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Your Fat Friend

I’m a fat queer woman driven by personal stories, compassion, and social justice values. I love comedy, politics, cooking, nutrition, karaoke, contemporary poetry and probably you. I write about my experiences as a fat woman on Medium and tweet at yrfatfriend.

Family

How to support fat women in the time of Trump.

This month has been an especially taxing time to be a woman in America.

We watch coverage of the presidential race and see thin women talk about being called “not my first choice” and “Miss Piggy.” It is outrageous, and it is visceral.

A wave of shame washes over us. The memory of a stranger’s hands on our skin sends an electric charge through our legs, willing us to run. Blood rushes to our cheeks as we try to figure out where we would fit on a bleak one-to-10 scale. Would he call me a one? A zero? Would he reach back into negative numbers? Who else thinks about us, about me, in such reductive terms?

As a woman, this wondering is all too familiar. Often, it is forced upon us, a biting reminder of the simple mathematics of femininity — that appearance only and always equals worth. It impacts every woman.

Photo by Maddie McGarvey/Getty Images.

But this televised bullying frequently targets women based on their weight.

It made Miss Universe into “Miss Piggy,” one of many women singled out for gaining weight. So many women have been called fat these last few months and so few are.

Those of us who are fat know that this kind of name-calling is just the beginning. It is only the tip of the iceberg that has struck our shared ship. Fat women have seen the craggy mass beneath the surface, its sharp edges cutting us down to size every day.

It is horrifying that a man running to lead a nation would talk about women this way. But to fat women, it is not surprising.

As a fat woman, I know that Trump is only the tip of the iceberg, the most visible part of a massive monolith of attitudes toward fat people. Humiliation of fat women happens daily, publicly, hidden beneath a waterline that can only be traversed by having a body within shouting distance of acceptability.

We feel the jagged edges of that iceberg in fat jokes in movies. (Whole careers have been built on pratfalls and fat suits.) We feel its cut when strangers give unsolicited diet mandates at the grocery store or when colleagues offer gym memberships to fat co-workers.

We have become accustomed to the rush of blood in our cheeks when our bodies are so readily commented upon — by anyone, in any venue. The stomach that drops like a faulty elevator. The hollow echo of friends’ laughter at cruel fat jokes. The thudding heartbeat when a family member insists “she shouldn’t be wearing that” about another fat stranger.

Image from iStock.

The way fat women are talked about is terrible. The way we’re treated is worse.

We know the sinking feeling of "grab them by the p***y." Because some fat women have been and, upon reporting our assaults, have been met with disbelief — who would want you? The horrifying logic of who would rape a fat woman is so ubiquitous some of us never report at all. Others of us haven’t been assaulted and somehow feel invisible in a culture that conflates groping and rape with affirmation. All kinds of women are sexually assaulted. Fat women are told we’re too disposable to be raped, even after it’s happened.

We didn’t start with a presidential candidate who felt comfortable, all on his own, to comment on women’s bodies. He has seen — as so many of us have — the aggressive, prescriptive, dismissive fate that befalls women who dare to gain weight. He’s got the backing of a whole culture that demonizes all women, yes, and fat women in particular.

The comments about starting a diet or joining a gym, the unchecked bullying, the harsh jokes and slurs hurled at fat women — all of that softens the ground for this kind of public abuse. It comes from all sides: movies, politics, family, friends, workplaces, doctors. It’s only from below that we can see the enormity of that slow, massive iceberg. It’s only from close-up that we can see its razor sharp edges, only from experience that we can know how deeply it cuts.

Thin women are under immense pressure not to fall from the iceberg into the frigid waters below. For fat women, it is not a cliff to fall from, it is a boulder to be pinned under. You may not feel sure-footed — you may feel your feet slip from time to time, may just be breathing at the surface — but you are breathing. Fat women are drowning. And we’re drowning with or without a bombastic fat-shamer on television each day.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

We don’t just need you to dispose of the noisiest bully. We need you to challenge the culture that created him.

You have the key to the oxygen we need. You can chip away at the heavy, hurtful iceberg. You can interrupt others when they call fat people names or pass judgments on their health, relationships, appearance, or value. You can talk to family members who offer unsolicited advice on dieting, exercise, fashion, or health. You can stop seeing movies with actors in fat suits, stop listening to comedians who target fat people.

You can ask better of those around you. You can do better for yourself and for the women you know. Because targeting women for their weight hurts all of us.

None of us owes anyone access to the bodies we have — to touch them, to change them, to criticize them, to cut them down to size. You don’t owe strangers, pundits, or politicians your desirability. Your body is not a debt to be paid, not a problem to solve or an albatross to carry. Your body is yours.

