F is for Fat

I am fat. Maybe yes. Maybe no. I have learned not to trust my expertise on matters of my own fatness or lack of. Essentially, I am seriously fucked in this area.

Stats (since I understand these are important when writing about fat): I am 5 ft, 6 inches. My pre-pregnancies weight that I'm fairly close to again is 177 lbs. That gives me a BMI squarely in the middle of "overweight."

I have spent so long – almost as far back as memory goes -- obsessing about fat in some way. Being fat, not being fat, obsessing about getting fat, obsessing about getting fat AGAIN, afraid of fat, how [insert X] makes me look fat, how I am so much fatter than X. I spent, and to some extent, still spend, endless hours wondering what my life would be like if I were less fat or less afraid of being fat, but I’m not sure I even know what being thin means. I don’t know how to define it, and I’m not sure I’d even know what it was when I got there. I have my own fantasy of being thin, and in this fantasy, I’m not just a smaller version of myself – I’m not me; I am someone else completely.

In my fantasy, I am cool. So unbelievably cool that everyone secretly wants to be me. Not the cheerleaders and the student government popular kids, of course. They would still think I’m a loser. But I would be a patron saint for all the freaks and outcast – the weird kids with black clothes and clove cigarettes, pink hair, all the musicians, the poets, the gay boys and the artists. They would all know I was special. And then there would be that one popular kid – just like in an ABC After School Special – who felt guilty about being such a shit, and after initial distrust and disdain, we’d become great friends and mosh together at the school dance. Apparently, I’m still in high school when I’m thin.

But this coolness transcends time and place. When I’m thin, I have a great career that I like and that people understand. Even more stunning is how laid back and not worried I am. I am quirky, and I delightedly just roll with the punches. I am definitely not neurotic, and I do not have a “process” for everything. I have no idea what it means to be efficient with a capital E. I just roll with it, man.

When I am thin, I am no longer introverted. I am goddamn jolly and busy myself with the tons of acquaintances I’ve picked up along the way – people I’ve chatted up in bookstores, coffee shops, on the T. I own the room, not matter what I’m wearing. I am CONFIDENT.

There’s no big reveal here, no great surprise at the end of the mystery novel. None of this – absolutely nothing in this fantasy – has anything to do with being thin. It all has everything to do with being me. I, and presumably everyone else who funds the billion dollar diet industry, fantasize that being thin – or thinner – will magically transform me into an amazing new person. I’ll shed a few pounds, tear off the gift wrap, and there will be a shiny and sparkly new me with a brilliant new personality.

I still struggle with this a lot. I know what a bunch of horse shit it is, and it's partially why I read and write a lot about fat "issues" -- I'm still trying to figure it out day to day.