The Fantasy of Being Thin
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A while back, Joy Nash provided us with this excellent quote of the day:
Obese patients are often encouraged to believe that weight loss is an appropriate way to combat depression, save a failing marriage, or increase the chance of career success. The irrationality of hopes pinned on weight loss is so striking that dieting might almost be likened to superstitious behavior…. Passing from childhood into adolescence, leaving home, marrying, starting a new job, having a baby, experiencing marital difficulties, adjusting to children leaving home, and growing old — all these life situations may become unexamined reasons to diet. In other instances, concerns over weight mask even more serious problems.”
-Wooley and Garner, from “Obesity treatment: the high cost of false hope,” published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol. 91, no. 10, 1991.
For the last few days, I’ve been thinking I wanted to blog on this subject but haven’t quite been able to pull my thoughts together. (Hence “help me find a dress” post.) Here goes nuthin’.
Once you’ve really started believing in fat acceptance — as opposed to thinking it sounds nice for other people, but you still need to lose X lbs. before you’ll be acceptable — it can be hard to remember how you thought about these issues before (just as it can be hard to imagine what it would really be like to accept your fat body before you’ve done it). I’ve written several times about how I spent ages in the cognitive dissonance phase, thinking it made perfect sense that the OBESITY CRISIS hype was way overblown, and even if it weren’t, dieting doesn’t work anyway — but still wanting to lose weight, still feeling like I, personally, needed to be a size 10, max, before I could really get started on my fat acceptance journey. The thing is, that memory is almost totally intellectual now; I don’t really recall what it felt like to believe those two contradictory things simultaneously.
But then, the other day, I got to thinking about a particular kind of resistance that shows up every single time anyone dares to say that dieting doesn’t work — the kind that comes from other fat people and amounts to, “DON’T YOU TAKE MY HOPE AWAY!” Those of us in the anti-dieting camp are frequently accused of demoralizing fat people, of sending a cruelly pessimistic message. I’ve never quite gotten my head around that one, since the message we’re sending is that you’re actually allowed to love your fat body instead of hating it, and you can take steps to substantially improve your health without fighting a losing battle with your weight. I’m pretty sure that message is both compassionate and optimistic, not to mention realistic. But there will always be people who hear it as, “I, Kate Harding, am personally condemning you to a lifetime of fatness! There’s no point in trying, fatty! You’re doomed! Mwahahaha!”
Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. *headdesk*
And then I started thinking about what it was really like before I’d actually made peace with my body. And what it was really like was this: The Fantasy of Being Thin absolutely dominated my life — even after I’d gotten thin once, found myself just as depressive and scattered and frustrated as always, and then gained all the weight back because, you know, diets don’t work. The reality of being thin didn’t even sink in after all that, because The Fantasy of Being Thin was still far more familiar to me, still what I knew best. I’d spent years and years nurturing that fantasy, and only a couple years as an actual thin person. Reality didn’t have a chance.
We’ve talked a lot here about how being fat shouldn’t stop you from doing the things you’ve always believed you couldn’t do until you were thin. Put on a bathing suit and go waterskiing. Apply for that awesome job you’re just barely qualified for. Ask that hot guy out. Join a gym. Wear a gorgeous dress. All of those concrete things you’ve been putting off? Just fucking do them, now, because this IS your life, happening as we speak.
But exhortations like that don’t take into account magical thinking about thinness, which I suspect — and the quote above suggests — is really quite common. Because, you see, the Fantasy of Being Thin is not just about becoming small enough to be perceived as more acceptable. It is about becoming an entirely different person – one with far more courage, confidence, and luck than the fat you has. It’s not just, “When I’m thin, I’ll look good in a bathing suit”; it’s “When I’m thin, I will be the kind of person who struts down the beach in a bikini, making men weep.” See also:
- When I’m thin, I’ll have no trouble finding a partner/reinvigorating my marriage.
- When I’m thin, I’ll have the job I’ve always wanted.
- When I’m thin, I won’t be depressed anymore.
- When I’m thin, I’ll be an adventurous world traveler instead of being freaked out by any country where I don’t speak the language and/or the plumbing is questionable.
- When I’m thin, I’ll become really outdoorsy.
- When I’m thin, I’ll be more extroverted and charismatic, and thus have more friends than I know what to do with.
Et cetera, et cetera. Those are examples from my personal Fantasy of Being Thin, but I’m sure you’ve got your own. (Please do share in comments!)
In light of that, it’s a lot easier to understand why some people freak out when you say no, really, your chances of losing weight permanently are virtually nil, so you’d be better off focusing on feeling good and enjoying your life as a fat person. To someone fully wrapped up in The Fantasy of Being Thin, that doesn’t just mean, “All the best evidence suggests you will be fat for the rest of your life, but that’s really not a terrible thing.” It means, “You will NEVER be the person you want to be! All the evidence suggests you will never find a satisfying relationship or get a promotion or make more friends or feel confident trying new things!”
So if that’s what you hear when I say, “Diets don’t work,” then yeah, I can see how that would be a major bummer.
Overcoming The Fantasy of Being Thin might be the hardest part of making it all the way into fat acceptance-land. And that might just be why I’d pushed that part of the process out of my memory: it fucking sucked. Because I didn’t just have to accept the size of my thighs; I had to accept who I am, rather than continuing to wait until I magically became the person I’d always imagined being. Ouch.
That is, of course, a pretty normal part of getting older. You start to realize that yeah, this actually is it, and although you can still try enough new things to keep anyone busy for two lifetimes, you’re pretty much stuck with a basic context. There are skills, experiences, and material things you will almost certainly never have, period. It’s a challenge for all of us to understand that accepting this fact of life does not necessarily mean cutting off options or giving up dreams, but simply — as in the proverbial story about the creation of the David — chipping away all that is not you. But for a fat person, it can be even harder, because so many fucking sources encourage us to believe that inside every one of us is “a thin person waiting to get out” — and that thin person is SO MUCH COOLER.
The reality is, I will never be the kind of person who thinks roughing it in Tibet sounds like a hoot; give me a decent hotel in London any day. I will probably never learn to waterski well, or snow ski at all, or do a back handspring. I can be outgoing and charismatic in small doses, but I will always then need time to recharge my batteries with the dogs and a good book; I’ll never be someone with a chock-full social calendar, because I would find that unbearably exhausting. (And no matter how well I’ve learned to fake it — and thus how much this surprises some people who know me — new social situations will most likely always intimidate the crap out of me.) I might learn to speak one foreign language fluently over the course of my life, but probably not five. I will never publish a novel until I finish writing one. I will always have to be aware of my natural tendency toward depression and might always have to medicate it. Smart money says I am never going to chuck city life to buy an alpaca farm or start a new career as a river guide. And my chances of marrying George Clooney are very, very slim.
None of that is because I’m fat. It’s because I’m me.
But when I was invested in The Fantasy of Being Thin, I really believed that changing this one “simple” (ha!) thing would unlock a whole new identity — this totally fabulous, free-spirited, try-anything-once kind of chick who was effortlessly a magnet for interesting people and experiences. And of course, the dark side of that is that being fat then became an excuse not to do much of anything, because it wouldn’t be the real me doing it, so what was the point? If I wouldn’t find the right guy until I was thin, why bother dating? If I wouldn’t have a breakthrough on the novel until I was thin, why bother writing? If I wouldn’t be the life of the party until I was thin, why bother trying to make new friends? If I wouldn’t feel like climbing a mountain until I was thin, why bother traveling at all?
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Accepting my fat really wasn’t the hard part. Accepting my personality — and my many limitations that have jack shit to do with my thighs — was. But oddly enough, once I started to do that, my life became about a zillion times more satisfying. I found the right guy, I took up yoga, I started taking my writing more seriously, I stopped apologizing for taking vacations in the U.S. and Canada instead of somewhere more exotic, etc. And lo and behold, things got a lot more fun around here. The thin person inside me finally got out — it just turned out she was actually a fat person. A reasonably attractive, semi-outgoing fat person who has an open mind and an active imagination but also happens to really like routine and familiarity and quiet time alone.
That was never who I expected to be — it was just always who I was.
