As Though It Was My Name.
When I was in middle school, specifically seventh and eighth grade, there was a kid, a boy, who was a bit of a bully to me. At some point, he took to calling me “obese”. I don’t mean as in, “Wow, girl, you are obese!” I mean he called me Obese, as though it was my name. He did it loudly, too, with a cheery, booming cadence that emphasized the second syllable: Oh-bese! I wonder now if he even knew my real name. I presume he would have, as we were in the same class. But he never used it. I can actually hear his voice even now; I can’t remember the voices of my grandfather who passed away when I was seventeen, or my best friend from that middle-school era, but I remember his voice and the way he said Oh-bese! to me, over and over, every day. He said it when people were around, in crowded classrooms or the cafeteria; he said it when I was the only one present, if he caught me in the hallway or walking out to the buses at the end of the day. I don’t honestly remember it bothering me that much, or for very long; eventually I assume I learned to block it out. But I can’t seem to forget the voice.
The picture to the left was taken the day I graduated eighth grade, and, giggles over my ludicrous hair and outdated fashion aside, is a fair approximation of my size at the time. Today, when I took at pictures of myself from back then, I don’t really see a fat girl. I see a round face; I see a noncurvy figure. I have never been small-waisted or large-bosomed or traditionally “womanly” in shape, at any point in my life. I see a girl who was probably a bit taller and a bit wider than some of her classmates, but who was not really different to any dramatic degree. I certainly don’t see the gargantuan freak of nature I believed I was then, which was probably at least slightly related to the fact that there was a kid who called me Obese as though it was my name.
In a testament to the endless circular context of writing on the internet, the memory that opens this piece was inspired by a post that was set afire by another post and partly informed by some other posts I have made, so it’s as though I’ve thrown a boomerang and because I wasn’t watching for it to return, it’s beaned me in the back of the head. From the primary inspiration, wrought by the inimitable Fillyjonk of Shapely Prose:
This so-called epidemic is not made up of theoretical fucking people who are just as fat as you can possibly imagine. It’s made up of people you see every day AND WHO YOU PROBABLY THINK ARE “NOT FAT.” […] That’s the point of the good work that Jezebel has, for the most part, been doing, making it clear that fear of fat is an injustice visited on all of us, of any shape. Jezzies seem to be okay hearing that from their thin editors — since we all know they’re really talking about thin girls, right, and it’s not okay for thin girls to have to think they’re fat! They might start to eat too little, which when you’re thin is called an eating disorder!
In fact, though, the difference between body shame for thin women and fat women is only one of scale. There’s not a magical cutoff where shame becomes healthy. There’s not a magical cutoff where bodies become unacceptable. There’s not a magical cutoff where weight loss pressure suddenly breaks free of patriarchy and societal scapegoating and becomes pure and beneficent concern for health. There’s only an arbitrary demographic cutoff where someone who was okay one pound ago becomes a statistic to scare children with.
Lizzie Miller is a hot topic right now; she is the nearly-naked plus-size model in the tiny picture in the September issue of Glamour that so many people have been palpitating over. Heralded as an overnight poster girl for “normal” women, the 20-year-old size 12/14 Miller is suddenly being asked to speak for them as well as herself:
“I remember when I was younger, looking through magazines, and I would feel so out of place and so self-conscious because I didn’t see anyone who looked like me,” said Miller… “The fact that this picture caused such a frenzy, it says that this is, obviously, something that people need to see. I’m not trying to promote obesity, and I’m not obese, but I’m also not stick thin.”
So Miller handily brackets her own limits of where acceptable sizes should begin and end–it’s really no different than the current paradigm, it’s just moving the goalposts a bit–but she draws the line at “promoting obesity”. Of course. No one wants to promote obesity. Obese is, after all, one of the very worst things a person can be. To be Obese is to hate yourself, to allow your body to look that way, and to hate everyone else, to force them to see you in that shape. To be Obese is to be unsanitary, uneducated, unpleasant, and unhappy. To be Obese is to be unlikeable and more than that, unloveable. To be Obese is to be unacceptable.
The trouble, as Fillyjonk points out, is that many of us are obese, according to even the most forgiving definitions. I was legitimately obese as an eighth-grader, and I am legitimately–morbidly, even!–obese today. Truth be told I’m not sure there’s been a time since puberty that I was not obese, even at the apex of my compulsive-dieting and borderline eating-disordered teen years.
