#FatAttack2015
I have struggled with my weight almost my entire life. Like many other people who also have, I hit puberty early, around 9 or 10, and was super self conscious from that early age. I gained weight quickly, and disproportionately in my midsection. For a kid who was already awkward with few friends, this was a big blow.
My mom also struggled with her weight. I suspect, though we never got to talk about it as adults, that she never really found a place of balance of self acceptance as far as that was concerned. Instead of teaching me to appreciate myself and my body, or teaching me to eat healthier and improve my lifestyle to help solve my problem, she would advise me to be sarcastic and self defensive when kids made fun of me. She taught me that I would have to discipline myself to wear clothes I might not like but that fit my body, and to try to hide my stomach. It’s no surprise, in retrospect, that I developed the eating disorder I still struggle with today.
As a result of being a fat kid most of my life, I’ve learned a lot about society and people and our culture. I’ve learned that fat people can be practically invisible. I’m still rarely taken seriously as opposed to my healthy weighted peers. I get looks from strangers when I wear shorts or tanks in public or when I go to the beach, and I imagine people are thinking that I have balls to be out in public looking the way I do. When I clothes shop in anything but plus size sections or stores, I get similar looks.
I’ve always been the fat friend. The one who rarely if ever dated. The “really good friend”. The “great listener”. Wonderful compliments except when they’re doled out not to highlight my positive traits but to gloss over my supposed faults. In contrast, someone else was always the pretty one, the hot one, the boy magnet. When I crushed on someone it was discussed amongst my friends and I in the same fairytale wishful manner in which we talked about our daydream futures as the wives of the NSYNC members.
None of this has ever been, or ever will be, okay. It is not acceptable to reduce someone to a stereotype, an accessory, a background item, because of their weight. It will never be fine to dismiss a persons thoughts and feelings and emotions as less important (or not important at all) because they aren’t skinny. Fat Attack is so important.
In the above photos, the top left is me at my highest weight ever. Top right is me sick from my eating disorder, pale and sick and miserable.
The bottom photos are me now - still by society’s standards fat. But healthier than I have ever been, and happy, too. Something I never thought possible until I gave myself permission and the chance.
MotiveWeight http://ift.tt/1K0xx0Y
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