Embracing the morbid.
I originally wrote the following to post on the Fatshionista community on LiveJournal, but figured it was worth crossposting here as well.
According to the dubious measurements of the BMI scale, I am morbidly obese. As in Death Fat. I am super duper really for real maaaaad fat. I am the kind of fat where doctors are friendly until they get me on a scale, and then after that they get Very Somber and talk to me Seriously about my Weight Problem (which is why I no longer get on said scale at the doctor’s office). I am the kind of fat where I can’t always find stuff to fit me even in plus-size shops. I am the kind of fat a lot of people mean when they say, well, some people are just bigger, but people who are really fat are just not normal or healthy, and maybe those people SHOULD lose some weight. Those people are talking about me.
Furthermore:
I adore cooking and refuse to keep anything less than real butter in my house (when in-laws visit, they bring their blasphemous butter-imitators for their own use, and sneak their horrid little yellow tub in and out of my fridge on the sly). I eat very little meat but not for moral or ideological reasons. I love a fine steak, once in awhile, or a delicious pile o’ bacon, but am only lukewarm about chicken and fish. I prepare and eat a ridiculous amount of fresh vegetables as the bulk of my diet, and have a serious weakness for good cheese. I keep a jar of bacon fat in my refrigerator, and I cook with it often. Yeah.
I exercise only sporadically. I take the stairs at work five or six times a day, but only because I am too impatient to wait for the elevator. By the tests and non-BMI numbers doctors use to measure such things, I am healthy, but this is mostly through divine providence and not through any real effort of my own.
I have a partner who unconditionally supports my fat acceptance, while struggling with his own. I have a decidedly not-fat family that is mostly supportive of my fat politics except for the very occasional lapse into the “…. but I’m just worried about your HEALTH,” rhetoric, and they rapidly backpedal when I call them on it. I live fully in this real and complicated world. On a social level, I’m not one who screws around on these matters, not with friends, not even with family; you can respect my body, or you can fuck right off.
I have been fat in varying degrees my whole life. My whole life. I never lost a ton of weight and got to feel a glimmer of what it might be like to be thin, or even average. Cumulatively, I’ve lost/regained tons of weight, over and over, for sure, and in my teens tried every commercial diet plan you can name. But I never lost enough to be officially not-fat. Never enough to shop in the not-fat stores, ever. Never enough that I wouldn’t reliably get fat-bashed when walking alone in my city. Never enough that a doctor’s ever said I was of a normal weight. Never enough that I didn’t, even for a second, feel like I wasn’t fat anymore.
There are lots of people fatter than me. There are people who are fatter and in better shape, there are people who are less fat and in worse condition. There are individual fat people with a far broader range of physical abilities than me, and individual fat people whose range of abilities is much narrower. There are also fat people whose abilities are simply different, and neither better nor worse. Choose a weight from the air, and I’ll bet you real money that I can line you up ten people at that weight with dramatically different bodies and experiences and lives. It’s okay to not always be the Good Fat Person. I don’t have to represent the best of fat people everywhere, and neither do you. I don’t have to defend my choices. They’re no one’s business but my own.
I am, plainly, morbidly obese. Death fat. I say this without attendant judgement. I say it not with an eager, fuzzy ring of reclamation, nor with self-loathing and fear. I’m just saying it. I am death fat, and this is my body, and it’s individual and unique to me. And I’m good with it.
This here is a call to the morbid to out ourselves. You don’t have to bike ten miles a day to make up for it. You don’t have to be “healthy” by anyone’s standards but your own. You don’t even have to be totally 100% really for real in love with your body. You don’t have to post pictures (unless you want to). You DO have to make an effort to not apologize. To not feel guilty (or ashamed). To just be yourself.
This is a fantastic post, Lesley. I’m also glad to hear a bit about your history with fat. xoxox
Thank you so much for your inspirational post!
not to be a broken record, but this is a great post!
I’m one of the in-betweenies… the ones who get chastized by thin girls for being OMGSOFAT!!! and chastized when stepping into a Plus Size clothing store for wearing their smallest couple of sizes. Thank you for shedding light on your individual fat experience. I may have to write something up in my blog.
Thank you. Just … thank you.
I posted my own story. Thanks for giving me the confidence to do so.
http://jasievangesen.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/my-fat-story/
I am morbidly obese even though I totally reject the BMI scale. I have been overweight my whole life and it just feels like such a part of who I am. This is my body.
5′6″ 265lbs.
Thank you for this post.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunshinebright/3006759280/sizes/s/
I am also morbidly obese. I vaguely remember being 5 or 6 and not thinking about being fat, but once I started thinking about the thin/fat divide, I saw myself as fat. Yes, I yo-yo’d in high school, but it was always between size 24 and size 18, or 26 and size 22, not fat vs thin. I hit supersizes when I got out of college.