Today I can look back at my eighth grade self pictured above and think, Wow, I really wasn’t all that fat. Certainly not as fat as I thought I was. But the sharper truth is that even at the time, telling me I wasn’t fat wouldn’t have helped. Telling me I wasn’t fat would have done nothing to quell my insecurities, my gutter-level self-esteem, my passionate body hatred. Telling me I wasn’t fat, even if you told me every day, wouldn’t have changed a thing and it wouldn’t have made a dent. I knew I was fat, and the reality of it was irrelevant; I knew it, with all the certainty of my burgeoning adolescence. I knew. So telling me I wasn’t fat would not have helped, any more than it helps when anyone tells anyone they are not fat, when the person calling themselves fat really, truly believes in it.
What would have helped would have been someone telling me I was fine the way I was, fat or not. Or someone telling me being fat was not reason to hate myself, to starve myself, to hurt myself, to punish my body for failing to conform to the images in my head, or in the magazines I read. Or someone telling me being fat was not the end of my world, that it did not mean nobody would ever love me, or want to be my friend. Or even someone telling me, yes, even if you are Obese, you still deserve basic human respect. These are the things that would have helped; these are the things that may have saved me years of damage that then took additional years to repair. What was singularly unhelpful was being told I wasn’t fat in the first place, since that assertion did nothing to dismantle the idea that fat people richly deserve their ill treatment. Simply being identified as “not fat” meant the fear of becoming fat (or fatter) was allowed to remain solidly intact.
There is a cultural trend at work in our world today which seems to dictate that any behavior that could be perceived as “promoting obesity” and thereby advancing a deadly “epidemic” is irresponsible, immoral, and unforgiveable, practically on a level with drowning kittens or selling crack to schoolchildren. But neither the promotion of obesity, nor obesity itself, is the disease; the disease is universalizing standards and expectations of what counts as a “normal” human body, because “normal” is always, always, always subjective, as it should be.
What would have helped would have been someone telling me I could be me, and be accepted, no matter my size. Even if it was a lie or a bedtime story or the prize I could only get after slaying a few dragons and scaling a few mountains. That would have helped.
This is one of those blog posts I occasionally run across and have nothing more articulate to say than, “YES. YES. THIS. ME, TOO. YES.”
Simply being identified as “not fat” meant the fear of becoming fat (or fatter) was allowed to remain solidly intact.
I think just about everyone can relate to this. It also pits us against each other, because if she thinks she’s fat, then wow, she must think I’m really obese! And if she thinks being fat is bad, then being obese must be really really bad.
At summer camp, at least the kids used my name when calling me obese. Unfortunately, my name is Elise, and Obese Elise kind of had a catchy ring to it.
That picture could be me, if the hair was dark brown. Thank you, this was a really good post. It even inspired me to write my own.
Being fat when everyone is instructed to hate fat is often bad enough, but being tall and fat can make it even worse. I remember getting detention a couple times in middle school because my first response was to fight back physically (I had two older brothers that I blame for that) and after that happened a couple times I had to just resign myself to being miserable.
Sounds to me like SOMEONE had a crush and was afraid to admit it!!
The many, many times I was berated for my weight or promiscuousness only to have been told later by my tormentors that they just wanted a piece but were too afraid to admit it, is sickening.
A lot of these “bigger” models are always decrying “obesity”, and claiming that *they* are not obese, so don’t even try to call ‘em that. They don’t get it. They don’t understand that they are alienating those who support their existence in fashion. Obesity is an individual with a BMI over 30. That’s it. It does NOT imply that the individual is ugly, unhealthy, or unworthy of humanity. It’s going to break my heart if I hear “plus-size” model Crystal Renn say anything like that, because I really admire her.
