a lot of us. Most of us who are fat are uncomfortable talking publicly about weight. The first lesson that a fat girl learns from her mother is not to draw attention to herself. Don't do anything to make people look at you such as wear bright colors or laugh loudly and maybe they won't notice that there's a fat girl sitting in the corner. 

I wore a lot of pastel colors as a child. It was a faux pas to dress a child in black (the alleged slimming color), so pastels were preferred to bright reds, blues, and greens. To this day I hate anything in a pastel color; give me something in a bold magenta print with teal accents, or an animal print.

I suspect that fat boys have similar experiences but I've never been a fat boy and I write what I know. I do know that fat men appear to get away with less disparagement, at least they do in straight culture. Think of the television or film career of fat actors; they have wives (slim, pretty wives), or girlfriends. They get to have romantic scenes. They get to play the lead. It's still big news to have a fat woman play the lead in a television show. Drop Dead Diva made  the news when it debuted a year ago because the lead actress was plus size.

People who would never disparage anyone based on race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation fail to even recognize the daily insults that they and others toss at fat people.

The focus should be on maintaining a healthy weight but we live in a culture where looks are everything. Attractive people are more likely to be hired and more likely to be promoted. If you're fat, perfect strangers feel that it is appropriate to comment on your weight. If you're fat, people take pictures of you from the rear, always a fat person's worst angle, of which you are unaware and use it as a warning of what not to become.

As for fat people, we still hide in the corners, trying to avoid attention. Most of us are unwilling to bring fat prejudice out into  the light because to do so means drawing attention to ourselves. We laugh at the fat jokes and cluck disapprovingly at the image of some hapless fat person in an ad about the nation's obesity problem. We allow the image of fat people as lazy, unattractive, and willfully fat to go unchallenged. We are secretly grateful when there is someone in the room who is larger because we are able to escape the dubious distinction of being the fattest person present.

At age 55, I've gotten beyond having my feelings hurt by offensive comments about my weight. I still have my insecure days when I'm convinced that I look like a small tank, but most of the time I see myself in a more positive light. I have a standard comeback to rude comments when I feel that one is warranted, "I'm fat and you're stupid. I can always lose some weight." My friend Burmadeane came up with that one years ago.


However, most children and teenagers haven't made peace with their bodies and go through untold emotional pain as they receive a consistent message that they are worthless. Don't misunderstand, I think efforts to teach healthy eating and the joy of movement are needed. However, there is a big difference from conveying a message that being physically fit will enhance your enjoyment of life and conveying the message that being fat is akin to wearing a sign around your neck that says criticize me, emotionally batter me until I have no self esteem left and then tell me how it's for my own good.

I think that some of the animosity expressed by fat people towards healthy eating campaigns and efforts to combat childhood obesity (that word again!) masks hurt feelings and insecurities. To be fat in a culture obsessed with appearance is to be a fair target for ridicule and shame. It means being a teenage girl out with your friends and having some woman whom you have never met stop you and tell you that you are going to die young if you don't lose weight. It's having people become so obsessed with the issue of weight that they forget there is a human being in front of them and not an obesity problem.

The Other F-Word

It seems that Jessica has committed the unthinkable faux pas, she's gotten fat. To compound her transgression, she wore "mom jeans" in public. Sorry, I should have warned you that I was about to drop that shocker on you. Those of you with sensitive psyches may want to skip the next sentence. Jessica performed in a skort at her most recent concert (skort= a cross between a skirt and shorts, we used to call them culottes). According to The Dish Rag, Jessica's skort is enough to make Mr. Blackwell roll over in his fashionista grave.

I'm left with a serious dilemma. According to the headlines, Jessica Simpson is fat, disgusting, and without any fashion sense. I decided to compare a picture of me to Jessica and clearly, I'm not fit to leave my house. If Jessica is fat and repulsive, then I need to shutter my windows and spare the world from the sight of me.

