War on the Homefront

Every fat woman I’ve ever met (and most of the thin ones, too, now that I think about it) has her own personal history of war against her body. When I think about my own, I’m exhausted by how long, how sad, how freaking endless it’s been. I was first aware of being overweight at five years old. I remember the conversation so clearly. My father sat me down and explained to me that I was chubby and that I would have to do something about that, because it was a bad thing for a little girl to be. I said, “But Dad, you’re fat too,” and he patiently explained to me that it was OK for men to be fat, but for a little girl it was a Really, Really Bad Thing. I remember being surprised and a little mystified.

From there it was all downhill in terms of my relationship to my own body.

I was one of those girls that matured fairly early. Starting 5^th grade as a 10 year old, I was nearly at my adult height of 5’8”, and I had begun to develop breasts and hips. I also got braces a year or two before everyone else. I felt unbelievably tall, fat and awkward around my classmates, most of whom were still shaped like children. I started my first real, organized diet at 14, when I joined Weight Watchers with a friend. I felt like a whale. Now I look back on pictures of that time, and I realize that I wasn’t fat. I was shaped like a woman. What shows in the pictures from that period of my life is not that I was fat, but that I was awkward and miserable. I was embarrassed to be alive. Throughout high school, I willed myself into invisibility by wearing generic, androgynous clothing and making sure that I did not stand out in any way.

And then, college. I was far enough away from the critical voice of my father that I began to experiment a little with clothing and with the idea that I was not too tragically fugly to live. I remember coming home for Christmas wearing a sweater I loved, with a bold, sort of Aztec-looking black and white pattern. My father took one look at me and said “I would think a woman of your size would choose something with a less obvious pattern.” I was a size 14!!! Gah, I shriveled inside, but I bounced back.

Since then, it’s been a gradual process of gaining confidence in my tastes, my style and my own worth. Unfortunately, it’s also been a process of gaining weight. About 5 years ago, I peaked out at 218 and decided that I needed to lose some weight. I adopted the Atkins diet, began to walk a lot, and over the course of a year lost about 40 lbs. I felt great! Control at last, and something to be proud of! But the weight didn’t stay off, and here I am, 5 years later, weighing in a 240. I’m happy to say that I seem to have permanently outgrown that sad, embarrassed child I used to be. But I’m not happy here, and it’s time to make some changes. Not because my father would like me to—he’s been waiting 35 years, since that first conversation, for me to cooperate and get skinny—but because I want to feel good in my own skin.