And I do think, in some ways, that it’s a plus. I do not sit around thinking, “Oh, I would just have to lose [10lbs / 20 / 30lbs] to [not be obese / fit into normal sizes / look thinner], surely I can do that without going crazy”. Uh, no. I am not going to pass for thin. The magical thinking is tempered by reality and past experience. It’s a cold comfort, but there it is.
This so resonates with me. I remember in 3rd grade, when I had to start wearing a bra (and that was way back in 1964), the girls in the bathroom were teasing me about it (and not in a nice way either). I remember telling them that they were just jealous because fat girls got tits sooner than skinny ones. There were times, as a teen-ager and young adult (before I had my son) when I could shop in regular stores and find clothes to fit, but I was still at the top end of sizes even then (a 14/16 for pants and 18/20 for tops). I could never buy a pantsuit because the top that went with the size pants I wore was too small (and if I bought the top to fit, the pants were waaaaay too big). Even today, at my morbidly obese death-looking-for-a-place-to-happen size, it’s the same way. I wear a 26/28 in pants, but a 4X or 5X in tops (it’s those boobs again).
The thinnest I ever was as an adult was 175 lbs at 5′ 9″, and I was not fat by any stretch of the imagination, but I was too fat to get into the Air Force (they told me I had to get down to 140 lbs). Told them it wasn’t happening, I was in great shape the way I was, and they were losing a great recruit (and they were, I scored higher on their entrance tests than most men who took the tests back then [1973]).
It’s been a long, hard road to accepting my fatness, with a lot of dangerous detours along the way. But today, I’m of the opinion that if people don’t like the way I look, they can just STFU and not look at me, because it’s not about my health when they comment, it’s about their aesthetic that I don’t meet. And I’m not obligated to meet their idea of what looks good, just like they aren’t obligated to meet my view of what looks good. So, at 5′ 8″ and 375 lbs, they can STFU about my weight, my husband likes me just the way I am and so do I (finally).
Oh, girly, preach it! At a delightful 350ish lbs, I am happy as a lark. I almost hit 400 lbs before my son was born, though about 20 lbs were retained water. I sometimes think, “If only I were 215…” Ha! Wouldn’t the skinnies of the world be mortified?
I am morbidly obese. 5′5″ and 325 and until about 10 pounds ago I felt great. I only started really noticing how fat affects health beacuse that last 10 pounds or so has made me start huffing and puffing. I also wonder if it’s due to some other medical condition because it seemed to accompany massive ankle swelling…….hmmmm.
I won’t go into what this post meant to me, because I’d probably take up way too much room and start weeping but suffice it to say that I wept with happiness when I read it. I have always been fat, I always will be fat and it’s about time that others accepted that with me.
Thank you Lesley. How did you know I needed to read a post like this today?
Btw, you have lovely shapely calves and elegant ankles.
I’ve never known how to tell my fat story. It’s not full of abuse and ridicule, and my road to self-acceptance hasn’t been frought with persecution, so I’ve often felt it wasn’t worth telling…that it wouldn’t be relateable, because I know so many people have struggled so much more than I have. I have had my share of bullshit to put up with, and have some scars to cover, I still have trouble feeling confident…but nothing like so many of my fat brothers and sisters have had to bounce back from.
I’ve always been fat. I come from a fat family. The last time I was under 200 pounds, I was probably 11. I didn’t eat differently than my skinny friends, I didn’t exercise less. I was just fat, end of story. I’ve never made excuses for it or felt like I should. I never dieted, or yoyo-ed. I watched everyone else in my family do it from early in my life: watched Dad struggle with self-hatred, watched my sister lose and gain hundreds of pounds, watched my Mom exercise herself into the ground. I’m glad to say that I’ve been able to pull my sister and my Mom out of fat hatred with my relentless positivity barrage.
I get so frustrated with how relentless a battle it is and how often I have to defend living my life in a way that makes me happy. It’s not natural to have to defend your right to self-respect.
I’m definitely morbidly obese, at 5′6″ 340-something pounds (I only know my weight from doctor’s visits. Luckily I have a doctor who doesn’t use my weight as an excuse to ignore my health, and I have yet to get a lecture.) Like most Americans, I don’t exercise much, I don’t eat spectacularly…but I certainly know skinny and fat people on both ends of the health spectrum.
In short, I’m big as house. And I’m okay with it. And the guys who stick around are into it. My family, my friends, my doctors…we’re all fine with it. We’re all at peace with the fact that I am a fat woman, and will be in varying degrees my entire life. We agree that this does not mean that I am doomed to bad health, no love, and a life of waddling around my house in muumuus.
My “goal weight” if I ever decide to believe in such a thing, would be in the zone of 250 pounds - still firmly and proudly FAT. I specialize in calling out people who think I’m less of a person for it.
Now, if only everyone else would stop making my fat into politics! I mean REALLY…good flaming grief!
Thanks for listening to my ranting - hope someone gets something out of it. :)
Faithful Reader,
Heather