I was reading one of my favorite blogs recently, The F-Word, and ran across a post about a 2008 study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. According to the study's findings, weight discrimination is more prevalent than discrimination based on sexual orientation, nationality or ethnicity, physical disability, and religious beliefs. I hope that a lot of money wasn't spent on this study; any fat person could have shared this info without the expense of a study.

I've been fat since I was five. There is a photograph of me at age four, leaning against the family Buick, a lean little girl with braids. I don't remember her. My kindergarten picture shows me at age five as a round face little girl with a round body. Growing up fat is a series of rejections, of not fitting in with the group. I was never athletic, when it was time to choose teams at recess, I was always the last one picked. Eventually, I just took my book and went off to some quiet spot. It is far better to choose not to participate rather than not to be chosen.

Whenever I see a fat child, I immediately want to befriend that child. I feel the same way about fat adults. By the way, I prefer the word fat. Obese sounds slimy, like some type of oily discharge. Overweight has never made sense to me. Over whose weight? Big-boned is just a euphemism. Fat is a simple, descriptive adjective. I'm a fat person.

I was around eight years old the first time I went on a diet. It lasted about a day, but the pattern was set, for the next 40 years, I was either on a diet, about to start a diet, or having my last meal before starting a serious diet. When I look back at pictures of me in my teens, I realize that I was fat but not grotesquely so. I just felt as if I was grotesque. The most insidious thing about loathing your appearance is that you lose all objectivity about your appearance. When you look in the mirror, all that you see reflected is the rejection that you feel every day, and rejection isn't pretty.

I became what the medical profession labels morbidly obese by the time I was in my late 20s. Years of dieting, losing 20 pounds, then regaining 30, took its toll. By 1998, at the age of 43, I weighed 440 pounds. I don't have pictures of myself at that weight. There must be a few, but for the most part I avoided being in front of a camera; I was the one who was always taking the pictures. It was the best way to avoid being in the pictures.

I didn't know exactly how much I weighed until I was hospitalized in January 1998 for congestive heart failure further complicated by atrial fibrillation (an erratic heart rhythm). In spite of my fear of dying, and my intellectual understanding that my weight severely lessened my chances of surviving my cardiac problems, I couldn't deal with all the reasons that I ate and the emptiness that I was trying to fill with food. I wish that I could say that I had a revelation and understood the psychology of why I was a compulsive over-eater but there was no self-realization. However, in 2002, my doctor told me that I had Type 2 diabetes. I knew that one of the complications of diabetes if it wasn't brought under control was amputation. I became obsessed with having my legs amputated. Everything that I read confirmed that if I lost five percent of my body weight that my diabetes would improve. I wasn't ill enough to take insulin and I didn't want to get to that point because in my mind, insulin use equalled amputation.

This doesn't really make sense to me, but amputation of my legs scared me more than dying. Maybe we all have that one thing that we fear most. I didn't go on a diet, I just stopped binging on food. I didn't think of myself as dieting. For a long time, I didn't realize that I had lost any weight. I still had issues, but I didn't try to resolve them by stuffing myself with food.

My sister's husband, Bob, snapped a picture of me one day. The next time that I visited, Rhonda told me that I needed to look at the picture. I saw a woman who sort of looked like me but with part of her missing. Rhonda also banned me from wearing the flowing dashiki cut top that I was wearing in the picture, and told me, "Go buy some clothes that fit."

In about 18 months, I lost 160 pounds. I've kept it off for a little more than two years. However, I haven't conquered my weight issues. I'm not quite 5' 4" tall, and I still weigh 280 pounds. My diabetes is under control and I just seem to maintain this weight. I think that I skipped the step of really dealing with the myriad reasons that I have sought comfort in food since I was a child and that's why I've stopped this journey. I suspect that there is some pay off that I get from holding on to my excess weight, but I've learned some things and made peace with others.