Lesley, you’re just awesome! So articulate. So adept at describing what it’s all like, growing up fat. When I started fifth grade, I decided to count the number of times the boys in my class called me by my first name, because they usually called me something really creative, like “fat lady” or “fat woman.” I waited…. and waited…. and at the end of the school year, none of them had ever used my real name. So I get this! Oh, man, do I get this! My mom and dad really thought they were helping me, showing me how to diet, cheering every pound I lost, until I could spin in a circle and my uniform skirt would keep spinning for a full rotation after I stopped. I dieted until I got down to 96 pounds (I was about 4′10″ at the time), because that was the weight one of the other girls in the class told me she was, and she was on the swim team, so I figured that was a good weight to be! But even after I got down to that weight, the teasing never stopped. Because it wasn’t about me. It was about whatever was making those idiot boys feel so awful about themselves.
I know it’s way late, and you seem like such a well-adjusted person that you probably don’t need to hear it, but it wasn’t about you either. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with that horrible little boy. You were fine then, and you’re fine now. Better than fine!
On another note, my official childhood name was “Twinkie Eater.” And I got call this while swimming laps at the public pool.
This one hit me right in the gut, picture and all. Thank you.
“Simply being identified as “not fat” meant the fear of becoming fat (or fatter) was allowed to remain solidly intact.”
Quoted for motherfucking-amen-hallelujah truth.
This is the crux of the problem; this is the place where it should become obvious that oppression hurts everyone.
Thank you, Lesley! You remain my hero. :)
When I see that picture, I see a beautiful kid. I love your smile. I could completely see that was you in that picture. Degree of fatness isn’t relevant — you look smart, and quite put together (the gloves! the purse! the heels!). And, as always, you look fantastic in that dress.
There was a boy in middle school who called me Earthquake. I still remember it and the futility of telling on him. I think it made me a better person in the long run. More empathetic, maybe.
Also, your hair in this picture is amazingly rad.
You do look very pretty in that picture. You actually look extremely like my sister there. Right down to the ‘let’s get this the frick over with’ smile. XD
And yeah, this story hit me in the gut too. I didn’t get called fat too often. (They pretended I had cooties instead. *rolls eyes at the fat cooties*) I was tall and I could hit… hard, so like I said fat name calling wasn’t too direct or often. But this one boy decided in grade school to moo at me. (Probably because of a witch with a B librarian that taught a mini class and chose to reduce my name for a book label to Moo for Moore. She was such a… anyways.) I could be doing anything and he would walk by and moo at me. I fought back by saying “Quit Oinking, Gabe”. It sorta worked. Not as in it ‘made him stop’ work, but it ‘made his friends laugh at him’ way so the sting was reduced for me.
And it did once come in quite handy once, I must admit XD. There was a small highschool debate in an English class. He replied to one of my statements with “When pigs fly”. *evil grin* I got to reply with “Quit talking about yourself, Gabe.” Everyone in the class knew what I was talking about and that ended that finally.
The best revenge was high school grad though. I, for once, wasn’t hiding under clothes that were too big or were designed to hide me. I wore a red slip dress with a black and red roses overlay with a lettuce hem at my knees. I saw jaws drop. Not too bad for a girl that only got asked to homecoming once. XD
I hate how people are being trained to hate fat. It’s not like it’s contagious or going to reach out and absorb the nearest person. But even I remember trying to compare myself to the other big girls at my relatively thin school, though I did my best to ignore it at an early age. I had other issues to cope with that I’m going to keep private.
Thanks Lesley, you are a lovely person to read. And no more nightmares about “More to Love” XD.
God I wish I had read this when I was 10. I’m tearing up right now. The worst was the fact that my parents’ well meaning “you have to get low-fat ice cream” stung just as badly as the “1-800 Call Jenny Craig” notes that kids used to pass to me. It takes years to undo the “fat = worthless” mantra that we get drilled into us as children - I cringe for what kids today are going through, what with the “war on childhood obesity” and all.
And you look absolutely lovely in that photo.
THIS. YES. COMPLETELY. ^^^^
That’s all I got, dude.
Also, you are effing cute with your dress and your 80s hair. Your GLOVES!
I am so racking my brain trying to see why anyone would think you were fat let alone obese in that photograph.
As a hyper critical fat chick myself I scan any photograph of myself for spare rolls and all the other crap, but here I see the photograph of a gorgeously cute girl in a gorgeous 80s ensemble, stepping out to enjoy herself.
You look sublimely healthy and happy.
You talk so well about this. You inspire me.
I had one of those. 2 actually–one was Jon O’Connor, and another was named Andy something. I’m calling them out now for their cruelty 27 years later. Jon decided that he would determine that I needed to be wearing a bra in the 6th grade, and Andy sang the “Hungry, Hungry Hippos” song whenever we crossed paths.
