Anyone who follows me on Twitter or has seen me do stand-up notices a common theme: self-deprecation. And I mean, self-deprecation to the extent it makes them uncomfortable, unsure how to respond, wondering if I am exaggerating for comedic purposes (I am, sometimes), and most importantly, it often triggers a type of pity. Lots are quick to reassure me that I AM, in fact, BEAUTIFUL, just the way I AM. The truth is, the most emotional damage I can ever inflict upon myself has nothing to do with my appearance and everything to do with how I perceive my faults as glaringly obvious. My good qualities, IF THERE ARE ANY, are quickly shoved aside and made excuses for. I am truly astounded by people that are able to say, out loud, “I am a good person.” It’s not a quality I posses.
But lets get back to the issue at hand: my weight. I haven’t weighed myself in months, but I know I’ve been steadily losing weight since I moved into my own place because I’ve had to buy pants in two sizes smaller over the course of 2021. I know that at my heaviest, I weighed over 300 lbs. People are SHOCKED when they hear this number. They assume I have some kind of body dysmorphia. Even people who have seen every part of me naked have made comments about other people (“he must have been close to 300 lbs”) which lead me to assume they can’t fathom that I, in fact, have hit that illustrious number. I can only suppose that I hide it well, and that my giant boobs and fat ass give the appearance of an hourglass, as long as you aren’t looking at me from the side. Truth is, I still carry quite a bit of weight in my belly. I have back fat rolls. My thighs are riddled with cellulite, and I have edema in my lower legs that never went away after my fifth and final pregnancy, giving the appearance of my legs looking like tree stumps despite owning an inseam longer than about 95% of men.
All this aside, most days I don’t mind the way I look. Sometimes I actually LIKE it. It’s a little easier to be confident in my skin with role models like Lizzo coming onto the scene. Discovering Lizzo, seeing that famous album cover, and seeing a woman be so comfortable in who she is, owning a body that looks a whole lot like mine, and still being considered “hot” or “a sex symbol” was freeing. Believe it or not, being celibate for what I consider an extended period of time (the longest I’ve been without sex since I lost my virginity at 19) has also helped. I know my body better than I ever have, and I can give myself such good orgasms that I’ve had the luxury of actually turning down sex when I felt a man wasn’t on the same page as me.
Of course, as any woman that’s tried dating in the last few years can attest, once it was clear he was being rejected, the fat shaming started. Luckily I had two things in my back pocket: I know women that look like fucking supermodels that have been called fat once they rejected a guy’s advances, and I know he wanted to sleep with me. I could only presume that to some men, the only thing worse than being rejected is being rejected by a woman you think you’re “lowering your standards” to fuck. Obviously his behaviour confirmed my initial decision to not see him again, but more importantly, I validated MYSELF. This moment which had the potential to tear down my fragile self-esteem did the exact opposite: I felt POWERFUL. I knew it was my decision, and had been all along. I knew that I wasn’t desperate enough to sleep with any man that showed me a little attention, but that it’s worth waiting to find someone who can match me on all levels.
So why all the self-deprecation? It boils down to this: there is a large group of people out there that *would* sleep with a fat person, and they allow themselves to feel good about this information. “See, I’m not shaming anyone. I love big girls. I’d sleep with a big girl, no problem.” It’s as if they’re some kind of saint for daring to defy society and include us in the “acceptable” category of one night stand or brief fling material. Yes, I know there are men out there with fat fetishes, as well as men that truly consider women of all sizes beautiful, and y’all are rare and lovely. I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the ones that would see a woman of my size as hook-up potential, or would “wingman” for their buddy and sleep with me so their bro could score with my hot friend; those that have invited me to their hotel rooms or suggested we Netflix and chill at my place this Friday night. The ones that admit that larger women rock their world, but wouldn’t consider bringing us to a wedding where they have to dance with us in front of people. THOSE are the people my jokes are written for, the people that I hope are made slightly uncomfortable by having to watch me stand on a stage and be brave enough to talk about my body and my sexuality.
