All my life my mum would say how ‘disgustingly fat’ she was. My dad’s pet name for us growing up was ‘Fatties’. My family was- is obsessed with weight, and how much better we would all be at being successful humans if we weren’t so large.
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You know that thing that people with eating disorders typically have? Where they see their bodies as fat, despite being dangerously thin? Well I have the opposite of that. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m fat. No fat person in the history of the world has ever not known that they’re fat. We don’t need the constant reminders that people feel duty-bound to give us. Like, I totally get it, I’m a hideous monster- but when I look in the mirror in the morning, I’m generally happy with what I see. Sure there are parts which I think I could change, but mostly I put on my clothes and think ‘yeah, I look like a human woman’ which is pretty much all I’m aiming for.
It’s really shit when other people feel entitled to comment on my body or my lifestyle, without knowing me. I don’t need or want constant, unsolicited comments about my appearance, and I’m not sure that they realise the true extent of the effect their words can have on me.
The thing is, being fat is like you’re in the public domain. You lose your right to privacy and anonymity. Because your body is so outrageously not normal, people feel it is their right and their duty to tell you as much.
No-one can grasp the idea that I could be happy looking how I look. It’s goes against such an ingrained societal norm, that being happy when you’re above a size 6 is honestly like an act of revolution. Being comfortable in yourself, at any size, is an act of defiance against a society which capitalises on our insecurity. A society which has for too long told women to take up less space, and apologise for the space we already take up, and ultimately to be pleasing to the male gaze.
For the most part, I have decided that I don’t live in that bullshit female role anymore. I ascribe my value to my intelligence, and character, and passion. To the way I treat my friends, my family. To the way I engage and work with others. I have to work hard every day to believe I am worthy of love, and success, and basic human decency. It’s taken me a long time to even get to this point, and honestly it’s exhausting, but I am more than just fat.
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When I was younger I dreamt of being an actress and wanted to be on the West End. I once made my dad drive me 30 odd miles to an open audition for a production of Les Miserable. It wasn’t a professional production – just an amateur theatre company, but I had stars in my eyes and thought that that was definitely going to be my ‘big break’. I talked non-stop the whole way there, and my poor dad sat for over an hour outside while I auditioned. On the way back I chatted all about how well it went, and how much they liked me and how likely it was I would get a part, ‘at least in the chorus’. My dad said “but aren’t they casting people who are starving in the French Revolution? You don’t look like you’re starving”. Ouch.
My mum comments on my weight. A lot. Just throwaway comments, asking ‘how’s the diet going?’ and encouraging me to buy clothes that are ‘inspirational’, AKA two sizes too small. My grandma used to weigh in (pun fully intended) and leave newspaper clippings about the obesity crisis lying around in the hopes she could shame me into attaining a more acceptable figure.
To no great surprise, I have an unhealthy relationship to food and my weight. It took me a long time to fully understand that and appreciate what it means for my day-to-day life decisions. I always will have a warped attitude towards food and weight; but what is getting better all the time is my understanding of its’ roots, and my attitude towards myself and my eating behaviours.
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My upbringing and the constant negative discourse about weight and size, have instilled in me deep triggers for shame regarding my weight. Brené Brown explains that there is a key difference between feeling guilt, and feeling shame. Guilt is adaptive and can help us to work towards what we want to be, by holding up our actions against that dream. Sure it can be uncomfortable, but at its core it is aspirational and therefore can effectively drive us to change. Guilt is also behaviour driven – it’s about our actions. Shame is deeply personal and internalised. It drowns you. Brown puts it, “instead of ‘I’m sorry, I made a mistake’ it’s ‘I’m sorry, I am a mistake’”. It’s highly damaging and “highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide [&] eating disorders”.
In my dark moments I feel a deep shame about my weight and my attitudes to food. I have, in the past, suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts. Sometimes linked directly to my weight, other times linked to different traumatic times in my life, but always coming from that same place of shame. That place of feeling not worthy of love or even, in the extreme, life.
Thankfully I haven’t felt that way so strongly in years, but I can viscerally remember one time when I sat, locked in the bathroom of our family home, and considered downing the contents of our medicine cabinet. Or that time when I stood a little too close to the edge of the platform on the Northern Line and for a moment allowed myself to fantasise about toppling forward. Only now with the blessing that is hindsight, can I see that every instance where I felt in any way close to making that tragic permanent decision, I was deep in a spiral of shame.
When we were in high school, my sister lost a lot of weight, and is still by far the only ‘normal’ (read: thin) member of my family. In these dark moments, I feel strongly resentful of her, and her socially acceptable body. I also allow myself to believe that people see her as better than me, or more successful, or more worthy because she managed to attain what I have not. She’s a very successful and talented solicitor and has a wonderful boyfriend. I am an unstable freelancer who has less going on in her love-life than a nun. Despite the fact that I know that my sister has got to where she is with hard work, dedication, and good friends who set her up on dates, in those moments of shame it’s somehow easier to believe that I’m just not good enough as a human being to be deserving of love or success.
I’m working hard on myself to try to overcome my triggers for shameful feelings, and to truly regard myself as enough. Loveable enough to be loved. Passionate enough to be successful. Human enough to be allowed the space I deserve in the world to grow and make my mark.
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Looking For A Place To Stand 