All you need to do is have the body you have, keep yourself safe, and build the momentum of your own goodness. Feel it whirring away inside you. Fuel its engine. Remember who you are, regardless of the body you have.

You have the extraordinary strength of character that only comes from living in a culture that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge you, much less affirm you. You have an unparalleled ability to empathize and to know just how essential empathy is. You know the difference between the abundance of love and the mirage of desire. You know that desire leaves you with less; you know how to give the kind of love that makes us all whole.

You have the extraordinary love of friends, family, and partners — many of whom are learning to love you in their actions as they love you in their hearts.

It’s going to take all of our warmth to melt this iceberg. Thankfully, all of our hearts are furnaces. Now let’s get to the hard work of firing them up.

Family

What it's like going to the doctor as a fat person.

I am visiting my family when my hearing cuts out.

It’s scary to abruptly lose one of your senses. Everything sounds muffled, like the people speaking around me are behind a closed door at the end of a long hallway, distant and unreachable. The pain in my ears is sharp.

I feel my breath shallow and quicken, anxiety beating its hummingbird wings in my ribcage. First, because something is so clearly wrong. And second, because I will have to go to the doctor, and I am fat.

As I walk into the office, I steel myself for the charm offensive I’ll need to wage.

As a fat person, my health is always suspect, and never more than when I step into an unknown doctor’s office.

Image via iStock.

The nurse and I chat away as she takes my vital signs, though I still strain to hear her. As we speak, she takes my blood pressure once, then frowns. She takes it again, then another look. She excuses herself and comes back with another cuff, trying a third time. Nervous, I ask her what the problem is.

“I’m just not getting a good read,” she says, adjusting the second cuff.

“Is everything OK?”

“It’s coming back great, but that can’t be right. Overweight patients don’t have good blood pressure.”

It’s a familiar moment that I’ve come to dread. Even with her trusted equipment, even with the numbers clear as day in front of her, she cannot see that I am healthy. She anticipates poor health, and anything better becomes invisible.

I have entrusted her with my health, and she cannot see it.

Eventually, the doctor enters. Both of my ears are infected, and I’m prescribed antibiotics.

He gives me detailed instructions on how to use the eardrops and advises me to take all of the medicine as prescribed. As the visit wraps up, I ask the doctor if there’s anything else I should do for aftercare.

“You should lose some weight.”

This moment is familiar, too. It leaves me disappointed and unsurprised. When I seek medical care, many providers only seem to see my weight. Whatever the diagnosis, weight loss is its prescribed treatment. I explain what I eat, how much I exercise, my history of low blood pressure, and general good health. It only rarely influences my course of treatment. Because the biggest predictor of my health, even in the eyes of professionals, is my dress size. I have proven myself an irresponsible owner of my own body. Every detail I provide is suspect.

And I am not alone. Many fat people find the doctor’s office — which should be safe, confidential, and constructive — is instead a home for shame and rejection. Health care providers congratulate fat people for their eating disorders, they tell patients they should lose weight if they “want to be beautiful,” and fat people are given lectures on weight loss instead of receiving medical treatment.

Like all of us, health care providers can be products of a culture that teaches us to shame, exclude, and be disgusted with fat people.

Image via iStock.

Often, it can show in their treatment of fat patients.

A growing body of research shows that doctors are less likely to show empathy for fat patients, making many unable to take in important diagnostic information. Doctors are more likely to describe fat patients like me as awkward, unattractive, noncompliant — even weak-willed and lazy. Because despite extraordinary training and expertise in medicine, health care providers are products of a culture that shames and rejects fat people. And those beliefs inform important, sweeping health care policy decisions.

When thin friends and family talk to me about my health, this is a part they almost never imagine: Getting basic health care, from regular check-ups to minor interventions, requires tenacious self-advocacy. Because in the doctor’s office — just like the rest of the world — I am forced to defend my body at every turn just to get my basic needs met. Unlike other patients, I must prostrate myself, prove that I am worthy of treatment.

And that’s made possible by the way we all talk about being fat — all of which muddies our ability to measure health in more complex, precise ways. I think we use “losing weight” and “getting healthy” interchangeably. We reject fat people’s accounts of their own weight loss attempts, opting instead to believe that they simply haven’t tried hard enough, or don’t know how.

When we talk about fatness as the only real measure of health, we bypass many other pieces of the puzzle: nutrition, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, mental health, family histories. We ignore precise, important measures of health, collapsing all that complexity into the size of someone’s body, believing that to be the most accurate and trustworthy measure of a person’s health. This is what happens to me. My health is disregarded, all because of how I look.

