“Fat Bottomed Girls, You Make the Rocking World Go Round.” – Queen

I generally do not suffer from insomnia.  If something keeps me up at night, I know it’s important.   And I lost a lot of sleep over this post.  Geez, this one was hard for me to write.  It just takes so much energy to sort out and articulate thoughts that are just so ingrained in my head that I take them for granted.  The thoughts are so automatic, so insidious; there are no words for them.  It’s been stressful for me to acknowledge just how problematic these thoughts are for me.  It’s been even more stressful to acknowledge my responsibility in perpetuating them. 

What am I talking about?  I’m talking about my body.  My complicated, screwed up relationship with my body.  How judgey I am about my body.   My hatred of my body.  How that judgment and hatred spills over onto other people.   My insecurity about my body.  How annoying that insecurity is.  The more I lay there awake thinking about all this, the more I realized how much time, energy and passion this hatred, insecurity and judgment sucks out of me and just how effective these thoughts are at destroying my relationships, my ego, my identity and my life. 

Thinking about the insecurity, hatred and judgment kept me up.  And then, thinking about how stupid I am for allowing these thoughts to stay in my head kept me up.  Finally, the pressure I was putting on myself to have a “resolution” before I wrote this post kept me up…..as if I could “resolve” all of this in a couple nights.  All that thinking kept me up at night for a week, and finally I just imploded and started writing.

My photojournalist friend Kris was getting ready for a trip around the world for the past week.  She had been saving for this trip for 12 years.  On this trip she will not be staying in fancy hotels or eating at great restaurants….she will be going to some of the poorest places in the world to help the people there build schools and photograph disappearing tribes and communities.  That strikes me as being important, exciting work, not like what I was wasting my time on.

Geez, if I could stop obsessing about my body, I could conquer the freaking world.  I’d have that much more brain power, time, and energy.  It seems so simple….I don’t want to hate my body, so I shouldn’t.  Just don’t do it.  It’s not like I’m trying to achieve world peace or discover a cure for cancer, so it bothers me that I should find it so difficult.  My angst is just so petty and annoying to me.  I have such a privileged life that I can lay in my King sized bed, on beautiful, clean sheets, with a fluffy down duvet, a full belly, staring at my iPad, surrounded by everything I could possibly want and still lose sleep over such silliness.  Sure, I could blame advertising, the media, “patriarchy”…..lots of things I could blame, but I know I do it to myself; no one does it to me. Why, can’t I just let it go?  Instead I pick at it like a scab that never quite heals. 

I find myself apologizing for my body all the time.  I hate myself for doing it.  When I feel like I want to apologize, I tell myself I’m not going to do it…and then I do it anyway and immediately want to take it back.  Usually when I apologize for my body, the person I am talking to says something meant to be reassuring and supportive, which just makes me feel pathetic and creates this uncomfortable tension and kind of sets me up for the next time I apologize.  It’s a weird loop:   I apologize….my insecurity is reinforced….I apologize more. 

Words are powerful.  Once you say something, it’s out there, in the universe and you can’t take it back…the words, your intentions….they blend seamlessly into the air and they never quite disappear.  They just linger for weeks and years….a lifetime if you let them. 

I like to read a lot of stuff online.   I am always as interested in the comments section as I am in the articles…sometimes even more so.  That’s where you hear the truth about how people really think and feel.  People usually don’t think very hard before they comment online…it’s a spontaneous reaction to whatever they’ve read so it’s usually a chaotic mess in the comments section:  People who disagree and agree – both trying, like their life depends on it, to convince everyone else they’re right;  people who aren’t trying to be polite; people who have nothing better to do than troll the internet and display what horrible human beings they are; people who take the opportunity to promote a business or service; people  who can articulate their opinions;  many others who can’t.   

I don’t know why, but I have always needed to know “the truth” about everything- regardless of how ugly or hurtful it might be.  I would rather know than not know every time.  The truth is rarely ever as rough as all the possibilities I can cook up in my head and the uncertainty of not knowing kills me.  So I’d rather know.  I can deal with knowing.  The unknown is what kills me.

The comments section is no different.  The fact that someone actually took the time to make a comment makes me happy.  It kinda makes me feel like there’s hope for the human race when I see that people care about something, no matter what it is.  Indifference is the worst case scenario.  No comments means that everyone who read it found the article so boring, so meaningless that they could not bother to muster up one ounce of energy to think or say anything about it.