I grew up from pre-puberty on thinking I was a fat kid, and those are the stories I tell. Awhile back, I had reason to go through old pictures of myself, and as I looked at them, I realized that despite my classmates and even my family calling me fat, I wasn’t. I wasn’t a fat kid; bigger than the other kids, maybe, but still not fat. I’m still bigger than the other kids–I’m 5′10″–and I’m fat now, but once I really looked at those pictures, I felt 2 things: bafflement at why people were harassing me about my weight at all–Jesus, I was just a kid! And anger. Deep, hot anger, that these so obviously wrong people defined my self-image as a fat kid, and fueled the shame I felt for being so, for all these years. I still forget sometimes, so ingrained is that self-image, and because I am fat now. If people want to ask, “What about the children???” in regards to weight, perhaps they should consider what kind of asshole self-righteously does this kind of willful damage to young psyches.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
thank you for writing this. i have only recently come to similar conclusions about my young self (i’m 26) and realizing that i wasn’t fat. the 300lb boy in my grade called me fat too, like he was one of the “thin” people. like the rest of you said, it didn’t matter that i wasn’t fat, or that there were fatter people. my sister told me that when i was in cross country in high school, that she thought i was TOO thin! and i know that at the time, i still felt like a cow, even though i was healthy. because that’s how people treated me. it really seems like being fat is the worst thing you can do, especially as a woman. you are right, the most important thing we can do now is talk about the fact that fat people are people and they deserve respect and love too. this post is gut wrenching for me, and i’m really glad you wrote it. i’m still coming to terms with this hatred of fat, and having a hard time feeling sexy (especially after i gained 30lbs) or just pretty in my clothes. i’m sorry this is so disjointed, i’m crying and wishing i could spew forth my entire childhold for consoling.
fatshionista is amazing, it makes this fat girl feel like i’m ok.
I’m happy to see you addressing this. I’ve been called fat for, literally, as long as I can remember. From my best estimate, that’s from about the time I was five/six-ish on. When I look back at those pictures now there’s no way I was fat– a little well rounded, maybe. “Chubby.” But obese or fat or anything related? No. Not by a mile.
I let everyone else make me believe that I was fat. That I was incapable of physical activity, so I didn’t do any. I’m still working out my phobia of exercise because deep down, I still believe I’m too fat to do any in a way that would not completely embarrass myself.
I too look back at pictures and think “damn, I was so cute!” (and so were you– and you are now, too!) Why didn’t anyone tell us how cute we were?
sailorminikitty, I HATED being told that “they just have a crush on you!” It was disgusting to ponder. And what does it matter if they “liked” me or not, if they were being abusive in doing it?
And those jackholes on the back of my school bus who alternatedly fat-bashed me and asked for blowjobs were scum of the worst sort. Of course, I was just an oversensitive wacko for daring to report them and get them suspended. I should have appreciated the attention, right?! I cannot roll my eyes enough. And I feel queasy just thinking about it.
Lesley, even though I’m echoing everyone else, you look adorable in that picture!
Thank you thank you thank you! And purplearies…
A lot of these “bigger” models are always decrying “obesity”, and claiming that *they* are not obese, so don’t even try to call ‘em that. They don’t get it. They don’t understand that they are alienating those who support their existence in fashion. Obesity is an individual with a BMI over 30. That’s it. It does NOT imply that the individual is ugly, unhealthy, or unworthy of humanity.
You know?! I posted this and had people commenting “well, obviously, definitely, clearly, of course she’s not obese, but she is a little overweight! It’s not like she’s skinny! (As if I ever said that?)”
NO. I AM OBESE. (Or at least borderline obese.)
THAT IS THE EM-EFFIN POINT.
That’s what policy is written on, that’s literally where they came up with the term “obesity epidemic.” And guess, what, Lizzie Miller? That means you and your nearly-non-existent belly roll, too.
This is off topic slightly, but as anyone else seen this?? http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/08/25/as-waistlines-widen-brains-shrink.html
It was making me upset about 2 minutes ago. I needed to share.