In order to get accurate diagnoses and real treatments to fat patients, we’ll all need to examine our own thinking about fat people and health.

Changing the conversation around fat and health will take more work than that — but it’s a place to start. Because as it stands, few of us are willing to believe that fat people could have health problems stemming from anything other than their fat bodies.

From Your Site Articles

Family

Why the sexual harassment of fat people reaches a different level of offensiveness.

We were trading catcalling and harassment stories.

A group of smart, thoughtful, lively, funny women had gathered, as many women do, for a moment of catharsis and commiseration over the ways in which our bodies are taken from us, little by little, with stunning regularity.

One woman’s coworker had asked her out three times, unswayed by her declination. Another waited at a bus stop when a man, unannounced, wrapped his arms around her from behind. Gross, everyone agreed. Me too.

The stories gained momentum, building to purging crescendoes of laughter and irritation. This is how we unburden ourselves. This is how we loose tension back into the world that foisted it on us in the first place.

When asked about my own experience, I shared something about an acquaintance making a graphic pass at me months earlier.

“He kept telling me how he wanted to hold my arms down while I struggled to get free. It was gross.” I shrugged it off.

Friends’ responses sharpened. What had been lighthearted release turned to vigilance and concern. This moment, with this acquaintance, had felt routine to me. He was not the first man to tell me about a rape fantasy, and he wouldn’t be the last. I had assumed it was just a particularly unsavory version of a kind of harassment we’d all faced. Other women at the table assured me it was not.

Afterward, a friend asked why I hadn’t told anyone sooner. Just as she’d been surprised by my experience, I was surprised by her question. The answer felt so evident. Like many women before me, when I share stories of harassment, catcalling, unwelcome advances and violence, I am met with pushback.

Unlike other women, however, there is a common misconception that my body cannot be desired, because I am fat. And that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Fat people date, marry, hook up, get lonely, and get laid just like anyone else.

Yet still, we are regularly depicted on screens and pages, by media and loved ones, as undesirable and undesired. Those depictions give way to a belief that fat people are isolated, unloved, desperate, voracious. Grateful for what little attention we get and forever longing for more of it.

So when we are harassed, catcalled, and assaulted, I’ve noticed that those moments are supercharged with entitlement and violence. Those who harass us are emboldened by the belief that we’ll be flattered, relieved, or honored by the attention. Their expectations have been skewed by a culture that tells them to indulge in any impulse, disregarding any want that is not their own. A culture that tells them they are entitled to nearly any body they claim. A culture that tells them so many of our bodies are disposable, accessible, and theirs for the taking. A culture that tells them fat girls are easy — they want you more than you want them.

And when we don’t, they lash out.

A man asked me out years ago. I declined gently, in the way that so many of us do — a survival skill to avoid violence. My heart raced, straining against my ribcage as I gingerly chose my words. "You’re so sweet. I’d love to. I can’t."

Still, he became agitated, asking why. I told him I was queer. I didn’t want any part of him or the picture he painted me into. Still, my rabbit heart wouldn’t stop thumping. Still, it stung. Still, I cried.

Image via iStock.

It felt so familiar. As a fat woman, the messages I receive about sexual harassment are cruel and constant.

Be grateful for the attention you get. Even if it’s violent. Even if you don’t want it. Did that person really want to rape you? Really, you? Because we still think of sexual assault as being driven by desire. And who would want such a wretched body? Of course it gets violent. Of course we don’t tell anyone.

Recently, a friend told me over cocktails about the umpteenth time a man made an unwanted pass at her. "I’m so over it," she said. "I get it, you’re into me, move on." I related to her irritation — like her, I have felt the frustration of so many strangers’ entitlement to my body. As women, it seems that our bodies are always public property, there to be grabbed, judged, claimed, conquered. Her frustration I understood — I feel it too. But her boredom and disgust stung.

Her body is held up so often as an ideal. Her skin is the shape of desire. When strangers and acquaintances see that silhouette, they approach her, almost reflexively. She constantly spends time, energy, and effort making sure she can stay safe. She does not know when a spurned stranger will turn violent.

She longs for a day uninterrupted by a stranger’s assessment of her body. So do I.

But where she is sought after with lust and attraction, I am expected as a convenience, readily available. I have shirked my responsibility to have a desirable body, so I am an easy mark. The men who approach me believe I will not resist, and I will not report. I will not be afforded the thin, flimsy veil of courtship. They will speak to me of violent desires, the darkest corners of their intentions.

After all, who would want to rape a fat woman?

My friend has become exhausted with the value of her body. I am terrified with the debt of mine.