Most people I know just avoid the comments section…that’s probably the sane thing to do.  “Ignore the haters” seems to be a common attitude now.  But I disagree with that…..I don’t think everyone who disagrees with me is a “hater” and it kind of drives me a little nuts that, in general, we’ve become a society of people who only want to interact with people who agree with us and watch media that tells us what we want to hear.  When we are challenged in any way, we either attack or shut down completely instead of trying to understand another’s point of view.  I try not to do this but I’m as guilty as anyone else.  Getting out of our comfort zones and challenging ourselves is important.  Reading the comments section helps remind me that there’s a great big world out there.

At least that’s what I tell myself as I read the comment section.  But what I’m really looking for are comments that reinforce my own body hatred.  And it’s not difficult to find them….they’re everywhere, even in places where you wouldn’t expect to find them.  I get a sense of smug satisfaction when I read negative, hateful comments.  They feed my dark version of reality where most people are horrible human beings.  When I find comments like that, I can get angry and blame someone else for my feeling the way I do about my body instead of looking in the mirror.

Life is pretty funny.  Strange things happen.  So….. Sam has a new friend who is very into body politics.  I became her friend on Facebook, where she is very active, and I suddenly started to see links in my newsfeed several times a day to articles on things like fat acceptance, body positivity, yoga at any size, etc.  Of course I read these and other articles I find myself daily and no matter what the article says, I find myself getting agitated and want to argue about it.  These articles could literally say anything…….we should love our bodies no matter the size, we should hate our bodies no matter the size, being 500 pounds is the new supermodel….I don’t care what they say, I get angry and want to argue about it. 

Sam often brings up these articles at home as something we can talk to each other about, thinking I’d be interested in talking about them….we’ve always had really good conversations….but he’ll bring it up and suddenly I’ll go off on a verbal rampage.  I’m not the kind of person who goes off on a verbal rampage unless I’m provoked.  Yeah I have a temper but it’s not razor thin….I always try to rationalize the things that make me angry…….my frustration and hostility have to build up quite a bit before I explode in anger.  I think of my words carefully and I don’t just verbally react, and if I do explode, I mean what I say.  So he was quite taken aback by my doing just that for no apparent reason.  This happened several times before he suggested that I might want to think about why I was getting so mad. 

I know why I was getting mad…….. all this “body positivity” kind of disorders my world.  It completely unhinges me because of my own body hatred.  In my first blog post, I mentioned how many people in my life have told me over the years that my weight is just part of who I am and I should learn to love and accept myself the way I am.  I also mentioned that I don’t accept that.  No disrespect to anyone who thinks that way, but I don’t agree.  I can’t agree.  I look in the mirror or at pictures of myself and I don’t see myself, so how could I accept it?

But you know, there WAS a time when I did accept it, and ironically, during that time those same people were the ones telling me I needed to lose weight!  I don’t know exactly when it happened but somewhere in my mid 20’s, after I had been raped, after I had started to eat compulsively and gained 150 pounds, I crossed a line.  Before that time, in my teens and early 20’s, I pretty much had a “fuck you” attitude towards anyone who dared tell me I should lose weight. 

That all changed after I was raped.  How I started to think about and treat my body was vastly different before the rape than it was after.  No longer did I love my body after the rape.   I was determined to punish it….destroy it.  I wanted it to disappear so I could never be hurt by it again….I felt betrayed by my body.  Before, I viewed my body as something valuable that I would only share when I wanted to….I would not be pressured to share it by anyone.  After, I viewed my body as damaged and worthless…I would give it to anyone who wanted it.

I know, you might think my story is different than every other obese person’s story, but I’m willing to bet it’s not that different.  I’m sure most people who are obese have some story to tell.  That’s why I just can’t get on board with the idea it’s ok to be fat.   To me, being fat is a world of pain.  And I am not going to tell anyone else it’s ok.  It’s not ok.  I’m not saying I’m right to feel this way and I’m not saying everyone should feel the way I do or agree with me, but this is how I feel right now at this point in my history.  Having lived with obesity for so long….knowing why I became obese, knowing how it feels to live in this world as an obese individual, knowing the discomfort in my own body being obese…. I just can’t understand how anyone who is obese can be happy with their body or really see themselves when they look in the mirror. 

A person’s self-worth should not depend on their size.  I agree with this statement - in theory.  But it’s not a blanket statement and to make it so – which is what the body positivity movement seems to sometimes do - is, in my opinion, really irresponsible and delusional.  I can’t tell anyone else where that line is for them…that’s not for me to say.   Of course I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad because of their body and in general, I do think acceptance of your body is a great gift you can give yourself, but the problem – for me – with the body positivity movement is it gives us a license to blame others and not accept personal responsibility.