@Nina, my dad called to ask if I’d seen that a week ago, but then he couldn’t find the link to send me, so thanks for bringing it right to me! Frankly, it looks like this is another non-study study, insofar as it not actually being a real study of cognitive issues or brain tissue, but a survey of images taken for a totally unrelated study. This would mean, for example, that the results probably don’t control for things like daily activity level, diet, or prior weightloss and gain. Also, this is a pretty small sample and everyone included was in their 70s.
Finally, there is pretty much nothing conclusive about this: what we have is a neuroscientist who looked at pictures from someone else’s study and noticed that the brains of fatter people seemed smaller on average, which is probably what he was looking to prove in the first place. Said researcher can’t even begin to offer any suggestions for why this may be case, or how fat brains may get smallened, because he’s got no damn idea. Because he didn’t do a real study.
It’s only because of obesity epidemic rhetoric that these things get any media attention at all.
Thanks Lesley!
I had a similar experience upon seeing a picture of myself at age 10 or so–I could NOT believe how ‘normal’ I looked (I’m deathfatz now and have been since high school). I was always the biggest girl in my school and pretty much I’m always the biggest woman anywhere now, so I was an obvious focus of derision. Somehow, I think it was related to a school production, I got the nickname “brown cow” which led to the ‘not now brown cow’ and mooing in elementary school. The daily barrage of insults did not hurt nearly as much as when the boy I had a crush on wrote in my 5th grade yearbook that he really liked me and he hoped that I lost weight over the summer. Those words stung and staid with me for years–if only I could lose weight, if only I could lose weight, he would be my boyfriend.
Obviously that guy was a tool. But I did go dateless through high school (I actually had an aunt who called me and my friends the “dateless ones”. Which we then embraced and went around calling ourselves for the next year!) and in my head it was all about being the fatty.
This is too long, so I’ll stop there without a real point.
Thanks again!
I didn’t grow up fat, nor am I fat now, and I don’t know what it’s like to have to deal with this. Everyone should have to read this post to get a better understanding of why fat acceptance exists and why it is so important. It was hard growing up as a ’skinny minnie,’ but that sort of teasing has an entirely different dynamic. It’s not the same. My heart aches for all the kids out there who have to endure this crap.
I really identified with your middle school story. Why is it that middle school kids will pick ONE THING that they identify as different in someone else? Or maybe it’s something they don’t understand, or maybe they see the same thing in themselves and don’t like it or are afraid of it…and for the rest of middle school, the other kid “is” that one thing and can’t seem to be anything else to the bully kid. It happened to me in 1982, and it still goes on. I was a middle school counselor for 3 years and saw kids bullying other kids in that way all the time.
I was born with a cleft lip, for which I had many surgeries. Not a cleft palatte, which would have demanded more surgeries, but just a cleft lip. It’s a funny name for the defect, though, since what’s left after the surgeries rarely affects the lip. It was my nose that looked crooked, one nostril larger than the other; one side of my nose more flared than the other. Oh sure, there was a small scar that went from my nose to my upper lip, but it was negligible in comparison to the odd shape of my nose, which seemed much more obvious to me. Even after many surgeries, it couldn’t be repaired. It wouldn’t be until I was in my early 20s that enough advances had been made in plastic surgery and I found a doctor with the skills to repair it. My nose still looks a little crooked now, but it’s a lot less obvious than when I was a child. When I wasn’t the only person noticing.
When I was in 7th grade, I was part of church youth group. One weekend, the youth group took a trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain, an amusement park about 2 hours away from my hometown. We took the church bus there and spent the day at the park. I was very excited, not only by the trip, but by the fact that a boy who I had a burgeoning crush on was going. My friend Cindy and I sat next to him on the bus, and the boy, realizing he had the attention of not one but TWO giddy girls, flirted with both of us. I took this as a sign of competition, that I had to out-flirt, out-giggle and out-scream Cindy the rest of the day at the park. It didn’t help that Cindy’s mom had taken her to get her first manicure, so she had long, shiny pink fingernails. I had nothing long or shiny of my own. Not even my hair, which was cut at the time in a Dorothy Hamill hairdo.
So I outdid myself and tried to outdo Cindy the rest of the day at the park. And the boy noticed. He started calling me a “cute” nickname: Nose. Like it was my name. That’s what he called me for the rest of the day. “Geez, Nose, you screamed so loud on the Log Ride, I thought my ear drums would pop!” “Hey, Nose, I dare you to steal a piece of that kid’s cotton candy.” Etcetera.
