As I sit here vaping CBD oil to help with the pain of my torn ligaments and hip arthritis I’m thinking about how people react to me when I get out of my car with my hips locked in pain and I can barely walk. As I get out, I start to hobble, and I see the condescending looks of those around me. Another fat Southern woman who ate too many biscuits with sausage gravy and fried chicken hobbling like a cross between an ogress and a sloth.
My mind sprints through all the scenarios of what they must think of me and how they despise fat losers like me. So, I stand up as straight as I can muster and walk in a way that causes me pain but shows a straight spine in the reflection on the backs of trucks and the windows of stores as I walk past these arrogant people. It’s excruciatingly uncomfortable for me to walk this way, but I do it anyway. With that one action, I have let the fat shamers have power over me.
This time no one had to say a word to me. It’s all in the way they look at me and my perception. After a few hostile experiences from strangers, family, friends, and co-workers I have trained myself to respond accordingly when I feel shame over my weight by trying to remove the appearance that being fat is causing me pain. It’s the pain that caused me to gain my weight back. This shameful behavior only causes me more pain.
I remember being at a Queensryche concert in my favorite spot, front row on Eddie’s side of the stage pressed against the barrier, enjoying myself when some men trying to get the fat chick out of their way tried pushing me under the crowd. Thankfully, a tall, gorgeous lug of a not so slender man himself grabbed my arm and pulled me in front of him, put his arms around me and braced tightly to the barrier to keep me from being violently pushed around. At another club concert watching local bands perform I had a heckler pour beer on me because it’s always funny to humiliate the fat person. The last concert I ever attended was another Queensryche concert, where as I left the venue on an emphatic high singing and dancing to their songs still loud and live in my head a man walked by me and said, “You’re F@#!ing ugly,” as he passed me. It wiped all the joy right out of my night. It was all I could remember of that concert. Guess who hasn’t been to a concert since? Me.
Then there’s our well-intentioned friends and family who compare their 20-pound weight loss to our need for fifty or one hundred or more pounds of weight loss as if losing that much weight didn’t involve more than skipping a few meals and walking or jogging 3 miles a day. We know because we’ve been there, that losing a large sum of weight is excruciatingly difficult, but we don’t speak up. Few people, outside of my WeightWatchers meeting, knew that I felt starved for three years as I worked out a minimum of sixteen hours a week just to lose seventy-one pounds. The maintenance of that weight was even worse. I worked out more and changed my diet several times from WeightWatchers to Paleo, to vegetarian, and I still couldn’t get over that plateau for years.
At the gym in my HIIT class I when I heard the thinner more athletic women talking about how they hated heavier weights and felt it was just too difficult to lift them my response was to lift those heavier weights. I couldn’t keep up with them in endurance, so I kept lifting the heavier weights. In roller derby practice my fat stopped me from some of the more skilled moves and from being able to maintain the speed and endurance to be a jammer, so I learned to hit better and harder. I pushed myself to extremes I was unprepared for and dealt with the excruciating pain of a damaged body (because I’d refuse to adjust when I was in pain) just to show them that the fat girl could do something amazing too.
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It’s no one’s business but yours as to why you got fat. I don’t care if it’s a medication issue, an esteem issue, an impulse issue, an accident or any other issue that drove you to over consume or lose the ability to exercise. All I care about is that you are trying and true to yourself. Was it easy for me to get to the point where I could listen to two muscle bound lunkheads to discuss me in a gym while I worked out? No. It took time and practice. It will take you time and practice.
Maybe you’re not someone who can just ignore fat shamers but ignore them if you can. If the person is someone that typically argues with you until you’re worn out then state your mind and walk away. I don’t care what they respond, walk away and leave them to realize that their opinion does not matter to you. Did someone insult your body? Comment back to them as to why they are unattractive to you too.
It doesn’t matter how you do it. Just don’t let fat shamers have power over you. It’s like we’re told, no one can have power over us unless we give it to them. This mantra is repeated in school, in therapy, in court, by parents, by administrators, and more. It’s the truth. No one has power over us unless we let them.
It’s time to take our power back. No excuses. We are the amazing rulers of our bodies, our esteem, and our lives. Let’s show them we are strong enough to give the power back to ourselves.