So giving up dieting and accepting my body didn’t just mean admitting I would never be thin; it meant admitting I would never be a million things I might have been. (Which, I’m told, is a phenomenon sometimes known as “maturity.”) I am absolutely not one for settling — which is where the confusion about pessimism comes in, I think — but I am one for self-awareness and self-forgiveness. Meaning, there’s a big difference between saying you can’t be anything other than what you are right now, and you don’t have to be anything other than what you are right now. You will probably never be permanently thin, unless you are already, but other than that, the sky’s the limit. You can be anything or anyone you want to be, in theory.
The question is, who do you really want to be, and what are you going to do about it? (Okay, two questions.) The Fantasy of Being Thin is a really convenient excuse for not asking yourself those questions sincerely — and that’s exactly why it’s dangerous. It keeps you from being not only who you are, but who you actually could be, if you worked with what you’ve got. And that person trapped inside you really might be cooler than you are right now.
She’s just not thin.
Filed under: Dieting/WLS, Fat
The thin person inside me finally got out — it just turned out she was actually a fat person.
HOLY SHIT YES. This is awesome.
And I completely agree that “I’m too fat right now ” or “I will when I’m thin” are just excuses. And understandably so, because it’s terrifying to face up to your REAL abilities and limitations — it’s much more comforting to believe that you don’t have to try anything until you figure out how to get by on 1000 calories. Thinness (or thinnerness) is the imaginary magical talisman that will allow you to have everything, but until you have it, not having everything isn’t your fault.
When of course the truth is, not everyone can do everything, and the things you’re good at or the things you value aren’t necessarily the things that everyone considers valuable. When you have that checklist mentality, you end up focusing on things you think other people would want, not things that would make you happy. I’m notoriously bad at thinking of anything I’m good at, so let’s take my boyfriend as an example — he’s really good at building antennas. Is that something everyone wants in their obituary? Is it on anyone’s 43 Things? Maybe not, but it’s what he values.
When I was in like fourth grade, we did an exercise about imagining what name we would want besides our own. I wrote about how if I were named Ashley I would be skinny and pretty and be good at gymnastics. (The teacher wrote a gentle note about how changing your name probably won’t do those things.) I don’t know if I really wanted to be good at gymnastics — I hate being upside down — but I perceived that as being something that other people valued that I couldn’t live up to. Meanwhile, the things I was good at, like memorizing poems and spelling, were fundamentally worthless because a) they weren’t generically perceived as valuable in a “checklist of things an 8-year-old should be able to do” sense and b) I was good at them already.
Mind you, I still do this, I just haven’t got any decent excuses anymore. Sometimes I blame ADD, but mostly I say “you know me, I can’t do anything I think I might succeed at or also anything I think I might fail at.” And I beat myself up for, say, not immediately knowing how to do things, or not being great at things I admire in other people. There’s no reason for this; I do it because I’m neurotic. It is, indeed, much harder when I can’t blame that stuff on my fat. But it’s more honest, too.
This is awesome, awesome, awesome, and spot-on. The “change your body, change your life” idea is really the only thing powerful enough to keep a person willingingly semi-starved and weak for months (or years) at a time.
Thank you for writing this. It’s precisely the thing I still struggle with, and what you said about the difference between “you can’t be anything else” and “you don’t have to be anything else,” well, damn. That belongs on a throw pillow on my bed where I can see it every day.
Damn. I want to print this out and frame it. I’m one of those people who’s been in single-digit sizes several times only to find it unsustainable. I have a tiny, tiny wardrobe because I’ve only just given up the idea of wearing those really nice clothes I bought when I was a size 6. My larger sized clothes are mostly crap because they were intended to be temporary. Sigh. My thin-person fantasies usually revolve around clothes and exercise… and I can buy clothes and exercise no matter what size I am, right. Silly person.
<…smart money says I am never going to chuck city life to buy an alpaca farm … And my chances of marrying George Clooney are very, very slim.
Oh, my god. Those are two of my dreams, right there! Albeit the former is more attainable than the latter.
I was somewhat surprised when I finally reached the mythical land of skinnydom. I thought I’d finally get a boyfriend, friends, and a good job. Okay, so I was taken more seriously professionally than when I was fat, but the first two never materialized. And, I was more miserable thin than I ever was when I was overweight and didn’t obsess about what I ate and didn’t spend all my free time exercising or thinking about food or both.
At my highest weight, I was fearless. I would debate and argue with people, confront people who gave bad service, etc… After losing the weight, I turned into a wimp. I no longer had my fatness to blame for what I perceived to be wrongs directed at me.
What a wonderful post. Absolutely wonderful.
Fantastic! Thank you so much. This actually made me tear up a little.
I love this post. I love this post. I love this post. I’m having to duck my head under my desk so my co-workers aren’t seeing me get all teary-eyed, but I love this post.
Wow. I… Just WOW. Your blog always makes me think, but this post speaks to me more than anything else you’ve blogged about. I’ve finally begun to accept my body, but I never admitted I cling to the FoBT mindset. This is going to be an ugly, but very necessary, period of introspection. Thank you, Kate.
Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!!!!
I do this all the time, with almost the exact same fantasies: I’ll get a better job, I’ll have tons of friends, I’ll be confident enough to start taking dance lessons, etc. etc. Fillyjonk is spot-on with the responsibility avoidance thing… I’ve been doing it for so long I’m really not sure how to *stop*.
So instead I swing back and forth between thinking I have this glamorous skinny person inside me and hoping the “skinny person” (where “skinny person” is defined as “person I’d love to be”
inside me is Nikki Blonski. It still distracts me from contemplating what precisely I am, but hey.
Hmm, I never had the fantasy of being thin. I think because at the time in my life (childhood and the teen years) when I was the shy, sad, lonely girl daydreaming of all the things she wanted to be, I was thin. And the time in my life when I started becoming more outgoing and made friends and got a boyfriend and started actually being happy (college) is when I started getting fat. So I never bought into the “if I get thin again my life will change for the better” because in my experience, it was rather the opposite.
The post still resonates though. The idea of: “you don’t have to be anything other than what you are right now”… that’s really just… huge.
You asked, so here it is:
When I’m thin, I will finally be a valuable human being.
And yes, I realize how fucked up that is. YEARS of therapy, people.
You know, “The Fantasy of Being Thin” would make (1) an awesome title for a book and (2) an awesome premise for a book.
Thanks for really digging into what the Fantasy is and what it means to so many people (myself still included, many days), and why it hurts so much to part with it.
I think you’re absolutely right.
But I wanted to add one thing.
Sometimes, people don’t use The Fantasy of Being Thin as an excuse so much as they honestly don’t think they’re allowed to do the things/be the person in their fantasy, just because they’re fat.
I couldn’t have been popular at school - I was fat. Fat girls are never popular.
I couldn’t be outgoing - I was fat, and nobody likes the fat girl.
I couldn’t play sports, because fat girls weren’t allowed on the team (thank you very fucking much, Gym Teacher!!).
Etc., etc., etc.
It wasn’t so much that I was allowing my fat to control me, it was that I really, truly, 100% believed those things. Imagine my absolute shock when I moved to another area and people actually wanted to be my friends? But… but… I was fat!!! Couldn’t they SEE that I was FAT? I honestly didn’t GET it. It took me a LOOOONG time to wrap my head around the fact that these people didn’t just see a fat girl… they saw ME. The PERSON who just happened to BE fat. And they thought that ME was OKAY!!! Wow! I couldn’t believe it! And then even when I moved back to my hometown and would see the bullies and the fat-haters around town (I never went back to the same school) and they would inevitably say some nasty shit… it still hurt, but it didn’t affect me like it did before. I’d already learned that some people thought I was okay, so fuck ‘em.
The one thing that was hard to let go in my Fantasy of Being Thin, though, was the thought of going back there and surprising the hell out of them. I wanted them to look at me and not recognize me, because I wasn’t The Fat Girl anymore. I wanted them to gasp in shock as they looked at me and saw the person that they had belittled simply because I was different. That particular fantasy was hard to let go, because it would have been the sweetest revenge.
Shade, me too.
Actually, I still have trouble with that one. But I’m working on it.
TMI, perhaps, but “I’ll get over my sex-phobia” when I get thin. I got so thin I swooned every time I stood upright too fast, but I was as phobic as ever. Damn. Seriously, this is just such an “A-HA post”. Kate Harding, you are the shit.
Nuckingfutz, we’re on the same page — when I say “excuse,” I don’t only mean… well, “excuse.” I suppose maybe I should have said it becomes a reason for not doing things. For a long time, I was every bit as convinced as you were that fat girls simply COULD NOT do X, Y, and Z, so I totally get what you’re saying.