Harassment of fat people is so much more than sexual and deeply different from the harassment faced by thinner people.

Strangers on the street regularly approach me to tell me that I’m fat and how not to be. Sometimes, they tell me that I wouldn’t be fat if I were a better person. Some shout that I shouldn’t show my face in public. Others rage at having to see me at all.

The message is clear: Whoever you are, my fat body is more yours than mine. Fat bodies are always someone else’s property, open to prescription, lecturing, anger, pity.

Street harassment, catcalling, and sexual harassment don’t impact just one kind of body, though.

Street harassment happens when a stranger makes a pass a fat person then laughs derisively. It happens when trans people are asked what’s in their pants. It happens when people of color are told to "go back to" another country, regardless of where they were born. It happens when women in headscarves are accused of terrorism.

To dig up the roots of this violence, we can’t just listen to the stories that sound like our own. We have to stretch beyond our own experiences and listen to the stories that are unfamiliar to us. Our safety depends on it.

From Your Site Articles

My heart sunk in such a familiar way when I first learned about "Fat Chance."

The TLC show explores the weight loss journeys of people looking to fall in love. “Why would someone love me, looking like this?” one contestant asks, staring at her soft body in a full-length mirror.

Wherever we go, someone is constantly asserting the life of loneliness, isolation, and lovelessness to which fat people are doomed. It is heartbreaking and it is false.

I think about the technicolor loves I have had, the partners who have loved and wanted me. I think about the fat people I have fallen for and the fat friends and family who are happily married, hooking up, falling in love, and calling affection into their lives.

Unlovable is ubiquitous and deeply untrue. After all, if fat people were truly impossible to love, two-thirds of the country would be condemned to a life of solitude and longing. But unlovable has gained so much momentum that it has taken on a life of its own, a self-fulfilling prophecy that shapes the thinking of my friends and family, showing up jagged and sharp in their tender mouths.

Even friends who are critical about popular depictions of fat people have a hard time. When we talk about "Fat Chance," their answers are startlingly similar. One after another, upon seeing the contestants: "I mean, look at her, she’s not even that fat."

There it is, unlovable, its toothy serrated blade cutting as deep as ever.

I know that’s not what they intend to say. They mean the world has gone haywire if this woman is considered fat. They mean an impossible standard has been set if a handsome, broad-shouldered man feels like he’s too fat. They are startled seeing bodies that look so much like theirs being discussed as irredeemably, unlovably fat.

It’s a common response to seeing fat-shaming of all kinds.

She’s not that fat. Because if she is, they might be too. They are awakened to a new level of self-consciousness, wondering if maybe they should’ve felt even more ashamed all this time. In that moment, they disappear into themselves, consumed by a new depth of surprise and shame.

She’s not even that fat.

But I am always that fat. When strangers bring up cartoonish numbers — I mean, would being fat be OK if she was 300 pounds? — I am their exaggerated example. I am the person they dread sitting next to on the plane, the one who avoids eye contact with strangers for fear of the slurs that follow, the one who orders salads in public in hope of being spared judgment, comment, or shaming. I have always been that fat. I have always been fair game.

She’s not even that fat. But they’d understand if they were saying it about me. She’s not deserving of such scorn, but there’s someone who is. There’s someone who’s that fat. There’s me.

“I mean, I know you think you know what you’re seeing, but I’m pretty fat,” you said, fixing your lipstick and adjusting your size-10 dress in a department store bathroom mirror. Behind you, my soft body, size 26, is a sharp contrast.

I furrow my brow and again, my heart sinks. You, willowy and lithe. You, cheekbones and clavicle. You, pretty fat. But, dear friend, you are never that fat.

I turn this moment over in my head, examining it carefully. It leaves me with such a dull ache of grief. Later that night, I finally find the words for what I wanted to say to you.

I wanted to tell you that your identity is important.

I believe that you see yourself as pretty fat, and I know that your identity matters to you just as much as mine matters to me. The way you see yourself shapes how you engage with the world around you. It determines when and how you feel seen, when and how you feel erased. You describe it precisely, with words you cradle close to your heart. It is a locket that warms with your body, a keepsake to remind you who you are and where you stand in the world.

Your identity matters deeply. So do perception and experience — how others see you and how they treat you as a result. Your identity shapes how you engage with the world; perception determines how the world reacts to you. This, dear friend, is where our experiences differ. You feel pretty fat. I am seen as that fat.

Image from iStock.