This society is obsessed with weight. It's a rare woman that I know who isn't convinced that she needs to lose weight. What else would we think, after all Jessica Simpson is fat, so clearly the rest of us must be in need of weight loss. Of course, tomorrow's headlines will be about some young starlet who suddenly looks too thin. Maybe it's not weight that we are obsessed with, but appearance. Yet we all repeat the same lines to each generation, "It's character that counts. Beauty is only skin deep. It's who you are on the inside that matters." Nice platitudes, but do we really mean them?

It's taken me a lifetime, but I know that fat really is just an adjective, a descriptive term and not a summation of character. I think that my impulse to loose weight because my excess weight was literally killing me was a practical approach to solving a problem. I think that all of those diets, living off of bananas, eating cabbage soup, three-day fasts (there are those of you who know exactly what I'm talking about), were a manifestation of self-loathing that was far from emotionally healthy.

I'm still working on eating healthy and getting in some exercise. I'm also looking inwardly, trying to understand what voids are still there that I need to fill. I don't know Jessica Simpson personally, but I hope that she knows that it's okay for her to use the other f-word, and tell all of her critics, "Fuck off."

Obama, Warren, and the Inauguration Thing

Warning: long and serious post ahead!

I received an email from a friend today that inspired yet another blog post on Obama's selection of Rick Warren to lead the nation in prayer at his inauguration. Here's an excerpt from what my friend Aaron had to say:

Yes, the more you hear from Ricky Warren, the more laughable and morally repugnant he seems. But when you think of all the people whose lives are affected - and that he's been asked to bless the inauguration so soon after the wounds of prop 8 - it's more sad than laughable. Added to the spectacle are some Obama supporters (ahem) who proclaim that the Warren selection was actually *not* a tremendous brain fart, but instead a brilliant master plan that is somehow to be compared with Dr King's advocacy of non-violence! (sorry Sheria, I couldn't let that one go!)

Naturally, I felt the need to respond and I actually did so in an email. However, after expending so much effort in writing a response, I decided to publish it. My friends love the way that any conversation or email with me may end up being fodder for my blog. (Stop trembling; I don't write about everything y'all tell me.)

No offense taken Aaron, but I still think that my Dr. King analogy is valid. At a time when black folks weren't just being denied rights but being murdered for daring to suggest that they had rights, Dr. King met with extreme racists, invited them to discuss racism and in doing so, shone a bright spotlight on their foibles, forcing the rest of the country to have to stare the reality of the policies that the racists espoused head on.

Nothing that Warren says is going to influence someone who does not agree with him to suddenly declare, "I see the light! Warren is right." I do think that Obama miscalculated in selecting Warren because the man is a piss poor speaker and a numbskull to boot. However, I think that Obama's overall intent is valid.

Like it or not, and I certainly don't like it, the reality is that a majority of Christian ministers are preaching the same doctrine as Warren on Sunday mornings. Thankfully, there are other ministers who reject this bigotry disguised as Christianity and those numbers are slowly but steadily increasing. In the meantime, Obama has a country to govern. I view the Warren selection as a conciliatory gesture, a message to the Warren followers that all the stuff that they were told about turning this country into a godforsaken Muslim enclave are not true. A message that they can hold on to their narrow minded beliefs and no one is going to try and force them to change.

It's not the way I would like it to be. I'm for dragging people kicking and screaming into the light, but my way doesn't work, especially when it comes to social change. I see strong parallels between the gay civil rights issues and black civil rights issues. As I stated in my recent blog entry, the world that I live in now is radically different from the one into which I was born when it comes to matters of race. However, the struggle to get here began a few hundred years ago. The major strides made in the 20th century regarding race and civil rights were the culmination of an ongoing effort. In addition, racism has not been eradicated; legalized discrimination has. We are still struggling with bringing social practices, policies, and beliefs up to the same level as the legal prohibitions against discrimination. You can't legislate feelings. You can't force people to see the error of their ways. It doesn't mean that you stop trying, but it does mean that you choose your battles carefully.

