Recently a lot of people are asking me, “Are you excited about going home (China)? What are you going to do? Traveling? Visiting friends?” Sometimes I made stuff up such as going to big cities and visiting art galleries. However, the reality is that I probably cannot do any of those, because I am one of the fattest people in my city.
Throughout my entire college life, I have only been home once. That was the summer break after my first year. I was about to declare my studio art major, and I was sort of worried how embarrassed my family would feel when people knew that I wasn't pursuing a "hard math or science," but that was an unnecessary worry. The only questions my family asked were:
“How could you gain so much weight?”
“Do you eat hamburgers and fries every meal in the US?”
My high school friends were so concerned about my appearance that they took all the food away from me to “save my life.”
“Sherry, you cannot eat anymore!”
I stayed in China for the three-month-long summer break, but after the first week, I did not dare to go outside to see anyone anymore. The rest of my break, I just stayed inside my apartment with my laptop, and ate as few things as possible. Every evening, when the sun went down, and nobody could recognize my face, I went outside and ran for eight miles to lose weight. After that, I haven't had the guts to go home again.
Is my life, in terms of weight, in America better? Not really.
The students from home are still talking about weight, all the time. Lately, a lot of them told me that I looked skinnier. Well, I could have taken it as a big compliment, but I could not. Because that is telling me how fat I looked before. I do not want to blame any of my friends, but I blame the culture.
Some people said that the fashion companies Photoshopped their model’s bodies to make them “perfect,” and so many people were using those photos as the goal for their own bodies. How I wish those were just Photoshop effect. When I was home, I was surrounded by those fatless people in real life. They do not have to be Photoshopped at all to be on those magazines. I knew that some people restrained themselves from food, and some people simply had the body type that could not gain more weight. What’s more, they were still talking about how to lose weight.
Sadly, I do not have that kind of body and neither do I have the self-control to not eat unhealthy food. I end up getting angry with myself whenever I eat, which is technically every single day.
I believe that I should keep track of my weight, and eat less unhealthy food, even just for myself. Nevertheless, the pressure should not come from other people's judgement. I do not wish to change the definition for "fat," but the discrimination toward the "fat" people according to that definition need to be diminished. The concept of weight weighs so much that it blinds us from discovering the inner beauty of people and forces people to prioritize losing weight over their real passion.