Shade, sadly, I can relate to what you said, too.
Kate, everything you said here is right on and I think you helped a lot of people today.
Amen, sister! What a fabulous post! I found myself literally nodding as I read it (though doing so made it a little hard to read).
I’m still kind of in that cognitive dissonance phase. Though I’ve stopped dieting for the last 2 months and it’s quite freeing.
I loved what you wrote about how certain things are just your personality and what work for you and have nothing to do with being fat. Being a fat overachiever for my whole life, I’ve always pursued my goals despite being fat (law degrees, hot boyfriends, exercising healthfully etc.) but still would feel bad about a general lack of outdoorsiness or yogic calmness or whatever the fuck else I decided was lacking in me at the moment. I think that self acceptance and body acceptance really do go hand in hand, and I don’t think it necessarily matters where you start.
I liked what you said about how people often react when you say, rightly, that diets don’t work. They really do respond as if you’ve taken their one shot at happiness away. It’s so saddening and so difficult to get your point across in a way that seems non-judgmental, even though the reason so many people are on diets is due to unfair judgments about what it means to be fat.
Anyway, brava on another wonderful post.
Oh man. This so needs to be a book. Or maybe a sermon.
Actually, my old fantasy of being “normal,” included being thin but wasn’t limited to it. Until very, very recently, I really did harbor the fantasy that if I was “better looking” overall — thinner, full head of hair, better skin, etc. — people would be drawn to me like magnets, that I wouldn’t have to work on anything going on beneath my scalp.
But as I’m finding out, that’s because the child I was made the decision to blame whatever social problems I had on my looks, rather than the fact that my brain was wired differently than most people’s and my family (like most people’s before there was widespread awareness of such things) chose to freak out over it and pressure me to conform (which was impossible! and I tried and tried and tried anyway to make them happy) rather than helping me use my “differences” well.
Truth is, I was thinner once. I had a full head of hair once. I didn’t get the All Access Pass to Valhalla. And if I had, I probably wouldn’t even have seen it. I and the shrink yesterday were talking about the fact that if you have a shot at conforming and “fitting in,” what a powerful lure it is. People want acceptance and the magic bullet that will get them acceptance. They don’t want to know that there isn’t one. But people like me, who will never be “normal” no matter what we look like, we know, we can stop trying and be our authentic selves.
Truth is, I was thinner once. I had a full head of hair once. I didn’t get the All Access Pass to Valhalla. And if I had, I probably wouldn’t even have seen it.
Oh, that is an EXCELLENT point.
Singing in the choir here:
“Kate/you’re so smart/and you’ve hit the nail on the head/with your extraordinary nail-targetting talent…”
Okay so I’m not a song-writer, but you inspired me to try
Which of course I was going to be when I was thin, and play the guitar, and dye my hair bright red and fall in love with Jordan Catalano.
I love how for you (and me, and probably many others) “thin” came to mean extroverted. Our poor introverted selves need some love too!
Which of course I was going to be when I was thin, and play the guitar, and dye my hair bright red and fall in love with Jordan Catalano.
Hee! Thank you — and everyone else — for the kind words.
The DH and I had quite a philosphical discussion about this topic over the weekend. I think my family has pretty much given up on having the weight talk with me, but his mother still gives him a hard time (she never says anything to me, though).
Anyway, here’s what we realized: we are perfectly, totally and completely happy with our lives and ourselves just the way we are. We’ve got a good marriage, careers we enjoy, enough money to have everything we need and a lot of the things we want. So we’re fat. It doesn’t bother us, and if other people don’t like it, too damn bad for them.
What’s let me get to this point? Therapy, maybe. Maybe it’s because I’ve always had pretty decent internal self-esteem, although I spent years letting society in general keep it knocked down inside me. Perhaps it was realizing that the only thing I’ve ever “wanted” to do in my life and not done is be thin. It could be that I’ve made a conscious effort to refocus my time and energy into things that make me happy. Or maybe it’s just getting older.
Whatever it is, I’ve realized that I AM the person I want to be. And I guess if I’ve accomplished nothing else in 41 years, that’s not a bad thing to be able to say.
This IS a very good post, Kathleen.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always had pretty decent internal self-esteem, although I spent years letting society in general keep it knocked down inside me.
You know, I think that might be a really important point. For me, the bright side of TFoBT — yep, there was one — was that at least I always felt there was an awesome person inside me who would deserve all the things I wanted. So all I really had to do (not that it was easy) was remove the condition that I had to get thin to be that person. I think it’s a whole different ballgame if you’re not starting from a place where you believe that somewhere down deep (if nowhere more obvious), you are fundamentally good and worthy.
Whatever it is, I’ve realized that I AM the person I want to be. And I guess if I’ve accomplished nothing else in 41 years, that’s not a bad thing to be able to say.
That is completely fucking awesome.
“Well roared, Lion.”
You nailed it! Great post.
Which of course I was going to be when I was thin, and play the guitar, and dye my hair bright red and fall in love with Jordan Catalano.
Ha! Oh my god, yes! I also thought I would wear a tank top under a flannel, which would of course look SUPER HOT AND STYLISH, and which I would never dare when I was fat. (I didn’t wear a tank top until college, under something or otherwise.)
I think just finally going and fucking dyeing my hair red was huge for me.
Silly Kate, of course you’re not going to marry George Clooney. He’s going to marry ME.
I don’t know if I ever had the fantasy of who I’d BE if I was thin, but I’m still knee deep in the fantasy of who I’d LOOK LIKE at thin. I mean, I’m a really happy person. I have a great relationship, a nice home, a supportive family, two psychotic cats, a job I love, blah blah blah. I like who I am. But what I look like? I’m still working on that one. So my personal contribution to the Fantasy of Being Thin is:
“When I’m thin, I’ll buy a new, fantastic dress for the annual gala at work, and everyone will say, ‘Wow, Sue, you look amazing!’ instead of just wearing something out of the closet that I probably wore last year. Because why would I buy something new and fantastic in my current size when I’m not going to be at this size much longer?”
That pretty much sums up all of my wardrobe decisions - not just new and fantastic dresses - for the last five years or so. I’m working on it. I really am.
It’s like you’ve taken every stray I have about accepting my body and myself as I am and tied them all together with a big beautiful bow.
The only thing I would say different is that I’m probably not giving up small town life to move to the city
Just yes to every word of this. I’ve been saying the same 2 things to myself, “I accept myself the way I am.” and “But I need to lose weight in order to feel better.” The cognitive dissonance is sort of comforting, because it’s been the same noise in my head for 39 years. (Hey, I’m smart! But, I’m fat so I shouldn’t be proud. Hey, I’m a good writer! But, I’m fat so I have nothing interesting to say. Hey, I want to be friends! But, I’m fat so I’ll understand if you blow me off…On and on and on.) You’re absolutely right that the giving up the fantasy is a huge step.
But, here’s another truth for me. When I was thinner, I was more outgoing and more social and more focused in my career and sexier and had more dates. Possibly, I was even smarter. But, it’s like those people who peak in high school and keep on reliving those moments as the star quarterback. You can’t live in the past. I was also twenty-four and all my friends were single and the dotcom boom was happening in NYC.
For a long time, being fat felt like punishment…for getting fat? I was never clear about the crime.
So, getting past the fantasy and truly accepting me, my fat and I is so bound up in actually knowing who I am and who I need to be. In a sense I’m not shedding weight, I’m shedding an outdated and untrue visions of myself. And that’s a lot to ask. Settling on losing weight instead is so much easier.
Sorry for the length and thanks for the space.
Hooray!! SO SO SO fabulous Kate. heart heart heart you
One of my clients was watching Oprah the other day while we were working together- She said something like: “I think Oprah’s gained some weight.” and I said “Good for her!” and she said - “What?” and I said it again and she said “What?” We went back and forth about 4 times- I’m not sure if she didn’t hear me, or couldn’t believe that’s what I said. Finally, she says “I really thought she’d keep it off this time, I mean she’d worked so hard…” And I said “Well, you know, 95% of diets fail.”
And my client got really pissy. She got really short with everything I said and made a big point about how she couldn’t wait til she didn’t need to see me anymore… I was kind of taking it personally- but what you’re talking about in this post is ABSOLUTELY what was going on.
“DON’T YOU TAKE MY HOPE AWAY!”
It’s a huge affront to tell somebody that THIS is as good as it gets. THIS is your life. What are you going to do with it?