I’ve become more comfortable addressing my fatness among friends, as well. It doesn’t just challenge males. We are all SO driven from such an early age to see thin as beautiful, that we don’t even realize the way we damage one another with that word. When slender to average sized women call themselves “fat”, “gross”, or “disgusting,” what the fuck do you think women my size assume you see us as? I’ve begun calling myself fat as a benign descriptor among friends, not because I want to “take that word back” or own it, but simply because if YOU think I’m putting myself down by using that word, then you are admitting that YOU somehow see fat as less attractive or lesser than. I’ve heard all the backlash stories, too, about “skinny shaming.” I try not to participate in that, but also, I’ve been on that side of the coin. I modelled briefly and locally in my late teens, and I was told by my agent that in order to move to a city like New York and model, I’d have to lose “at least 10–15 lbs.” This happened the VERY SAME WEEK someone in my high school started a rumor that I was anorexic. I was 5'8" and weighed around 115 lbs. I can tell you that even factoring in that a 17 year old girl’s self-esteem is at it’s most fragile compared to a woman in her late 30's-early 40’s, who is generally able to let most things roll off her back, there is NO comparison to the amount of shame I have felt as an obese person. Never as a teenager did I have to stop to think about what someone in line at McDonald’s thought when I ordered a double Big Mac combo (even now I feel the need to point out that I ate that as a teen, and can’t even finish a regular Big Mac combo these days). I never felt the need to explain to a grocery store cashier that I had gone to the farmer’s market just before this grocery trip, and that’s why I had a cart full of meat and cheese and snacks. As a thin person, I never had to experience medical staff that couldn’t hide their surprise when my blood pressure and blood sugar numbers were so average. I never had to wonder if I could fit in a seatbelt on the airplane or while taking my kids to the go-kart track, and have a back-up plan in my head for how to avoid the mortification that I might have to tell my 5 year-old that we had to get out of the cart and leave the track because mommy couldn’t drive him.
As a fat person, you feel people watching you do mundane, normal everyday tasks and wonder if they’re cringing internally when you can’t stand straight up from sitting on the ground, or when you have to squeeze your stomach between the cars on the ferry. When you take your kids to your favorite bakery in a town you’re vacationing in and wonder what the staff thinks about the large order (that you are taking back to share with other family members, by the way). There’s a different kind of fear on dates or at a work function, when you reach for that second slice of bread. Maybe you haven’t eaten bread with a meal in a week, maybe you save it for special occasions like a fancy dinner out, but you only feel the urge to EXPLAIN that to people if you’re overweight. And the entire time you’re gripped with the fear that explaining it causes you to sounds even MORE guilty, as if you’re lying about it to save face.
Recently, as I’ve started considering dating again and because of pandemic, only really explored that on an app where most people match based on pure attractiveness factor, I’ve had to stop myself from saying “YOU KNOW YOU MATCHED WITH A FATTIE, RIGHT?” Obviously not in those words, but in some way I feel the need to quantify this before there’s a chance of meeting in person. I’ve been called out on it, too, and bluntly asked why I do it. Sure, the right way to handle it is to go out on a date, and know that if he walks because he didn’t realize I have a bottom half like a goddamn iceberg, then he never deserved me anyway. But that’s not practical for me. I don’t have time to waste meeting people that I don’t already know are “into it.” I don’t have the ego to handle being constantly rejected, and furthermore as that happens I become more and more cynical and disillusioned about men anyway. I don’t want to turn into a bitter feminist man-hating cat-lady. I want to enjoy my newfound freedom and autonomy during my sexual prime, dammit!
So while I may joke about being an incel, or men having to be desperate to fuck me, what I really want everyone to read between the lines and see is that I am FULLY aware of the high standards I have, and nothing about my weight, body, age, or appearance is going to cause me to lower them just to have some mediocre sex. I’m in no hurry to settle for someone that thinks they’re settling for me. As the esteemed musical artist Bonnie Tyler once sang (but didn’t write because let’s be honest, it’s pretty obvious a narcissistic man wrote that song): I’m holding out for a hero. Bonus points if, like me, he is also larger than life.
