My Big Fat Story I have always been fat. Sometimes a lot fat and sometimes a little fat. Some people don’t like the word fat. They get upset. They don’t want to hear me say I’m fat. If I do, they say, insistently, “NO! No you’re not! Not at all - you look like a size ten.” This makes me feel like a mental patient. I am 5 foot 3 inches tall and I weigh 170 (today). I have a mirror. I am a size 18 (on the bottom except when it’s a 20 although I’ve been known to fit in a size 16. I take a size large although sometimes the extra-large fits better. I have some mediums. I’m a different size from the waist up. If I just wore a table I really could look like a size 14. But wearing a café table everywhere you go is so bulky and it totally limits your shoe choices.) But here’s my question, why is being a little overweight so horrifying that I’m supposed to hide it or lie about it?
The reason I can say that I’m a little fat and feel comfortable saying it is that – for one thing - many of the people I talk to can actually see me so I don’t feel like I’m busting the hiding place of the grail. More importantly, I don’t think it means anything other than that I am a little fat. I don’t think it’s the most important thing about me and I don’t think it’s anything to be deeply ashamed of. (Although, in the wrong outfit mild embarrassment may be appropriate – but this is true even for skinny broads.)
I have been overweight since I was a kid. I weighed 115 when I was seven, 200 when I was twelve and 250 when I was fourteen. My top weight was 275 and my bottom weight was 127 (for at least a day and a half). I’ve kept a hundred pounds off for twenty years but I’ve got fifty pounds that I go up and down with. So what? I have reached the point in my life where I have better things to worry about than my ass. I’m getting a B in a topic that I used to fail. I’m okay with that. In our book, Embracing Your Big Fat Ass, we say that you can be happy with a big fat ass, or miserable with a big fat ass. Either way, you got a big fat ass. I know what I’ve decided. I’d rather be happy. Let other people obsess about my ass if they want to – I’m busy living. |
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