Creative Nonfiction

Body Chronicles

F-A-T

(2010)

I write the word in 12-inch letters on the dry erase board in a class of 30 psychology majors at our local university. The silence is complete. I am a guest speaker. I’ve been introduced to them as a cultural anthropologist with a specialization in psycho-cultural studies, but nothing else.

“What is the first word that comes to mind when you see that word spelled out here?” I ask, looking out at a seeming sea of deliberately blank faces. They are male and female, mostly white and Latino, with a tiny scattering of African-American and Filipino.

Some of them are F-A-T.

So am I.

And that is why they can’t respond. Some are caught between the truth and what they dare not say in front of this teacher-speaker-so-called-expert who is white, middle aged, and obese. Some are locked into their own pillories of shame about their own bodies and are feeling both vulnerable and targeted.

“I’ll start,” I say. I write the word P-I-G next to the word fat. “If you live in this society, certain things come to mind when you see the word ‘fat.’ Those associations are bred into you. So let’s hear them. Anyone. You don’t have to raise your hand.”

“Obese,” someone says from the back of the room.

“Unhealthy,” someone else volunteers.

“Gross.”

And that opens the floodgates. “Dumb.” “Ugly.” “Sad.” “Unhappy.” “Depressed.” “Unemployable.” “Smelly.” “No Self-Esteem.” “Lazy.” “Miserable.” “Suicidal.” And then, “Addicted.” And “Shame.”

Ah, yes.

I will talk to them, these youngsters, roughly 18 to 30 years of age, about evolving standards of beauty, and how the average size of a Miss America contestant has consistently lengthened and slimmed while the average size of the American woman has increased substantially over the same period. I’ll talk about the history of eating disorders in this country and its correlation with two major waves of the feminist movement in the 20th century. I’ll talk to them about the rise of convenience foods and standardized clothing sizes. I’ll talk to them about capitalism and a self-sustaining industry devoted to diet, health and exercise that reaps a rich reward from women who, twenty years ago, spent on average $16,000 a minute on supplements, diet programs, classes, and equipment in hopes of attaining the unattainable. God knows what the cost is today.

I’ll talk to them about my doctoral research, undertaken when I myself was maybe 30 pounds overweight—about women I interviewed and observed in a recovery facility who had never been more than 10 pounds overweight in their lives, but whose body obsession had compromised their ability to maintain jobs, relationships, and even a modicum of sanity. We will talk about the work of Foucault, and how you don’t have to imprison people if you can chain their minds by framing their world view such that they are convinced of their own inferiority. We will talk about the rich dividends earned by those savvy enough to know how to take advantage of their pain.

We will not talk about the fact that I weigh 300 pounds.

I Am Fat 

(2014)

I am fat.

This isn’t a case of thinking I am fat when I’m not, the scourge of many American women. I have been fat to one degree or another for most of my life. And I haven’t always been just a little bit fat; for over twenty years, I was morbidly obese. My top weight was 313 pounds.

Probably, only the use of the past tense—the “was”—in that last sentence is what allows you to keep reading.

People read the words, “I am fat,” and they push aside the story in the same way they push away their discomfort when they look at someone obese, or look in the mirror and see themselves as obese. They will do it with distaste, or disdain, or judgment. If they are very insecure, very immature, or with little sense of their own empowerment, or if they are in the full blaze of youthful beauty and haven’t yet realized it isn’t theirs to keep, they will do it with a giggle, a catcall, or a rude joke.

You don’t buy credibility, and you don’t sell books, by writing, “I am fat.”

You buy credibility and you sell books by writing the words, “I once was fat. I know the pain, the discouragement, the hopelessness of being trapped inside a fat body. I, too, have dieted, binged and purged, and stretched the limits of the women’s sizes at Macy’s. I’m here today to tell you there is hope.”

That is what you write if you want to be a credible voice in the wilderness of female desperation.

What you don’t write is: I am fat.

I have been fat to one degree or another for 56 of the last 59 years.

I now compound my wrongdoing by mentioning age. And what an age to mention! Fifty-nine is not a looking-forward-with-hope age, or a “thank God I’m doing something about it now” age, or a “the best years of my life are still ahead” age. In our society, fifty-nine is, kindly speaking, the age of the senior citizen. It is the age of the crone. It is the age in which the amount of Botox it takes to appear young and vibrant is enough to poison a pachyderm. It is the age when even if you do something about the fat, you don’t make yourself more marketable. It is the age when you finally come to grips with the realities of gravity and decay. Or you don’t, and render yourself even more pathetic. Add fat to the mix, and the concoction is lethal.