Because I’m seen as that fat, I’m treated with all the dismissal and contempt that people who are that fat deserve. People who are that fat get turned away from job interviews, promotions, even doctor offices. Because I am that fat, a nurse takes my blood pressure four times before telling me that my low blood pressure “can’t be right — not for an obese patient.” You know you feel pretty fat, but cashiers don’t gawk when you walk into a buffet restaurant, and acquaintances don’t joke about ending up on a blind date with someone like you.

You see yourself as fat, and that matters. But the world around you doesn’t know how you see yourself. They only see the body in front of them, and that body isn’t even that fat.

I see your identity. And I need you to see my experience.

Both of these moments, with good friends whom I love and trust, have stayed with me. These friends are thoughtful, incisive, committed to doing better by fat people. And in both cases, their values were betrayed, caught in an undertow of dismissing fat people.

They never meant to, but both of them made it clear that some bodies are acceptable, and others aren’t.

Many of us are comfortable saying that some fat bodies are OK. Those fat bodies are almost always exceptional star athletes or stunning models. The kind of bodies you see alongside their accomplishments and, astonished, utter, "I never would’ve guessed." The kind of bodies that check every other box: staggering beauty, visible markers of health, physical ability, youth. Women must have hourglass figures; men must have broad shoulders and barrel chests. No one can “look obese.” Yes, fat bodies are OK, but only if they are immaculate in every other way and only if we can see their perfection. Fat bodies are best when they don’t look fat at all.

She’s not even that fat and I’m pretty fat are harsh reminders of that line. I never know just where it is, but I know I am always on the outside of it. I have never been an acceptable kind of fat. Those who are acceptable, those who are embraced, are precious few and far between. Most of us fail at being the right kind of fat.

That’s why any acceptance of fat people that expands our standards to a point is unacceptable. I do not want to be accepted into a beauty standard that has betrayed me. I do not want my acceptance to rely on someone else’s rejection.

Everyone — yes, everyone — deserves respect in the world. No one — not one person — deserves to be harassed, discriminated against, disrespected, or hurt just because of the size or shape of their body. It doesn’t matter if you think they could change their body. It doesn’t matter if you’re right. All of us deserve safety and all of us deserve love.

There will be bodies that you find difficult to embrace.

The fattest person in the movie theater, daring to eat popcorn. The person you clock as transgender at the grocery store. The person with a visible disability, who needs you to give up your seat on the bus. There will be me, a person who is that fat. This is where the work gets tough.

In order to make room for all of us, you will have to believe to your bones that they deserve everything you have.Not some of them. Not the most beautiful ones or the most athletic ones. Not up to a certain size or just if they’re nice to you or just the ones you think are cute.

Dignity is not earned. Safety is not a reward. None of us should have to overcome our bodies just to be safe, to be loved, to be treated like anyone else. Safety, acceptance, and love are for all of us. Not just the ones we’re comfortable with. Not just the ones who aren’t that fat.

Family

This is what it's really like to go to the gym as a fat person.

How the gym exposes a challenging double-bind of attitudes around fatness.

I love the feeling of my beating heart — the rush of blood in my face and limbs, the scrape of heavy breath in my lungs, the pulsing in my fingertips.

I love to feel sweat gather in the fine hairs at my temples, neck. The bright colors of workout clothes and the rhythmic throb of blood in my veins are a celebration of the life in my lungs.

Photo via iStock.

I learned to swim at a young age, joining a swim team in grade school and middle school. I never minded being the fattest kid on the team because swimming made me feel so free and exhilarated. I swam the butterfly, a complicated stroke with a precise momentum, in which my fat body proved a surprising asset. I felt my heartbeat in every inch of my body, and I loved it.

Things changed in high school, when our whole class took fitness tests at the same time, the gym becoming a tiny stage packed with players and too much audience.

In locker rooms, beyond the earshot of adults, classmates would talk endlessly about each other’s personal bests and bodies. Those conversations were a warning shot. I never heard my body discussed, but there was the caution: It would be.

The worst test was running the mile, and the inevitability of harsh judgment that came with it. I dreaded the obviousness of being the fattest kid, the cliché of coming in last. I prided myself on being a high achiever and felt overwhelmed with shame at being seen by all of my peers doing something at which I was so inadequate. After everyone else had finished, I was still there, the last of the last, keeping everyone else from going home for the day. Classmates watched as my reddened face contorted with embarrassment and determination, willing my stubborn body through its final lap.

My brain would overheat and sputter with dread and panic for days leading up to The Mile.

Already an anxious kid, my brain would overheat and sputter with dread and panic for days leading up to The Mile. The night before was often sleepless. Hot, frenzied tears would sear my face while my mother offered comfort. Imagine when it’s over, how free you’ll feel, knowing you don’t have to do it for another six months. Think of how relieved you’ll be. Think of everything else that you love so dearly.

