Two weeks ago, I wrote an article called, "On Choosing to Love My Body". In it, I briefly mentioned a negative experience I had at my doctor's office regarding an injured ankle and an unwarranted lecture. I'd thought I'd use this week to expand on this and share my thoughts after the fact.
About three years ago, I was in my high school's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. As a senior, I had auditioned for the fall musical three times before finally getting into Joseph. Granted, I probably only got in out of pity, but that is another story for a different day.
Anyway, you must know how excited I was to be a part of the musical, because every year our school was entered into a competition where we would be eligible to win awards and possibly get the chance to perform on the Orpheum stage downtown (spoiler alert: we did get invited to perform there and it was awesome).
During one of our rehearsals, we were learning the choreography for "One Less Angel", which was just changed. Instead of doing a step turn, it had been turned into a bell kick, which is like knocking your heels together in the air. Seriously though, if you're having troubles picturing it, just look it up. Everything is online nowadays. If any of you are dancers, you probably think this is nothing (or maybe it is a fairly difficult move, what do I know?), but for a clumsy fool like me it is no easy task.
Eager to please my director, I just kind of went for it.
You can see where this is going, right?
Yes, you guessed it. I fell. On stage. Right in front of everyone (smooth).
Being the fat girl I am, you can just imagine the loud smack of my entire body weight hitting the stage floor. There was a moment of silence for the loss of my composure. It was probably the loudest pause I've ever had in my life at that point.
Yeah, it was not my proudest moment.
To lessen my humiliation, I was determined to not live up to the terrible stereotype of fat people being lazy, so I decided to continue dancing instead of resting my poor ankle, upon which I had fallen.
(Marisa, you idiot). Hindsight is 20/20.
Well, needless to say, my ankle continued to hurt in the following days. Finally choosing to be responsible, I dragged my disgruntled self to the doctor.
Now, as a fat girl, I never liked going to the doctor for my yearly physical, as I would always get "the fat talk" (all you other fat people know what I'm talking about), but since I was only here my injured ankle, I wasn't really expecting anything besides the usual "ice, rest, elevate" spiel.
I was in for a rude awakening.
As it turns out, when fat, a sprained ankle is never just a sprained ankle.
I sat there in silence and on the brink of tears while I was told that if I were smaller, I wouldn't have injured my ankle and "maybe if you had less body weight, you would have less strain on your ankle". She then told me how great she felt after losing weight and told me to download this app that calculated calories and exercise.
I was shocked. I sat there and took it because I didn't know what else to do. I let her tell me that the reason I sprained my ankle was because I was fat.
Looking back on it now, I wish I could have stood up for myself. I mean, I fell on my ankle. Sure, I have a large body, but anyone who would have fallen with their entire body on their ankle would have injured it. Any amount of normal human weight plus force would be harmful to any joint.
The irony is that I injured my ankle doing physical activity. At that point in my life, I was very active. I danced and regularly jogged in my PE class, but my doctor couldn't seem to look past my size.
Fatphobia is alive and well, friends. When fat, doctors will tell you that every injury, every illness or complication is a side effect of being overweight. I can't be clumsy without being blamed for being fat.
I can't walk into a boutique without feeling like everyone's eyes are on me rummaging through sizes to see if they carry anything larger than a "large". I can't go to a job interview without feeling judged as being lazy. I can't go to the doctor without getting a lecture about my weight. I can't even breathe without being concerned about how I sound while doing so. Does it sound like I'm heaving?
This one moment in my life has stayed with me for three years now and I can't imagine I will forget about this anytime soon. It hurt me to be invalidated and humiliated like that by someone in authority.
Living while fat is hard and this is just one instance that reminds me of the reality I face. It's because of moments like these that I choose to talk about my experiences, we can do something to stop them in the future and possibly change the culture around body policing.