Or maybe she was just sick of me. heheh
I really liked this post - and it reminded me of a thought I had the extreme makeover show “The Swan” first came out: I was furious that the show’s name was supposedly inspired by Andersen’s fairytale “The Ugly” while what the show promoted was so absolutely opposite to the message of that tale. My interpretation of the story is that if you allow yourself to be yourself and to grow more and more into being yourself you might just turn out to be more beautiful than you could have ever imagined. The show on the other hand was all about turning people (in my opinion quite violently) into something that they were not, or that is at least my interpretation of what I read about it - I never watched it. (After all the ugly duckling didn’t have surgery or even died its grey feathers to look more like a “proper” duck.) Also, swans are not more elegant and beautiful than ducks in EVERY situation. Ever saw a diving swan? It looks very much like the Titanic in its last minutes. It is often similar with ones role models - yes, there are amazing people around, and I have quite a number of people I admire deeply, but I have yet to meet the person that is “perfect” in just everything. And somehow I find that very comforting because that means that I don’t have to be perfect either. Plus, out of some weird reason I love all those little quirks and imperfections of the people close to me - those are the things that make them human and unique. (You could say they are perfect because of their imperfections.)
And yet - I am one of the people that do have a terribly hard time to give up magic thinking when it comes to thinness. I think one of my main hopes is that being thin would somehow erase all the effects that having been bullied quite extensively through most of my childhood and adolescence has had on me and that this would suddenly make me not feel ambiguous anymore about social situations. Oh yeah, and of course part of me still believes that weight loss is a sign of self-control and that by becoming and staying thin I could somehow prove that I am a tough and strong person.
Magical thinking, yes. Mine was this:
When I’m thin, I won’t have a double chin.
I know that sounds strange, but actually I come from a family (on one side) with long, narrow faces, high cheek bones, and “weak” chins. The one time I lost 80 pounds (and gained 120 back) I never lost the second, phantom chin.
It finally occurred to me that my chin was part of my rich Irish heritage and made me part of my family. There is no way I could (or would) get rid of it, except by means I would never consider. It’s mine for my long, healthy, fat life and I love it!
(Hey, I’m smart! But, I’m fat so I shouldn’t be proud. Hey, I’m a good writer! But, I’m fat so I have nothing interesting to say. Hey, I want to be friends! But, I’m fat so I’ll understand if you blow me off…On and on and on.)
Oh, man, do I relate to all of that, MT.
And I definitely found a measure of new confidence when I was thinner, too — it’s hard to avoid when people are constantly telling you how awesome you look, especially if they’ve been telling you the opposite or pointedly not remarking on your appearance for years before that. And then, as you say, you have to factor in the circumstances — I, too, was in my early 20s, in a major city, with a bunch of single friends. So realistically, even if I’d been fat back then or thin when I was miserably single a couple years ago, I’d probably be looking back on that as the easier time in my life, socially. I had a hell of a lot more energy, and a lot more people around who didn’t have partners and kids to stay home with on Friday nights.
Which reminds me of a tangent I didn’t even get to here — the magical thinking about how being thin will affect your health. Also known as, “Twenty years ago, when I was thin, my knees didn’t hurt. So obviously, the extra fat is hard on my joints!” Yeah, either that or the extra twenty years, honey.
For a long time, being fat felt like punishment…for getting fat?
Ha! That’s it exactly.
Whoa.
It occurs to me there’s also a dark fantasy of fat that goes hand-in-hand with the fantasy of thinness, of fat as a malign magical substance which smothers the person within it, a loathly yellow cloak of disease and despair. And yeah, I bought into that one. I hadn’t thought about it, but … I honestly thought that if I only lost some weight — even a little! — I’d not only feel better, that mythical ‘feel better’ we’re all told we’d feel if only we’d diet, but I’d also shed the monstrous, literally monstrous, magical, burden of my fat.
First, great post. I have a hard time letting go of my future thin persona (ftp) because I literally have spent almost 20 years imbuing her with superhuman qualities of hotness and confidence and talent. But I’m slowly figuring out how to live as me, not as me waiting to be http://FTP.
Second, one of the blocks I run into sometimes is that society does treat thin people better. Now, I know that since the chances of me becoming thin are pretty much nil, that my energies are put to better use by trying to erase the stigma of fat rather than trying to get rid of my fat. But, I think of things like dating (where on online profiles, most of the women I see specify that they’re not interested in the biggest body type option offered) or when I was still acting and being told that I was very good, but there were simply not a lot of parts for fat women (outside of the “OMG! I thought *she* was my blind date, but her massive girth was just hiding my true love!”
and that they would have cast me if I “fit the type better.” And it’s easy to fall back into the fantasy b/c the uphill battle of social change is very hard.
That said, life is better when you’re living it, not when you’re punishing yourself and dreaming of the day when you’ll finally be acceptable enough to join the human race.
I was normal sized before I was fat, so I do know the doors and opportunities that are shut to me as a fat woman as opposed to a thin-enough woman BUT as the rest of you know, being thin enough isn’t by itself enough to make you successful, or enough to help you let your true self out. I think just getting older has helped me come out of my shell.
I suffer this one greatly. I believe in HAES, but unless I am actively making weight loss noises, my doctors don’t help me with HAES, and I suspect they write me off because I am fat, rather than really helping. me. I recently had to throw a temper tantrum to get my doc to write a prescrip I need to help me keep my blood sugar under control ( because it goes up when I exercise, ever heard of that one?) anyways, because I m under so much pressure to keep trying to lose weight, I often get sucked into bad thoughts about it — the fantasy of being thin, maybe if I lose enough weight these health issues will just melt away, too — and my doctors encourage me in those thoughts. I think about plastic surgery, I think about how much weight I would have to lose if I needed a knee replacement (they’d refuse to do it for me at my current weight) and then I wonder how I would do that, because I know from experience that even starving does not work. The fantasy is powerful.
I know the reality is my body as it is here and now, but the fantasy is hard to let go.
Hmm, this sheds some light on why I suddenly became a sexpot around the same time I vowed to never diet again (age 29/30).
I suspect my Fantasy of Being Thin had something to do with being really desireable and sexually open and able to wear flirty clothes if I was thinner. I started dressing in more fitting clothes, more colorful and more flirty, about the same time, too. And I had the most sexual/flirty/affectionate attention at that time, when I was as big as I’d ever been in my life, much more than when I was dieting and completely food-obessed and hating my body.
Hmmm…
Great thought-provoking post.
Magical thinking, yes. Mine was this:
When I’m thin, I won’t have a double chin.
Ah, Lulu, it’s funny because it’s true. Al is, like, ALL neck. And yes, some of it is fat, but A) in pictures of him as a skinny teenager, you can see that’s just the way his face and neck are shaped, so he could lose all the weight in the world and would still look like a bullfrog when he puts his head down, and B) said face/neck shape comes directly from his mother, who’s much thinner than he is. But double chins, like everything else deemed undesirable, are ALL ABOUT TEH FAT, of course.
When I’m thin, my body will work.
When I’m thin, the pain will stop.
When I’m thin, I won’t be depressed.
When I’m thin, I won’t be so afraid of everything.
When I’m thin, I’ll have a sex drive again.
When I’m thin, it’ll feel like my family values me at all. I know they love me, I know they’re proud of me, but they only call on holidays.
When I’m thin, I’ll finally have some amount of the social acceptance that I’ve never experienced, but always hoped for.
When I’m thin, I’ll still keep posting on my own fat acceptance blog, because while I do firmly and feircly believe in the movement, I still have moments where I wish I could be
normalsocially acceptable (read: popular) in at least one aspect of my life.Y’know it’s funny because I totally understand where this post is coming from, but at the same time cannot relate to it at all.
Personally, the only thing I’d really like to change about my life are my salary and being fat. (And I don’t think the two are related, my company just sucks.) I would love to be thin, mostly because then the picture I have of myself in my head would actually match the person I see in photos of myself. It’s not that I am in denial about what I look like, it is just that in my mind, I am of normal weight.
In theory if I were thin I’d be able to buy clothes that I actually liked, instead of clothes that I could find in my size. (In practice, my sister is stick skinny and she still has trouble finding clothes because we’re both so tall, so I’d probably still have few options. And I doubt I’d ever get under a size 16.)
Kate, you fucking rock.