The weird thing is, I have heard a lot of other weight loss surgery patients talk about how after they had surgery and lost weight, they were surprised to discover that were having judgmental thoughts towards other people living with obesity.  You would think someone – like me - who has suffered from obesity would be the last person to judge or have negative thoughts towards someone else’s body.  You’d think they would be the most compassionate.  But it’s like the former smoker who wants to proselytize to everyone else they think might benefit from their knowledge and experience.  I’ve heard a lot of WLS patients talk about how they want to be a role model for others and how they want to walk up to obese strangers and tell them they don’t have to live like this…they could have surgery too. 

It’s such a complicated mess.

There’s a meme making its way around Facebook and several of my friends have posted it….a quote by JK Rowling that says, “Is fat really the worst thing a human can be?  Is fat worse than vindictive, jealous, shallow, vain, boring, evil or cruel?  Not to me.”  The first time I saw this on a friend’s wall, I made a comment about how I’d rather be vain than fat (and I was totally serious) and I got lambasted for it. 

I see that quote and I think, well….is fat really the BEST thing a human can be?  Why does it have to be the worst or the best thing a person can be?  It’s just a thing a person can be….the end…..no “best” or “worst”.  It’s not even worth discussing.  If you’re happy the way you are, great…be happy.  What concern is it of mine?  But it’s a cruel world.  Nature is cruel.  Humans are cruel.  Life is cruel, so people post these memes with good intentions to counter ignorance, but they just piss me off.  Being fat is a physical trait we can all - to a certain extent - control.  Being shallow, vain, jealous, boring…these are all personality traits which – in general – we cannot control.  Am I just supposed to say yes I agree with that statement when it’s clearly a complicated issue?

My memories of life start when I was 5 years old.  I don’t remember anything before that.  There has never been a time in my life that I remember where discussions about my being overweight have not happened.  There’s a picture of me and my brother running through the waves in the ocean when I was about 8 and I’m in a bikini.  In the picture I can see I am clearly not fat.  I see that picture and it makes me weep.  I want to scoop that girl up in my arms and tell her how beautiful she is, how perfect, and not to ever let anyone tell her otherwise….that she will go through some terrible trauma but she will get through it and it does not make her damaged goods…she’ll still be beautiful. 

But that’s not the answer either, is it?  Focusing on what someone looks like, whether they are beautiful or not, already starts to create this awareness that being beautiful is important.  But it’s human nature to be drawn to be beauty, so it’s a catch-22.  You can’t talk about it; you can’t NOT talk about it.  Basically we’re screwed. No matter what we say to each other, what we say to ourselves, what we say to our kids growing up…….no matter what we say or don’t say is bound to screw us up. 

I think our only recourse is a genuine appreciation for everyone’s magnificent, unique physical qualities and to recognize that that difference is what makes us as a human race so beautiful.  Every body is different and lovely and amazing and flawed and full of potential.  Some bodies are naturally more beautiful than others, so what?  Is doesn’t mean the people who possess them are any better or worse than anyone else….it’s all genetic.  By being so accepting, I think it will give people the feeling of wanting to be better and change things they have control over.  I think people get so uptight about obesity because of the repressed, judgmental attitudes we as a society have.

The best thing I can do for myself is start accepting the idea that this body I have right now might be as good as it’s ever going to get.  The fact is, even if my face doesn’t show it, I am 45 years old.  My body is not getting any younger.  Living with obesity has taken it’s toll.  I can’t expect perfection.  I said in a previous post that I don’t regret my history, my experience.  That is true.  But for this one purpose – to build a healthy relationship with my body - I wish I could erase it all…..all my baggage, all my history, all my awareness, every message I have ever absorbed from friends, family, strangers, media and myself and just start again.  Blank page, first line, ”What I love about my body is….”

What I love about my body is that my skin turns from very pale to golden brown when I go out in the sun….my “Italian” skin, as my mom calls it.  What I love about my body is I get freckles across my nose in the Summer.  I love my thick, straight hair.  I love my perfect teeth.  I love my eyes and my smile.  I love my breasts and hips and perfectly curved ass and how perfectly hourglass my figure is.  And I have nice feet.  I love how soft my skin is.   I love that all my limbs work and I have absolutely no health issues other than obesity, which I am working on.  I love that my body is the source of indescribable pleasure for me.  I love that my body is mine to do whatever I want with.  I love the stories my scars tell.  I love that my body drops and gains weight so predictably.  I love that my body has taken so much abuse and still responds to the care I provide it now.  I love that my body contributes to who I am…and if I had had a different body, I would be a completely different person.  And I love the way my body feels after an intense work out.