It took me years to rediscover my love of movement and strength.

Today, I walk in the city, run in parks, hike in mountains, and swim on the rare occasion I have access to a private pool. But I don’t go to gyms.

“GOOD FOR YOU!”

I was at the gym on my first day of a trial membership.

I was on the elliptical with my headphones in and my eyes closed, willing the world away. People, problems, noise, and challenge all slipped into the ether, disappearing in a cloud of breath and fast-paced music. Suddenly, a piercing interruption.

“GOOD FOR YOU!”

I opened my eyes to see a stranger standing before me, face to face. She smiled with too much encouragement, the way adults do when children learn a basic skill for the first time. I felt conspicuous, the recipient of too much unwanted and unwelcome attention. I forced a weak smile and nodded, waiting for her to leave.

I looked around. No one else was talking to anyone they didn’t know. One other patron stared at me, his face contorted with unchecked disgust.

Photo via iStock.

Suddenly, I was back in high school, the last huffing, puffing fat kid to finish the mile. The size of my body felt so obvious. It felt piteous because it was pitied, disgusting because it elicited disgust. I walked into the gym feeling fine, even good. I walked out feeling ashamed, small, embarrassed by my own audacity.

Going to the gym as a fat person is a ropes course of social cues — little signals that I’m unwanted or, at best, unexpected.

Like an uninvited party guest who can’t take the hint. Would you like something to drink? We don’t have much left.

The gym exposes a challenging double-bind of attitudes around fatness. Even doing what I’m expected to do — working out — I’m still met with sidelong glances and open gawking, reminders that I’m unwelcome and unwanted. Even in the place I’m supposed to be, I can’t find respite.

As a fat person, I’m constantly bombarded with messages telling me that my job is to spend all of my time and energy changing my body, ever reducing it, until it is the right shape and size, until it moves the right way and says the right thing; until I am confident but not conceited, apologetic but not sad.

This is an impossible standard that rejects nearly all of us. But the gravitational pull of beauty standards is so strong that we are pulled into their orbit.

We all keep trying, keep striving, keep failing. We don’t lose as much weight as we thought, or we don’t lose it in the right places. Our bodies remain stubborn and untamed, unbending to our forceful will. But still, we try. We try new diets, new workouts, new pills. We spend money, time, effort. And every time something doesn’t work, it calls up all of our past defeats. Over time, those failures start to feel like who we are. They ferment, souring into shame.

Photo via iStock.

When any of us goes to the gym, it can call up all of that shame, hurt, and anger at ourselves for our perceived shortcomings. But when I show up, I become an effigy for all of that angst. I suddenly start to feel like a high schooler again at the gym, awkward and ashamed. Because in that environment, so many of us are suddenly awash in insecurity, focused on performing and judging. Even in a gym, the only bodies we can accept are the ones that are already perfect.

When I work out, I don’t do it to fit an impossible and exclusive standard.

I do it to clear my head. I do it to feel vitality, the brightness of knowing just how alive I can be. I do it to take care of a body that takes care of me.

But to go to a gym, I’ve also got to brave a culture that’s borne of insecurity, perfectionism and the lack of it. There’s no room for more, better, improvement. There’s no room for getting stronger, breathing easier, goals other than weight loss. There’s only room for hunger, lack, insecurity and shame.

I’ve had enough insecurity and shame. Instead of chasing a mirage my body will never be, I focus on making it strong. I attend to the many measures of health that shame conquers and flattens. I take long hikes and runs to clear my cluttered mind. I find safe places to swim, to feel the power of my body, the waves it can make. I return to that simple, glorious feeling of my sturdy heart pumping blood brightly through my veins.

Photo via Isaac Brown/Stocky Bodies /Stocky Bodies.

I have known enough shame. Today, I choose abundance and confidence. I choose nuance and self-determination. I choose strength.

From Your Site Articles

9 women describe the frustration, shame, and heartbreak of being a fat person on a plane - Upworthy ›

I need you to listen closely. I need you to believe me when I tell you what happens.

I need you to say the word “fat.” About me. Because I am.

I’m a size 26 — fat enough that some stores for fat people don’t carry my size. Fat enough that some doctors will refuse to see me. Fat enough that getting on an airplane makes my blood run cold because they might kick me off without a refund for my ticket, or they might charge me double and then I will have to explain to my friends, job, family why I can’t make the trip. Every discussion about bodies — whether in the media or amongst friends — is about how to avoid the horrible fate of looking like me. I need you to hear that this all hurts, and it happens all the time.

I know this stuff is hard to talk about.