I never had this a-ha moment about my fat (I’ve always been pretty much okay with that), but I totally had it about, you know, life in general. I had this ridiculous idea that, one day, “when I grow up and get my shit together,” I’m going to…finally travel abroad, or buy a laptop and record my own demos, or redecorate my apartment, or take a class in X or Y, or, etc. etc. etc. I decided that my shit was already at the level of togetherness I was capable of sustaining, and no use holding my breath for being more awesome than I already am.
I think of this as another way of recognizing that I have the life I have chosen for myself - end of story. Sure, there are aspects of life beyond my control, but at the end of the day, what I do and how I do it is all me, and the only boundaries that exist (besides that general Golden Rule thing) are the ones I give myself.
I decided that my shit was already at the level of togetherness I was capable of sustaining, and no use holding my breath for being more awesome than I already am.
This A) made me LOL and B) is very well put.
Kate, thanks for clarifying that. To my eyes, it looked like you were literally saying it was an excuse, but I get it now.
It seems almost like The Fantasy of Being Thin is — in and of itself — almost like a drug. We get addicted to the thought that we’ll be able to do or be something else When We Finally Become Thin. When we’re embroiled in The Fantasy, every thought, every deed, nearly every BREATH WE TAKE is caught up in that Fantasy.
It really is exhausting, both physically and mentally. Only we don’t realize it until we either think we just can’t take it any more, or, if we’re lucky, we find somewhere like this place right here, a place that will educate us and teach us that we’re okay just as we are. Fat or no fat.
Ah… the love of all things grunge.
In my defense it was like 1994.
We get addicted to the thought that we’ll be able to do or be something else When We Finally Become Thin.
This is exactly what Kate means by “excuse,” I think… not a conscious “my dog ate my capability for self-worth” kind of excuse, but a black hole into which you pour all your mental energy because the alternative is facing up to scary things like success and failure and talent and limitation.
I have been thinking about my thin fantasies for a while and the biggest one to come to me is probably particular to women of color:
If I were thin, I would be white…well as close as possible.
That was the biggest and most heartbreaking revelation for me. I always considered myself the exception to the rule about black folks and maybe it was my way of separating myself from my peers.
To my eyes, it looked like you were literally saying it was an excuse, but I get it now.
Well, I was, insofar as I didn’t express myself very well.
And I do think it is literally an excuse sometimes, too, in keeping with what Fillyjonk was saying way upthread. But I totally, totally related to what you were saying about feeling like those things are IMPOSSIBLE for fat chicks, not just difficult (as they are for everyone, frankly). I missed out on a lot of male attention when I was younger, for instance, because I just assumed it couldn’t possibly be there. No guy I was attracted to would be attracted to a fat chick, period. There was NO talking me out of that one.
But on the flip side, the fantasy can definitely take up a lot of time that could be spent trying to improve the you you are, instead of wanting to be a whole different person. And in that case, it can become an excuse.
Or, what Fillyjonk just said while I was typing that.
Also, I want “my dog ate my capability for self-worth” on a T-shirt.
Well done Kate!
It comes down to: what matters more to you, your fat or what you want to do? Fat should NEVER win that argument.
Kate, get outta my brain!
Seriously, though, I am SOO right with you on that one. It took two years for me to realize that the guy I’d been in love with for all of those two years felt the same way about me… and I only got it because he literally had to SPELL IT OUT for me. (And guess what? He was fat, too! It had taken HIM those two years to build up the courage to tell me.)
But this:
I totally agree with. Like, TOTALLY
The one thing that’s kicking my ass at the moment is the one thing that I get stuck on time and time again…if I were thin, someone would love me back. And it just gets more galling as I get older (I’ll be 36 in January), the thought that not once in my entire life have I been loved back by a member of the opposite sex–well, not in the way I wanted them to love me back, that is. It’s so fucking frustrating because logically, I keep telling myself to stop hanging my failure on the way I look, that there are scads of other reasons why nothing’s happening, but emotionally? It’s really, really tough to not pin it all on my fat. And that makes me furious with myself and how, in all other areas of my life, I’m HAESing like a mofo and vocal about fat acceptance.
If I were thin, I would be white…well as close as possible.
Oh, wow, Tracy, that’s fascinating. And heartbreaking.
And you know, my first thought when I read this part of Attrice’s comment:
Second, one of the blocks I run into sometimes is that society does treat thin people better. Now, I know that since the chances of me becoming thin are pretty much nil, that my energies are put to better use by trying to erase the stigma of fat rather than trying to get rid of my fat. But…
was, well, people of color have the same problem, but they don’t have the option of becoming white even temporarily. There’s no choice but to fight the stigma — except hating yourself — if you know you can’t ever be part of the dominant group.
Usually, I try to avoid fat/p.o.c. comparisons, because it’s a minefield and a distraction, but here, I think it’s useful. So much shit is heaped on fat people under the claim that “we could change if we really wanted to.” But, as racism demonstrates, not being able to change sure doesn’t mean people stop hating you because you look different from them. What then?
And I wonder where fat acceptance would be if people really believed that diets almost never work, and for most of us, being permanently thin is about as likely as permanently changing our skin color. Would more people advocate for themselves, instead of clinging to the fantasy of “passing” one day? Or would we just add a big old dollop of despondency to the internalized self-loathing?
ZOMG. Sincerely.
I have needed to read this for like, three months. Thank you.
Kate, you fucking rock, you really do. Awesome post.
I felt so sad over the weekend when a friend of my husband’s mentioned the referee in a game of indoor netball the other day. If you don’t know netball, or the indoor variety in particular, it’s FAST. The ball screams up and down the court. And the referee was, according to husband’s friend, ‘huge’. And he said “I was surprised she could even keep up” in the sort of tone that said “I actually believe that I was somehow being tricked into thinking she was keeping up, because I believe so firmly that she shouldn’t have been able to”.
And I thought how fucking unfair it is, that even when a fat person IS living the life they want to live, when they have ‘let the fat person inside out’ as it were, society still tries to tell that person that actually, it’s a fiction. They’re not really doing all the things they think they are. They can’t possibly be popular, or self-aware, or fit, it’s just a figment of their, and society’s, imagination.
It takes such a hell of a lot of confidence? integrity? compassion for oneself? to convince yourself that thin you and fat you are just the same person, that fat you has all the good qualities of a theoretical thin you, against all the cognitive dissonance, and beyond that, the dissonance between your own idea of yourself, and society’s idea of the same.
But it’s always that little bit easier when someone like you, Kate, stands up and says, “hey, been there, done that, and it’s not easy, but so SO worth it”. So thanks.
Allow me to reiterate the intense love I have for this post. Just the NAME of it describes my whole LIFE.
I’ve been fantasizing about being thin since I was 8 years old and first realized I was fat (some kid called me “Goodyear,” which I didn’t even get at first, and he had to actually clarify that he meant I was a blimp).
My Thin Fantasy has only ever involved boys. While I’ve had it relatively “easy” compared to many fat women (I don’t get much grief from anyone, my mom gave up criticizing me a long time ago, no one has made fun of me to my face since I was like 15), and never had trouble getting jobs or making friends, or being praised for the things I’m good at (I do some kick-ass karaoke); the ONE thing that has always eluded me is attention from men.
I’m 28 and I’ve only had one boyfriend. And I met him after I had Weight Watchered myself down from a 275 pound size 24 to a 175 pound size 12. (I’m now back up to a 250 pound size 20, more living proof that diets fail). We broke up over a year ago and I’ve had about 3 dates since, two of which were when I was a still moderately “acceptable” size 16.
I try, I try SO hard to accept that there are men out there who will still think I’m awesome and want to date me…but I get quite lonely at times and find it really hard to believe. I do all the same things my thin friends do–but they are the ones getting asked out all the time while I stay home alone and frustrated. And trust me, I’m really outgoing, and genearlly really do have a good attitude about my looks…I don’t *think* it’s bc men are picking up on my insecurities. I always flirt and laugh and have fun when we all go out.
I just also do all those things while Being Fat. And I know it’s part of this blog’s mantra that fat women are loveable, and I do believe it, but I haven’t met that many 20something men that also believe it.
So–thin fantasy: When I’m thin, I’ll have a boyfriend!
On another note–count me in among those that often get depressed at the Diets Fail message. I think it’s because I am not a fat woman who eats normally and exercises just as much as her thin friends. I do exercise, but not nearly enough. And I DO quite often binge eat, or “sit on the couch stuffing my face” as the fat-haters always say. So what is my defense when they say that, aside from “yeah I do do that, so?”
