Love Your Fat Self

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Our all-or-nothing nation is built on foundations of fantasy. Our imaginations are harnessed to America’s favorite adolescent fantasy: how much prettier, thinner, richer, and more successful we will be one day. This perpetual American daydream is written in the language of “somedays.” Someday whispers us to sleep at night, gets us through a boring workday, makes our little lives bearable. The hundreds of ads the average American sees every day brainwash us into believing that we need more shiny, new things and, of course, food—glorious piles of chocolate chip cookies, decadent ice cream, burgers the size of elephants. “Someday” soothes insecurities, numbs discomfort, and keeps perfect girls running obediently in the hamster wheel of preoccupation with their weight. Someday we will be thin. Translation: Someday we will be happy, loved, and powerful.

But even those precious few who get to this someday destination aren’t happy or better. If you live fat in your head, then you are fat. If you believe you are unattractive, you will experience the world as an unattractive woman. If you hound yourself about everything you put in your mouth, you won’t enjoy eating. Regardless of the number on the scale, if the number inside your head is large, insurmountable, and loaded with meaning, then you will feel weighed down by its implications.

This is the heart of the matter: A starving person can ache just as deeply inside a thin body. Our dissatisfaction is never, at its deepest, about our bodies. This is why fat women and thin women often experience the world in similar ways. If a thin woman feels inadequate and “thinks fat,” she may endure less hate coming from the outside in than a fat woman does, but just as much criticism and sadness from the inside out. Likewise, if a woman of any size is able to stop her negative self-talk and accept herself, she may experience the world with a little peace of mind.

Gareth is onstage, the shadow of her voluptuous silhouette on the wall behind her. I am watching it, instead of her, during her monologue, because it’s too hard to look her in the eye when she is speaking such brave and brutal truths. Her words start out celebratory but quickly become accusatory:

In a way it is easy to be proud of my body. I’m proud of what it does for me and what it can do for other people. But every time I get dressed I think about how other people will see my body and I can’t help but hear the words “fat bitch” in my head. I’ve been hearing them most of my life. It’s as if people feel the need to make a judgment on my character as well as my body all at once. And it works. It makes me feel huge and obtrusive and grotesque, deformed.

It’s true. I am fat. I am not attractive to most people. Most of the time, I am not attractive to myself. Where does that leave me? Angry with myself? Yes. Angry with society? No.

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