But when I talk about fat, I am not talking about feelings or self-esteem or body image issues or inner strength. I am talking about the way individuals and institutions treat me and people who look like me. I need you to acknowledge that you and I have different experiences because I am fat.

I need you to consider your audience. When you say you hate your body for being so fat or that you are afraid of becoming fat or when you say that you shouldn’t have eaten that lunch or dessert or when you announce your New Year’s resolution is to lose 5, 10, 25 pounds — you are saying that you don’t want your body to end up like mine. Your feelings are real and true and valid. And you still should not say them to the fattest person you know.

I know that all of us are affected by body shaming and everyone has real, valid, deep, hard feelings about our bodies.

I still need you to stop perpetuating it, especially when talking about yourself. No amount of caveats or prologues make it hurt me less. I need you to know that I’m taking it personally because it is personal.

I need you to know that I go to great pains to take care of everyone’s feelings when I talk about being fat, and for me, these conversations happen weekly, sometimes daily, and lots of people need lots of attention and care just to be able to hear what I need from them. Sometimes I get tired, frustrated, or angry with the emotional work it takes just to prepare those around me to hear me name who I am and what I need.

I need you to know that when you talk disparagingly about your own body and then you say “but not you, you’re beautiful!” your compliments are impossible to believe. That if you disapprove of yourself, vivisect your own body, and then compliment me, I will remember how you talk about both of us. If you think of your own fat body as repulsive, I will believe you are also repulsed by mine. I know that you intend to talk about yourself. I need you to know that you are also talking about me.

If you think of your own fat body as repulsive, I will believe that you are also repulsed by mine.

I need you to let go of the things I have never been able to hold, just for a moment. Just to feel how fragile they are when you loosen your grip, to feel how easily they can shatter. I need you to care for me enough to feel unsafe. I need you to join me for a moment where I live every day.

I need you to try to learn to love the lush overgrowth of your body. Let it grow wild and untamed as a garden you loved as a child. Love it for the way it sustains you, keeps you warm, goes to such lengths not to let you get hurt. Its only job is to care for you. I need you to try to love it if you intend to love me.

I need you to remember that blaming individuals for the harassment they experience isn't supportive or effective. That we can't attribute poverty to poor work ethic any more than we can attribute harassment of fat people to low self-esteem or weak willpower.

I need you not to forget your values when I tell you about my experience.

I need you to stop reducing my experiences to hurt feelings or to ill-intended individuals. I need you to know that even with good intentions, you can still do harm. I need less sympathy and more solidarity. Less pity; more anger. Fewer condolences; more action. I need you to stop comforting me.

I need an ally.

When you ask me what I need, and I tell you, I need you to try.

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I am not ugly, unintelligent, or unlovable. I am just fat.

Years ago, a dear friend made a fat joke about me.

We were incredibly close then, as we are now, and had found ways to joke about our identities that brought us closer together. At that point, I had never described myself as fat: not to friends, family, myself. If the topic came up, my face would flush, I’d stammer out something about being "overweight" or "big" while a hot wave of blood rushed through my full cheeks, coloring my whole face. I would feel searing embarrassment for hours, sometimes days afterward. I’d come out as queer at 15 — a surprise to friends and family — but still couldn’t muster the language to describe the body that everyone could see.

We were at work on the day my friend made the joke. At the end of a long day, he and I lugged dozens of heavy boxes up and down the stairs. On our last trip, I got impatient and tired and opted instead for the elevator. "Elevator, huh?" He looked at me, his eyes lit up in the way they do when he’s ready to make a joke. "Is that why you’re — you know,” he said before stage-whispering, “large?”

There was a moment of silence, his face frozen in a grin before I broke into a huge, cathartic laugh.

It was such an absurd, stupid joke — that taking the elevator once was the difference between being fat and being thin — and it was exactly the kind of joke we’d make with each other about our other identities. In that moment, fat was a normal part of who I was — not the sole focus, not a secret to keep, not a fact to deny, not a cause for an intervention. It was just one of the many identities and characteristics that made me who I was.

It was the first time someone had talked to me about being fat in the way that they talked to me about anything else. It was normal; it could be joked about.

And really, my friend wasn’t joking about me; he was joking about the absurdity of judging tiny moments like this one as an explanation for why I was fat and the ridiculousness of others’ feeling of entitlement to know why I had the body I had.

Fat jokes don’t work for everyone, and they certainly don’t work in every context. But for me, in that moment, it was the most exquisite, divine, cathartic moment of freedom.

Because it was, and is, true: I’m fat. I’ve been fat my whole adult life. Sometimes I’m less fat, sometimes more fat, but always fat.