Ever wonder what we could collectively do with the energy we use thinking about fat? I do, and I wonder if it’s all a plot to keep the world exactly the way it is.
Well, what I have to say may be hated, but I say it not to provoke, but to ask a question: why am I so pathetic to any of you if I want to lose some weight and, in fact *do* lose a bit of weight, NOT through dieting, but from not bingeing anymore?
Bingeing hurt me terribly and messed up my body. I can’t speak for any other person’s obesity, fatness or call it what you will call it, but my 150 extra pounds came from a self-destructive way of eating. It was fueled by self-hatred and, I suspect, many imbalances that predesposed me to obesity (I, personally, have nothing against this word, per se).
I now eat as I see fit, and that means I avoid a lot of sugar, but still enjoy dessert and treat foods in moderation, and eat what-ever else I want to eat that produces a good feeling in my body.
I am working on self-acceptance. Diets *don’t* work(but I am Not dieting) and I will probably never be thin again, which I was and which was once a natural weight to be. And yes, I wish I could be again - my body looked great and I won’t lie about that.
So, if I can get to, say, size 14 or 16 with eating my own way and some exercise, who is it to judge me? That is hurtful and wrong. And it is also ignorant, because it tells me I must never admit to what is, for me, the truth: being very obese is unhealthy in many ways. It’s painful on my feet, joints and in a myriad of other, physical ways. I also know full well that the psychological pain comes from how this world treats fat people: quite nasty. I don’t hold with that and have always hated people’s contempt.
I’m glad to have a body and to work on loving it (which I do every day by eating fulfilling, reasonably healthy food and getting fun exercise in). I know I have a long way to go with self-love; so does the skinny woman who looks like she’d never have a bad body thought a day in her life.
That’s why I say: Don’t tell me it’s wrong to want to lose some weight when it lessens my physical pain and gives me more energy and I look better in clothes (which I do). Don’t make me feel wrong for wanting greater health by losing a bit of weight in a natural, healthy way. Maybe You feel and look perfectly healthy at the same weight I am. We are all different. Let’s celebrate that instead of instructing people on how to think about their weight and freezing them out if they don’t get with the plan. Sheesh, there is enough hatred directed against fat people as it is. I have never liked being lectured on how to think; I’m fine with different opinions, but don’t tell me what mine should be to be as healthy as you are; I think I already am, as I am.
The one thing that’s kicking my ass at the moment is the one thing that I get stuck on time and time again…if I were thin, someone would love me back. And it just gets more galling as I get older (I’ll be 36 in January), the thought that not once in my entire life have I been loved back by a member of the opposite sex–well, not in the way I wanted them to love me back, that is.
Jane, I can so totally relate to that one.
It’s so fucking frustrating because logically, I keep telling myself to stop hanging my failure on the way I look, that there are scads of other reasons why nothing’s happening
That one is a difficult one, because to me admitting that it is not being fat that keeps me from having a relationship means looking for other things that are “wrong” with me - and that is even more uncomfortable. If I blame it on fat that nobody I have been attracted to seems to have ever been attracted to me I can at least say that it is partially due to the beauty ideal in today’s society and not with possible flaws of my character. AND I do believe that being fat has made it harder for me to find a partner – or more precisely that being fat in a society where fat is generally seen as undesirable has done so. (Not fitting beauty standards in quite a number of other ways does not help either). I am aware that other women my size are in happy relationships. But looks do play some part – hell, I am attracted to men partially on basis of their looks. Plus, having been fat all my life and having had some rather bad experiences of the kind that guys pointed out to me how utterly disgusting they thought I was has definitely also made me more careful and shy when I meet men in a social context. That wouldn’t go away if I suddenly wouldn’t be fat anymore, yet I am sure that I had those experiences partially because others saw my body size as absolutely undesirable (and unfortunately this does not only hold true for the jerks but also for some really, really nice men - they obviously have never made fun of me or humiliated me on purpose but they did point out that they were not attracted to me at all).
A strange thing related to this is that the very few men that were attracted to me a) came from non-Western cultures and b) seemed to look for a rather submissive woman with a rather traditional idea of “feminine” behavior. The first point wouldn’t be a problem and just says something about how cultures differ in their beauty standards - the second one however is a huge problem for me since I do not think I am at all that kind of woman and I probably would make myself and my partner unhappy if I tried to become like that.
Yeah, my dream is, ‘if I were thinner, I could find more pants that fit’.
Well, I was thinner — about as thin as I can get without major health problems, and yeah, that was 14 lbs away from where I am now — and I still couldn’t find pants that fit, in any size.
(OK, I lied: I have jeans that fit fabulously. But it’s still disheartening to try on twenty pairs of pants ostensibly in my size [and a size up, and a size down] and realize that they don’t fit because I curve too much. If I go up a size, they bag out so far around my waist that I can see my own underwear. Also, they bag everywhere else. So I’m saying I just have to accept that my butt ain’t the shape of most pants, and when I’m thinner, it’s exactly the same proportions it is now, so how is that going to change my pants opportunities?)
Oh, and the other dream is, “When I’m thinner, I’ll be prettier/more successful than my cousin.”
Well, I’ve got a waist, which she doesn’t, and a great rear end, which she doesn’t, and much better hair. Also, I’m about 50% smarter than she is. She’s getting underpaid in New York; I’m getting underpaid in Cleveland. My LSAT score was ten-plus points higher than hers. How am I not as successful as she is? Oh, right. I weigh 15 lbs more and wear a pants size higher. Idiocy, ain’t it? And my BMI is in the ‘normal’ range. What we do to ourselves!
I’m just going to dump this and trust that you don’t take it to mean that I disagree; I don’t. I think what you have written here is beautiful and brilliant. I’m just still in that phase of fat acceptance where it’s something I have no problem applying to others, but cannot yet apply to myself.
The idea that there is something I cannot do no matter how hard I work at it makes me ANGRY.
Saying “It’s fine to be who I am, at the weight I am!” feels good, but on my bad days, most days, it also feels a whole hell of a lot like admitting defeat.
And you know, I’m not sure what to think of the fact that I genuinely WAS happier when I was at my thinnest. It’s not a case of “I’ll finally be happy when. . . .” It’s “I was happier when.” Not totally happy. I still tore the hell out of myself. But it was way better than the pain I am feeling now. It seems only natural to want to return to a state where I was in less pain. I am trying to learn to accept this, but it’s not what I really want.
It’s NOT easy to give up the dream. I get a one-two-three punch every time I do something that reminds me that I’ve gained weight. First, the unpleasant realization that all my parts aren’t where they used to be, which is like being trapped in a different person’s body all of a sudden. Second, the feeling of sorrow that comes over me because I, like nearly everyone else here, was conditioned to feel bad about my fat. And third, the slap in the face that comes from knowing that I shouldn’t feel this way about myself, and that I’m failing at that, too. So I feel like I’m wrong by anyone’s standards.
We should all be happy with ourselves and give up our magical thinking. We should live now, love now, and trust that the world will accept us as we are if we just go first and love ourselves. I agree wholeheartedly. It gives me hope, it makes me feel loved to be surrounded by that message. But it’s another thing entirely to actually be in the place where you are having to do that every day no matter how horrible and painful it is — when you feel you are failing at EVERYTHING because you can neither be thin nor love your fat self.
I’d like to hear advice for soothing the pain that comes when you have to give up a dream that you dearly love. Especially when you lived that dream for a while, and you know exactly how it felt and what you are missing. How do we stop it from feeling like settling?
Yes, the basic message is optimistic, and please, never keep reminding us of that. Yes, our clinging to this dream is magical thinking. Yes, we want to like ourselves. But crossing that bridge, one side to another, that is one hell of a leap of faith, and it’s one that you don’t make just the once. You make it every day, over and over. Sometimes fifteen or twenty times. Even the strongest can find that too difficult.
I have written novels, buried family, shoplifted just to eat, been sick with no insurance or money, been bipolar and undiagnosed and unmedicated; I’ve done lots of painful and difficult and humiliating things.
Accepting myself, accepting that this doesn’t mean failure or defeat, that it’s just a more realistic way to live, doing it day after day, is literally the hardest thing I have ever done. It takes just as much effort as pursuing an unattainable ideal. And in between both of them I am expending the energy to do both.
