Fat Fury!

Chips, cookies, sugared cereal, and pop were not available in the home of my youth. Even had money been plenty, my mother would never have fed her children that "garbage." We were served a simple, starch-protein-vegetable meal at every sitting. I was very active as a child: TV watching was limited, there were no video games or movies to be had, and nobody had a computer. Nothing but activity and chores (if you dared say you were bored) to keep us busy.

I have been held back, put down, and shamed for my body since I was 9 years old. I was followed through the lunch lines and ogled while I ate. My food choices were analyzed and ridiculed.  As a cheerleader, I was called thunder thighs by players on the opposite team, I was spit at from the stands on our home field, and had to purchase my own specially made skirt (they only provided them to size 9 - I needed an 18). At 14, in science class, I was told by a classmate that I was "so fat, if he were f___ing me, he couldn't find the hole."

14 years later, something in my chest still breaks when telling you of these things. Fat harassment is the only legal form of discrimination left in this country. I haven't "done" or "not done" a single thing in my life to make my body the way it is. It just is. On issues of weight and unrealistic beauty standards in this image-based, achievement-driven society, I am bitter, jaded, and easily infuriated. The only thing I find real is the quiet truth I carry inside, despite the fact that most days, still, the lies and the crushing put-downs come so fast and so hard, my self-affirmation barely remains afloat.

So what triggers this diatribe? Tonight on the WCCO 10pm news, they aired a segment about female sex offenders. Because I, and the 92% American women who don't look like supermodels, have such a clear understanding of the prejudice, I knew...KNEW!...that the offender they interviewed would be overweight. And the news never disappoints: an obese woman. Missing teeth. Less-than-intelligent speech. And I am one pissed-off lady!!!What would happen if we showed that a woman with a perfect body, with an education, could be fallible? Could have LESS than a perfect life? What would happen if we showed that fat people are NOT inherently stupid, lazy, poor, and weak-willed? What if we showed that the beautiful people COULD be all those things? Saddest of all is how this segment implies that an overweight woman cannot find love but in an unhealthy way. Since she could never have a loving, healthy relationship with any consenting man worth having, she would have to resort to this: finding love the only way she can get it.

America wants its women in a neat little box. Smart, capable women scare the hell out of the society that would keep us down, unless that capable-ness is reduced to her ability to control her physicality and maintain a perfect body. God forbid we think independently. God forbid we embrace the power of our astounding bodies as the mothers of the human race!

According to the CDC's body mass index chart, I am still obese. I struggle with self-esteem, and no one is harder on myself than I am, but that label is wrong. WRONG - no matter who it's applied to. Because "obese" has evolved to not just mean "excess fat." It has come to mean all of those undesirable traits listed above. And I am not any of those things, and neither are you...as the size 24 that I was...as the size 16 that I am...or as the shunned and shamed little girl who thought, with an innocent, broken heart, that those ignorant fools were right about her.

You are beauty, wisdom, and strength. You are woman in all her grace and power.
The people who want to hold this brilliant, stunning woman down can kiss my perfectly fat ass!