What’s worse is, I pretended that I liked it. I giggled every time he said it. He didn’t come up with a “cute” nickname for Cindy - “Nails,” “Shelf-butt,” “Jaclyn Smith” or anything like that (Cindy looked kind of like Jaclyn Smith from Charlie’s Angels, with a similar long hairdo…and she knew it). I thought I was “special” because I got a nickname and she didn’t. I also thought the boy was an asshole for choosing that particular name. But in my 7th grade mind, I knew that getting angry with him, telling him I thought he was an asshole for calling me “Nose,” would not win me the boy’s approval. And I didn’t want to risk that. It never even occurred to me that this boy’s approval wasn’t worth shit, and it would be many years later before I came to that conclusion about him and others like him on my own.
But, yeah, middle school kids can be undeniably cruel, particularly when they hone in on the one thing they decide is different about you, or they know you can’t change. They’ll use your own discomfort and lack of confidence about the issue to boost their own failing self-esteem up another notch. They’re assholes for behaving that way, but then I remind myself that they’re 12. I did a lot of dumb things at 12 (like not speaking up when a boy called me “Nose”) that I don’t do as an adult. I can only hope these kids will learn.
I totally get this post!
I can pinpoint the day in my head that I started on the heady rollercoaster of self-hatred and non-stop dieting. My 12th Birthday. My class went on a school trip and we decided to have a mini-party on the bus home for my birthday - cake was eaten, pressies were handed out and thank-you kisses given back. (Mwah! Mwah! - we were a pretentious bunch of forces brats!)
Then came Jason. Who handed me my gift and put out his hand for me to shake with the words “I don’t kiss fat people”.
I can still feel the hot tears pricking my eyelids and the sick feeling in my stomach. Six months later I went on my first diet, started refusing to participate in group sports/activities and went from being surrounded with friends to just having the one or two. We moved to a new school and I became so self-concious that I wore only baggy, dark clothes to hide ‘the hideous me’.
I recently found a photo of me and my classmates taken on that very day and I look ‘exactly’ like every other child in that class! Most of the people I’ve shown it to can’t even tell which of the 20 smiling 12 year olds is me.
I wish I could go back in time and find the 12 year old me and tell her to ignore him and carry on doing exactly what I was doing - I wonder how I would have turned out?
It always amazes me when people use “health” as a justification for promoting self hate… as if mental and emotional health are completely separate from the physical. Thank you for this.
Seems that one of the hardest things about FA, for me anyway, has been remembering the things that happened to me or that were said to me because I was heavier than a lot of my friends and classmates growing up. I guess that’s what therapy is for?
Thanks for writing this Lesley.
Thank you Lesley - You are smart and awesome and full of win.
I agree with other posters - the gloves are divine :)
My school nickname was a fun rhyme. My last name starts with ‘Teste’, so, lots of joy there. When I got to high school, I realized that somehow fat = slutty and stupid to those who bully (which is still mystifying to me).
Nowadays, it’s funny that when I refer to myself as fat, so many people seem horrified that I would call myself that (despite my obvious fatness). They seem to like it better when I pretend I am constantly dieting, and speak not of the fat.
there are a lot of posts of yours that I read and just want to yell, ME TOO!! THis is one of them.
In middle school, kids thought it was funny to throw food at me on the bus, because I was fat. And while I left like a giant fat, awkward oaf back then, it took me until I reached my 20s to be able to look back and realize that I wasn’t fat, not even by medical standards. Sure, I was chubby and awkward, and had the added bonus of being taller and wider than almost all my friends, who at age 13 seemed to all be barely pushing the 5 foot, 100 pound mark.
I remember being 14 years old, 5′6 and 147lbs, but when I was told they would be taking our heights and weights in gym class the next week, I stopped eating. I drank my juice box and threw out my lunch, I couldn’t let anyone know I weighed so much! I was terrified, it was the fattest I ever felt, and ironically, that was the thinnest I have ever been. It didn’t matter than when I stepped off the scale, the gym teacher said I was “perfect”
It took me way long to realize that changing my outlook would be way more effective than changing my body.