This is exhausting, heartbreaking work. It crushes you, I guess because you have to be crushed to be remade.
My biggest piece of magical thinking? It’s a doozy.
I liked myself for the first time when I was thinner. Obviously I’ll only like myself again when I’m thinner again.
I kick that mangy bitch out the door every damn day. And she comes right back. If I’m lucky, I get a couple of days’ slack in the rope. Sometimes I don’t even get an hour. Today she’s parked in my lap, breathing her stinky, hateful breath in my face and I can’t move her for love or money.
I’m sorry for the semi-rant. I feel horribly exposed and guilty saying all of that, and for taking up space.
It’s just . . . we’d come around sooner if we possibly could.
Jane and queendom, that used to be a major part of my thin fantasies, particularly in college. It was always “if I were thin, X would see me as more than a friend, or Y would see me as more than a fuck buddy.” Sometimes I was right. X, for instance, probably would have been interested in me if I were more his physical type, since he was interested in basically everyone who was. If I’d been thin, I could have gotten my heart broken instead by the fact that he did want to sleep with me but was fundamentally incapable of having an adult relationship, and I would have missed out on a friendship. As for Y, he makes a salacious story that I’ll tell you sometime, but I’m so thankful for whatever it was that made him ultimately not interested in me (and I don’t think it was my body).
My point is, getting rid of the security-blanket excuse doesn’t have to make you face up to your own flaws — it could make you realize that when something doesn’t work out, it’s not necessarily because of you, and it may actually be because the OTHER person has problems. As for facing up to your personality problems, well, see above — what looks like a problem may just be your personality. Er, that sounds bad. What I mean is, even when I wasn’t thinking nobody would love me until I was thin, I certainly never thought anyone would love me until I could make myself more sane. Turns out, I just had to find someone who kinda made me sane, and could deal when I wasn’t. Nothing about me. All about the fit.
But I had to give up the comfort of self-flagellation to find that out.
It’s just . . . we’d come around sooner if we possibly could.
Amanda, your comment deserves a longer response, but for now, just know that I totally get this. And the last thing I want anyone to feel is that I’m criticizing them for not getting there fast enough.
Yeah, my dream is, ‘if I were thinner, I could find more pants that fit’.
Hey, I couldn’t find jeans that really fit until LB came out with the right fits. Now, I’m afraid that if I were thinner, I couldn’t find pants that fit!
I totally get it too, and giving it a short or glib response would do a disservice to the depth and intensity of the feeling. It’s a hole you have to dig yourself out of. There’s nothing easy about it.
Given the right combination of factors, you can shift your focus from “I will be happy when I’m thin” to “I will be happy.” But the fact that it’s possible is the only thing I can say universally. Everything else depends on circumstance and personal struggle and neurochemicals.
Now, I’m afraid that if I were thinner, I couldn’t find pants that fit!
Is it pathetic that tiny little me is jealous of you size 16-pluses in some ways because YOU HAVE A STORE THAT PAYS ATTENTION TO HOW YOUR BODIES ARE MADE?!?!?
Well, what I have to say may be hated, but I say it not to provoke, but to ask a question: why am I so pathetic to any of you if I want to lose some weight and, in fact *do* lose a bit of weight, NOT through dieting, but from not bingeing anymore?
Zoe, who said you were pathetic? I’ve written several times about how being fat with an eating disorder is a different ball of wax from being fat without one. I’ve never said that binge eaters shouldn’t try to overcome their disorder, which may or may not involve losing weight.
And when you say this:
Diets *don’t* work(but I am Not dieting) and I will probably never be thin again, which I was and which was once a natural weight to be. And yes, I wish I could be again - my body looked great and I won’t lie about that.
I have a lot of trouble believing that you’re coming from a place of respecting what I and this community stand for. So I’m really not sure why I should make a special effort to make you feel more comfortable for trying to lose weight.
This post could speak to anyone who is waiting to live their life until they’re __________________.
I do live in a constant state of fantasy thinness. I love clothing and fasion. Because it’s made to fit smaller body types, of course I would continue to harp on myself for not being thinner or thin enough to pull it off.
I’ve also found that I didn’t “allow” myself to enjoy sex as much. I was completely afraid to be the dynamo I was when I was thin. I am sure my better half doesn’t understand why things changed or why I was not as free as a I used to be. It’s tough going from an acceptable size, and as others have said-praised for being it- to becoming a size that outside forces make you feel wrong for being.
As time as passed I have found myself accepting things about me that I had a hard time with last year. I know as more time passes I will continue to accept that I will never be a skinny version of me. I still find it hard to wear a bathing suit and I still find it difficult to just let my guard down and enjoy life. But, it sure is nice to have a place providing affirmations to not only love yourself, but to love yourself NOW not 40lbs from now.
Okay, Amanda said everything I wanted to say, but said it ten times better!
Also agree completely on the feeling bad about being fat, and then feeling bad about not being able to feel good about being fat! Amazing how we torture ourselves isn’t it?
And also agree on the feeling bad for knowing I was happier when I was thinner. It’s awful. Nothing else in my life was going right at that time. I still had terrible luck with guys (though did also get 100% more attention from them, just never found “the one”), I was flat-broke, the year I was thinnest I had 5 different dead-end low-paying jobs and no direction in life, I got fired TWICE, I had a moderate drinking problem that led to being date-raped….And yet?
All of that crap was easier to deal with than the pain I feel at being 250 pounds now. All of those problems are now “better,” I have a GREAT job, money, security, I drink far less, my life is allegedly far, far better than it was 4 years ago, but all I remember about that time was how good it made me feel to be able to share clothes with my sisters and get hit on by hot guys at bars.
It’s so fucked up, and I don’t know how to fix it. But this blog helps, so thank you.
You know, regarding clothes, I think a big thing for me was starting to look at shopping as a treasure hunt to find things that fit MY body, instead of lamenting what I could never have. I spend a lot of time online just looking at what all the plus stores (and a couple of straight stores) have. Most days, there’s nothing I want. But when I find something that I know will be awesome on me, I either A) plunk down the plastic immediately or B) start dreaming about it and revisiting the page until I either decide to plunk down the plastic or find something I like even better and abandon the old dream. The latter is nearly as satisfying as the former, frankly, although it can bite me in the ass when I decide I’m going to buy something and it’s already sold out in my size.
The thing about that habit is, it still involves fantasy about how AWESOME MY LIFE WOULD BECOME IMMEDIATELY, IF ONLY… but now, it’s “If only I owned that dress that would look amazing on me right now” instead of “If only my body looked better in more dresses.” So I’m picturing how fab I could be with this body instead of an imaginary one. That’s actually a pretty huge step.
And treating shopping as an ongoing game definitely helps. It still sucks when I need a specific item pronto and can’t find it in my size anywhere. But when I’m regularly sifting through the shit that doesn’t fit to find the few gems that do, and I buy ‘em whenever I can afford ‘em, it’s a lot more fun — and it means I usually have something to wear (or at least know exactly what the perfect thing would be and where to get it) when the typical “must buy outfit NOW” occasions come up.
Wow, this is awesome. I don’t happen to be fat, but I’ve often imagined the magical world where I’m “beautiful,” so I kind of get it.* In this fantasy world, I’m a totally different person with a totally different life, where I’m glamorous, loved, successful, brilliant, respected, and of course, conventionally gorgeous. Rationally, I know it ain’t gonna happen - and that there are plenty of more interesting and more important things I can aspire to and actually do - but I still think of this “world” almost every day. But reading this amazing post was like a few sessions of therapy without the wallet-sucking expense! Thanks so much.
*I say “kind of” because I’ve never experienced the level of prejudice the bloggers and commenters here have survived. I’m interested in FA because fat hatred has affected family and friends, but I haven’t lived it and wouldn’t want to presume.
Is it pathetic that tiny little me is jealous of you size 16-pluses in some ways because YOU HAVE A STORE THAT PAYS ATTENTION TO HOW YOUR BODIES ARE MADE?!?!?
Stephanie, pathetic? Hell no! We all deserve that.
Idealizing? A little. Nobody, fat or thin, really has a store that pays attention to how their bodies are made, unless they have a custom tailor. What we have in LB is a store that pays lip service to paying more attention to how our bodies are made (but has kind of crummy products IMHO). It’s way better than nothing, but we still need to find a way to get the fashion industry to actually listen to its consumers!