This country thrives under the illusion that it is a Christian country founded upon Christian values. We now have a president that some people still believe is some type of sleeper Muslim agent. (Check the message boards on almost any site if you don't believe me.) In the long tradition of black people in this country, he not only has to be competent, he has to continually prove his competence. The irony of it all is that Obama is just as much white as he is black, but in this country he is a black man. The one-drop rule may have been removed from the law but it's still a part of the social fabric of this country.

People of color never have the luxury of representing self, we always represent our race or ethnic group. Remember when Timothy McVeigh and his cohort blew up the federal building? There was no general concern that twenty-something Midwestern white males might be a danger to the country and needed to be rounded up or put under surveillance. Or my favorite example dates back to WWII. Germany was our enemy; there were German-American communities in the U.S.; and the Germans had U-boats capable of reaching our shores, but the only group that this government felt needed to be rounded up and detained were Japanese-Americans. What's up with that?

However, let a person of color make a public misstep and immediately it is about the overall qualifications or honesty or trustworthiness of the entire racial or ethnic group. Don't believe me, well then explain why Guantanamo Bay is filled with people who haven't been officially charged with a crime other than resembling the folks who attacked this country on 9/11.

Obama has the unenviable task of not only governing this country but continually reassuring its citizens that he is worthy of being their leader in a way that no president before him has ever had to do.

Warren's task is to offer a prayer. That's it. He won't be asked to talk about policy of any sort on January 20. He will pray to God and a lot of people will feel that all is right with the world. Do I like it? No, but then I think that having the whole invocation thing is inappropriate. I think that the inauguration should be a strictly civil ceremony. I find it offensive that in having a Christian prayer, it ignores the many other ways of believing in a supreme deity. I don't believe that it is even inclusive of all Christians; there are many differing ways of believing in and worshipping even the God of Christianity. However, we have a tradition of praying and the last thing that can be allowed is to break with that tradition.

My overall point was and still is that Obama has a huge mountain to climb and he is under attack from every direction. He will make mistakes because he is human, and he never promised any of us that he was more than that. In the scheme of things, this Rick Warren hoopla is a lot of noise about a significant issues, and the noise is a good thing. Bringing bigotry out in to the light of scrutiny is the first step in changing law and policy. That's what Dr. King understood better than anyone and I think that Obama also gets that. I know from reading Obama's books that he is well versed in the works of Dr. King.

King worked with whites who believed themselves to be forward thinking because they supported the civil rights movement. Do you believe that all of these people really viewed black people as their equals? By the time that I was old enough (early 1970s) to be involved in the still ongoing civil rights movement, a standard conversation among black folks was about the whites who viewed themselves as our saviors and engaged in offensively patronizing attitudes and behaviors. Yet we worked with them because we needed them at the time.

I can live with Obama's selection of Warren. I don't think that the sky is falling. I started believing that Obama was going to win this election long before most of my friends and family did. Don't forget that I won our little poll regarding the number of electoral votes each candidate would receive because I knew that he was going to win big. (BTW, where is my prize?) I don't share the consternation or outrage expressed regarding Warren.

One more thing, certainly there are real people whose lives are being impacted by the nonsensical passage of Prop 8. However, as a pure legal issue, I (and evidently California's attorney general) question whether Prop 8: (1) can undo what has been legally wrought, i.e. the marriages validly entered into under state law at the time; and (2) has any validity under the California state constitution. The California courts may undo Prop 8.

Oh, and one more thing, I've changed my mind about all the references to Warren's weight. What in the hell does his size have to do with anything? Would he be any more acceptable if he was thin? Aaron, this isn't only directed at your reference to his pudgy face. All over the blogs there are a lot of references to his less than svelte physique. I'm not super sensitive about being fat. In my middle age I've made peace with it and can't believe all the years that I wasted not realizing how cute and adorable I am. However, the misery that I endured as a child and as an adolescent are still there for a lot of young people. This is the most bigoted society when it comes to weight. Why is fat bigotry acceptable? The most decent people who would never express any other sort of negativity about any group will casually comment on someone's weight. Warren is a numbskull and he is fat, but the two are not connected.