Saying that makes people around me uncomfortable. Sometimes, the discomfort comes from other fat people, who feel the shame that fat people feel in a world that tells us we ought to. Often, it comes from people who aren’t fat, who remember deeply ingrained scripts about what it means to be fat (unlovable, slovenly, ugly, unintelligent) and who think that naming such a harsh truth would be impolite. They substitute other words, either euphemistic (plus size, fluffy, big girl, more to love) or medical (overweight, obese).

I say fat.

I say fat to take back a heavily charged word.

It’s a word that can be used with the sole intent to cause pain and harm — in street harassment, in arguments with loved ones, on TV, everywhere. For many women, fat is among the most hurtful things they can be called. Thin women often say they "feel fat" as a shorthand for feeling unattractive, rejected, ashamed. Fat — that one short word — has become the site of so much pain. It comes with a long string of assumptions and insults, dragging noisily and clumsily along behind it like so many tin cans.

For many women, fat is among the most hurtful things they can be called.

At the center of that cacophony of hurt is my body. Not an insult, not a feeling, not rhetoric: the body I live with every day. When friends say they "feel fat" or strangers call other strangers "fat" as a cutting insult, I feel it. I understand that for many, my body is the worst-case scenario. Whether directed at me or not, the culture of talking about fat people derisively, dismissively, hurtfully — it all stays with me.

For me, though, fat is a statement of fact. It is a description of the body I have.

Fat is not a referendum on my morality, willpower, character, attractiveness, intellect, or worthiness. It is a descriptor. It captures an important aspect of the way I look, like saying I’m a woman, I’m white, or I’m tall.

Calling myself fat describes my body, but it means so much more than that. When I say I’m fat, it takes power back. It’s hard to be hurt by someone calling me what I am.

It's hard to be hurt by someone calling me what I am.

When those around me get uncomfortable or say, "Sweetie, no!" when I call myself fat, I don’t mind. As a fat person, there are little moments every day that wear away at you: the nurse that takes your blood pressure for the third time in a row, insisting that it can’t be right. The patronizing "Good for you!" at the gym you go to every day. The unsolicited advice at the grocery store. "Cantaloupe is so high in sugar. Have you tried grapefruit instead?" Over time, these moments mount up, rain droplets turning to torrential downpours, slowly but surely eroding the topsoil, then the clay, then the bedrock of our senses of self.

When I call myself fat and when I make jokes about my own fat body, I’ve got an umbrella, just for a few seconds.

It gives me a momentary respite from that steady stream of judgment and harsh advice. It gives those around me a brief taste of that discomfort, leaving them to sit with the bizarre awkwardness that comes with these little moments when we judge one another’s bodies.

Good, thoughtful people say harsh, judgmental things to fat friends and family every day. If you lost 30 pounds, you’d be a knockout. The dates would just start pouring in! It’s often unintentional, borne of a culture that expects fat people to feel shame about our bodies. Comments that deride, erase, judge, or punish fat people are predicated on the idea that we won’t object to cruel and thoughtless remarks about who we are. And many of us don’t. Neither do otherwise good-hearted, well-intentioned thin people. The more those conversations go unchallenged, the more charged that one little word becomes.

Fat holds so much power over so many people. When I use it to describe myself, I take back a simple, small, important thing: the ability to name and own my experience.

When I talk about being fat, I take control of what that means. Instead of being forced into reductive conversations about weight loss and shame, I get to talk about my actual life. I can talk about the partners who’ve loved my fat body. The friends who understand and support me. The clothing that fits me. The people who shun me for having the body I have. The doctors who treat my fat body and the ones who deny it. The way my body is seen as a reflection of my character, of public ills, of morality. And the disconnect between that and who I actually am.

Fat holds so much power over so many people.

Calling myself fat allows me to wrest my own experiences from the jaws of a powerful, pervasive narrative that says I ought to be ashamed of the body I have always had, the body I am learning to take care of, as we all are. It allows me to carve out a space to say that the treatment I receive isn’t deserved just for looking the way I look.

We all have things we wrestle with: parts of our identity that we can’t quite reconcile, that our families struggle to accept, that our friends and partners can’t quite respect. That struggle for acceptance — internal or external — keeps us cloistered, cold, and isolated from embracing ourselves or fully engaging in our relationships. Over time, the cold sets in, sinking into our bones, and the isolation becomes a way of life.

When I call myself fat, I step into the sun. I feel the warmth rush over me. Suddenly, I can see myself — and be seen — for who I actually am and the body I actually have. It is a moment of arrival to a sense of security and assurance in my body, and myself, that was out of reach for so long.

It is a homecoming. I am home. I am fat.