It’s well known that many weight loss surgery patients who lose as much weight as I will have plastic surgery to remove excess skin.  Every time a group of weight loss surgery patients gather, that’s one of the first things people want to know from the ones who have finished losing their weight….how bad is the skin?  There are so many other things people could ask but our vanity is central to our sense of self.  Everyone cares what they look like, even people who claim they don’t.

I do everything I can to try and help my skin bounce back as I lose:  Since my surgery, I have slathered my body in cocoa butter every single day after my shower; I consciously eat fattier foods than my dietician would like so I can slow down my weight loss so my skin has a chance to catch up; I insist on strength training several times a week to build muscle and fill up some of that stretched skin; I drink water obsessively…and, even though I swore I would never do this…. I step on the scale almost every single day and control my weight loss very methodically. 

Since my surgery on January 6th, I’ve lost 60 pounds…..80 total from my highest weight last year.  Every day I look in the mirror and see myself a little more clearly.  I’m starting to recognize myself again.  

For years I had the attitude that if someone wasn’t attracted to me at this (whatever “this” was at the time) weight, then screw them…there’s no way I would give them the time of day once I had lost weight.  I was really offended by guys who weren’t interested in me because of my weight. I was also offended by guys who were attracted to me because of my weight…and yeah, that has happened.  Have you ever heard of “Feeders”? There are people with fat fetishes.  I’ve met several guys who have wanted to feed me, watch me eat…get off on watching me.  It’s creepy.  One extreme or the other is not ok with me:  To not be attracted to someone because of their size is not ok; to be attracted to someone because of their size is also not ok.  It’s just one physical quality.  I would rather not even have to discuss weight with someone who is attracted to me but unfortunately, it has to come up, for various reasons.

 I’ve lightened up a bit about weight in the last few years or so.  I’m sorry but there are some things that only humour can salve.  Sometimes you just gotta freaking laugh, especially in an intimate situation where people are uncomfortable, they don’t know what to do, but they care about you and are attracted to you.  There’s no point in trying to preserve dignity or be cool ‘cos everyone knows that at that moment, you ain’t dignified and you ain’t cool.  Laughing and being honest is only way to get through it.

On our basest levels, we really are all the same, regardless of what body we have.  We all want to be Special Snowflakes – and sometimes and in some ways we are – but we all eat, we bleed, we hurt…and,  no matter how much we might deny it, we want to be loved by someone.   It doesn’t matter your politics, your age, your gender, your sexual orientation/preference, how experienced you are, whether you sleep around or stay monogamous…..we all want that guy or girl we like to like us back.  No matter how old we get, we don’t outgrow this.  The desire to partner up is always there.  

Everyone always says that you have to love yourself before someone else can really love you.  I think that’s bullshit.  I think there are all kinds of people who don’t love themselves and still manage to find happiness and love with another person.  And there are all kinds of people who do love themselves and can’t find a partner.    I personally think love and acceptance from another person can do wonders for helping us discover the good in ourselves.   Realizing that someone else sees the beauty in us can heal all wounds and go a long way in helping us feel whole. 

I don’t have any other answers right now.  Add “body politics” to “intimacy”, “relationships/love” and “addiction” as issues I need to continue to work on.  The fascinating thing for me is how intermingled these issues all are for me.  They aren’t independent in any way.  Watch this space for updates.

Random Stuff:

·         I absolutely detest the word “panties”.  I don’t know why but that word makes me cringe.

·         I am crazy about pickles.  So are several other people in my family.  There are always pickles at my family’s dinners, and usually quite a lot of them, because we can all eat some pickles.

·         I like all different kind of pickles – kosher, dill, garlic, sweet – but when I say “pickles”, I generally mean pickled cucumbers.  This sparked a somewhat amusing conversation at a pub the first time I went to England.  In England, anything pickled is called a “pickle”. 

·         I also like pickled beets.  My brother loves pickled hot carrots…me, not so much.

·         I worked at a pickle factory for two summers while I was in high school.  To this day I always inspect every pickle I eat.  I know what those suckers looked like before they hit the jar and unless the pickle is pristine, there’s no way I’m putting it in my mouth.

·         My grandmother made the best homemade pickles.  After she died, I took one of the unopened bottles and kept them in my fridge, saving them for just the right time.  5 years later when I packed to move to the States, the jar was still unopened in my fridge and I ended up throwing them out.

·         The first time I went to England was in 2000 to meet up with a guy I met online.  No joke.  I stayed at his house for 2 weeks.  We got to know each other through phone calls, pictures, emails and ICQ and we were convinced we were in love.  He picked me up at the airport and on the drive back to his place after I got off my red eye flight, he told me he wasn’t attracted to me because of my weight.  It was not the first or last time I heard something like that.  It was an interesting two weeks.