O is for... Overweight

I’m not normally that personal or confessional a writer, but when I looked through the dictionary searching for my “O”, this is the word that grabbed me. This is what I wanted to say.

I am a fat girl. Don’t rush to tell me I’m not. I am. Every item of clothing I buy is about minimising the damage of what I see in the mirror, and even if I wear the most flattering cut in the best lighting, I can still see that most awful of flaws. I think I’m the fattest person in any room I walk into. I won’t perch nonchalantly on a rickety stool because I think it will collapse, and I get the same anxiety going over bridges, even the ones built for cars. I won’t take an outstretched hand to help me get up a hill or a muddy slope because I can’t bear anyone knowing how heavy I am; the essential shame of them dropping me is worse than just falling on my own.

It is all too easy to point at magazines and movie stars and blame the media for this assumption, but the truth is it starts with us. If you laughed at all at Shallow Hal, where the only joke is “Gwyneth Paltrow is fat”, then you may not have made that movie but you’re part of it. If you’ve ever called someone a “skinny bitch” or a “fat cow”, you’re part of it too. If you’ve ever seen a boyfriend’s ex or someone you fell out with and thought with satisfaction that you’re thinner than her, then you’re also part of it. We know the images in the media aren’t real, but the snide look from a sales woman in a fashion shop, the offhand comments about how fat people just need to eat less and move around more; those epithets – whoever they’re directed at – of skinny bitch or fat cow, they’re all real. They’re all part of the way we speak and the lives we live.

People are built with different metabolisms. Some people can maintain a slender figure with minimum effort, others just have to think about a bar of Galaxy and they’ve gained two pounds. People with larger jeans than me run marathons, and people with smaller jeans than me only move from the TV in the ad breaks for soap operas. There is no reason to make a judgement on the type of person someone is because of the size they are. Some people are prone to spots and skin rashes and others aren’t. Some women are five foot two, others are six foot two. No one assumes this is their fault or that it conveys some essential truth about their character. It is because there is more attached to someone’s weight than just the number on those treacherous clothes labels that fat becomes not just a state of being, but a state of mind.

There is a view that fat people are essentially unlovable – if they don’t care for themselves, why should anyone else care for them? But I’ve been bigger than I am now and I’ve been smaller and it’s never had any correlation to whether I was happy or loved. Even knowing that, when I’m indulging in what Russell Kane calls the “kitchen floor reset” (weeping on the kitchen floor in abject misery) then I link the two as well – I’m lonely, no one will ever date me, why would they when I’m so fat and ugly… Now, of course that’s the extreme of self-pity talking when what I really need is not a boyfriend but a single malt and a good talking to, but it’s always the same issues rearing their head. I’ve never berated myself for being a size 6 in shoes – oh look at me, so bland and average, no wonder no one will ever love me with my run of the mill feet – or for not knowing more about current affairs – if only I’d watched more Newsnight and less Jason Statham movies… I never really examine beyond how I look in these moments, and within that how I look in terms of my clothes, make up or hair is irrelevant if I look fat. When I look in the mirror and see a fat girl and decide it’s all her fault I’m alone - that makes me part of it, too.

This isn’t meant to be a lecture, I’m just thinking out loud and I don’t have any answers. We live in a world where negative assumptions about weight and body shape – fat or thin – are the norm. Writing this down, I can see that it is those assumptions that weigh so heavily on me when I look in the mirror.

Don’t expect to see me wearing leggings in public any time soon, though.