Just as being fat breaks the rules, so does talking about it—especially if you aren’t talking about it as a state of transition. Fat is only acceptable if you have left it or are in the middle of divorcing it, just as getting older is acceptable only if you find creative and believable ways to deny it.

I am fat and mostly always have been. I didn’t deal with this state, this fate, in the way many “women of size,” as they euphemistically call us, deal with it. I didn’t hide inside a marriage or a low-profile job. I didn’t keep my head down and my eyes lowered as I passed people on the street or in the grocery store. I didn’t restrict myself to my home or refuse to fly on planes. I didn’t do those things because I’m innately defiant and a pretty good actress. So instead, I pursued my education, and became an anthropologist, an educator, a trainer, a researcher, a business owner and a public speaker. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the subject of eating disorders. I did diversity training and made body size a part of it. The rest of the time I passed myself off as “normal”, as though at my higher weights I didn’t notice my own struggle in theater seats. I treated with seeming kindness and compassion the idiocy of the passing car of teens who screamed insults in which the words “pig” and “elephant” tended to dominate. I laughed off the people who attended my workshops and sent me anonymous flyers about weight loss programs and bariatric surgery with tiny print at the bottom, “It changed my life. It can change yours.”

Although you might be forgiven for thinking so, I am no flag bearer for fat rights, no hero of the people of size; nor have I ever been. I have never found fat a comfortable state of being. I have incorporated fat into my work to get beyond the social barrier it imposes, to create a zone of comfort for myself in what would otherwise be an unbearable pillory of shame and isolation. I don’t celebrate fathood. Instead, I have brought fat, my enemy, to my table, keeping it close at hand, watching its every move so I can circumvent its destructive intent.

Trust me, it has not been a comfortable relationship.

So, understanding the rules as I do, why would I write about being fat?

Because of a dream I had of holding my own starving body. Because it is time to tear away the mask. Because I am writing for my life.

Mirror, Mirror: I Used to Be Fat

(2017)

I stand in front of the mirror.

I didn’t know until recently—or didn’t remember—that the formal word for the bone that runs on either side of my sternum, or breastbone, is the clavicle. I’ve always just called it the collarbone. I didn’t realize that the rib cage doesn’t start AT my breasts, but actually extends all the way up to just below the clavicle. This, in part, is because I never studied anatomy. It’s also because, until recently, I had never seen those bones on my own torso.

Now, standing in front of the mirror, they are the first thing I see. They protrude from the smooth, pale flesh of my upper chest, impossible to miss. There is no fat—not even the little underarm pockets that women routinely work to hide. Thanks to my Le Mystere bra (molded cup, 34D) and my concave belly, from the waist up I look taut, feminine, built. Without Le Mystere, I am in the plight so graphically described by Maya Angelou as watching my left breast engage in a race with my right to see which can reach my waist first. And even the graceful lift and tilt of Le Mystere does not detract from the slight pucker of flesh at my waist—no more of one, I imagine, than any woman might experience who has borne one or more children.

I have born no children.

Beneath my pantyhose, my thighs are smooth, my legs shapely, my abdomen relatively taut. The thighs are a little large, the torso a little low-slung; the legs could be an inch or two longer, but overall—attractive enough.

Under the pantyhose, there’s a flap of skin that hangs on my abdomen. It is hidden by the nylon, but I know it’s there, just as I know that the flesh around my rounded thighs is loose and flabby when released from constraint.

Age is part of the equation, certainly. But so is the loss of 165 pounds—the loss of far more pounds, in fact, than now comprise my body.

The mirror shows a face that lays full claim to its 63 years. Thanks to Le Mystere and Hanes, it shows a body I didn’t have at 18.

I like this body. It feels right. The appropriate exterior vessel for the awakened interior self—the self that enjoys freedom of movement, that engages in the world with a charming lack of self-consciousness.

Maybe, given time, I will recognize this body as rightfully my own. Not borrowed. Not temporary.

Because, right now, when I look in the mirror, I still see size 28. I don’t see size 6.