Yeah, I should point out that I’m one of the lucky ones for whom Right Fits actually do fit right — but plenty of LB stuff doesn’t (like, say, all their shirts and dresses), and I’ve heard just as many negative reviews of the RFs as positive. (And reportedly, it’s that much MORE demoralizing to try on a garment that’s supposed to be made for bodies just like yours, only to find it doesn’t fit.)
I did have pretty good luck with C.enne.V’s “pear” jeans (even though I’m not really a pear), except for their stupid STUPID back pockets. At least people are TRYING.
amanda gannon- I have been thinking about this you said:
“I’d like to hear advice for soothing the pain that comes when you have to give up a dream that you dearly love. Especially when you lived that dream for a while, and you know exactly how it felt and what you are missing. How do we stop it from feeling like settling?”
The only thing I can come up with is kind of wordy. But here goes… When you think back to those times you were thinner and happier what else was going on? It’s probably true that you were doing other things than just being thinner. What did you do for fun? Did you live in a different location? Did you have different social interactions than you have now? All people, fat and thin, have trouble dealing with CHANGE. And yet that is what life is all about. Maybe even if you had stayed thinner you would still feel the same way - looking back on that time in your life and wanting to return to it. But the best thing I think to do now is be proactive. Write down goals you want to accomplish. Make dates with yourself to go and do fun things. Honor who you are now instead of who you were. You are valuable NOW. I don’t think you are “settling” by giving up the quest for thinness. But you may have given up on happiness without it. What does that leave you with? Constantly being uneasy or disappointed in our bodies makes us more prone to depression and illness. Try focusing on those things you like about your self now. I think you can be happy again, just allow it some space to grow in your life and it will come.
I struggle with some of the same issues as you do. These are some of the ways I have found my own happiness. It’s an on-going process. Good luck to you and above all, be kind to yourself.
Jane, and everyone else in this boat, if it makes you feel any better, I had no fewer problems with unrequited love as a size 8 or 10 or 12 than I did as a size 16 or 18 or 20. Please believe me when I say it, it’s true. I met all the men in my life from a) personals ads, b) in situations where I saw them every day (a rooming house I lived in), or c) in group therapy. I am not joking about the last one.
In fact, when I was a size 12 in college, I had this massive crush on a guy who just-wanted-to-be-friends-boo-hiss. I was sure it was because my ass was too big for him. As it happened, a) the girl he married weighed a good 70 pounds more than I did at the time he rejected me, and b) he turned out to be gay anyway. As did his wife.
Again, I am not making this shit up. The process of finding a partner is a giant pile of suck for everyone. I’ve known plenty of slim, conventionally gorgeous women who had a terrible time of it, including my own mom for many years. You might attract more men, but quality is not quantity. (I shudder when I think of some of the house apes she brought home to us in between marriages.)
The closest thing I remember to feeling how Amanda feels — because for me the idea of being thin was always basically a pathetic pipe dream until I gave it up, not a so-close-it-hurts void — is being in love with someone who was awful to me. (Apparently it’s FJ Talks About Crushes Day here on SP… ooh, remind me to put “talk about your crushes” away for a future Friday Fluff.) Knowing that I couldn’t quite have what I wanted, though I could sort of have a pale reflection of it, was a knife in the gut all the fucking time.
But those desires, and I think the desire to be thin as well, were stand-ins for what I really wanted, which was to be a Worthwhile Person (whatever I meant by that… if I’d really known, I wouldn’t have abjected it all onto some fucking guy). That’s what I was really desiring and felt I was lacking, but the substitute pain took all my focus. I didn’t have the first clue how to go about getting what I really wanted (still don’t really), so I tormented myself about not being able to achieve the one thing that I had built up as the Key to Happiness.
So I would say the trick is not to figure out what you used to have, but to figure out what you really want. It’s not weight-loss dieting — even when it is, it’s not. (When you pine for an eating disorder, it’s the control, not the obsession and malnutrition and terror.) So what is it? Fucking hard as hell to figure out and I’ll be damned if I know how to do it — I made some lucky stumbles but I’m no better at it than most and worse than some. But I think that’s the key anyway.
Yeah, I should point out that I’m one of the lucky ones for whom Right Fits actually do fit right — but plenty of LB stuff doesn’t (like, say, all their shirts and dresses),
Yeah. I love the Right Fit jeans, but their other pants are just cheap crap and their shirts and sweaters… ugh. Of course, those of us who are short as well as fat of ass belong to two groups who don’t, apparently, need clothes. If it fits in the boobs, the sleeves go to the knees.
But at least I was able to buy some damned jeans without crying, which was, come to think of it, part of my thin fantasy. For that, I’m grateful.
This is interesting, because when I was younger I don’t really recall that not being able to do the things I wanted to do was very often linked to being fat per se. I just assumed that I was a total klutz at everything. I happened to be a fat klutz, sure, but I never felt that if I were thin things would be any better because, after all, I was me, and great stuff didn’t happen to me.
Now I’m actually fatter than I was then, and happy with that, I find myself looking at stuff I wanted to do when I was younger and wondering why the heck I didn’t, and realizing I wasn’t an inadequate person like I thought. Just scared. Mostly not even of failing - just of not doing things perfectly. Learning that I didn’t have to be perfect at everything was hugely liberating.
There have been a few instances in which I felt something really was impossible because of my weight. One was nothing to do with me, but everything to do with someone whom, I thought, from their words and actions, would love me more if I were thinner. I realized, finally, that this person was using my weight - and a multitude of other things that were ‘wrong’ with me - as an excuse for the fact that they simply could not love me, period, and wanted to project it onto me rather than admitting it and making themselves look horrible. That - as with you and those college guys, FJ - was never my problem.
The other thing, when I was younger, was ballet. I had it clearly spelled out to me that my chances of getting anywhere with it as a fat teen were nil. I’d love to believe that this actually wasn’t the case - although at 14, apart from my weight, I was supposedly too old to make anything of it, as well. I’ve done some breaking down of my beliefs about the limits of age in the last few years, so if I can find a suitable adult beginners’ class, I might just give the other old myth a little push and see if it falls.
Kate, thank you SO much for this post. It means a lot to me right now. For me, the magical thinking is “When I’m thin, my parents will love me.” Intellectually, I know they love me. But they harp on my weight over and over and over and over again, so that what filters through to my brain is that I’m not good enough as I am.
It’s been really, really hard to let go of that magical thinking, but I’m finally starting to do it. I’m finally getting to a point where I can demand my parents’ unconditional love, which I deserve, because I’m their daughter. What has helped in a BIG way is that I’ve found a wonderful husband who loves every inch of me. (And he likes my “extra” weight, because it means I have big breasts. He’s such a lech.
) Knowing that, yes, I am capable of being loved for my whole self, not just certain parts of me, has done more to banish the magical thinking than the years of therapy (not to rag on therapy — it’s helped with lots of other issues).
How am I not as successful as she is? Oh, right. I weigh 15 lbs more and wear a pants size higher. Idiocy, ain’t it?
A couple of years ago, when my mom was giving me the biannual “DON’T YOU KNOW YOU’RE FAT AND OMG OBESITY KILLS” speech, she mentioned my old childhood nemesis, and said that the nemesis was “winning.” Because she was thin and married. Nothing my mom has said in all my 29 years has hurt me as deeply as that did, because the nemesis was a horrible, hateful person who made my adolescent years a living hell. And my mom knew that, and also agreed that the nemesis was an evil boil on the butt of humanity.
So for my mom to say that she was “winning” was tantamount to saying that being kind, getting good grades, and accomplishing things in my professional life meant NOTHING, because I was (a) fat and (b) single. (And, of course, my mom thought that (a) was the reason for (b).)
On a happier note, I have recently discovered a new plus-sized store in the Philly area, called Fresh Ayer, which sounds a lot like Lee Lee’s Valise in terms of the lines that they carry. Buying a gorgeous cherry-red shirtdress (from Trentacosta) that actually buttons over my chest (!!) was the highlight of my month.
What a beautiful mezmorizing post. I found myself slowing the speed of my reading just so I could savor each word. And right now, the dissonance I’m experiencing is making me feel a little like the computer in War Games when the kids finally figure out how to stop it from setting off the nukes. Some part of me is furiously grasping at, I dunno, something, trying to get away from the paradigm shift. Isn’t that weird? What am I pretending not to know?
My major dissonance? I am totally smart and a feminist and a major caller outer of bullshit and yet I want to be a waif. And don’t feel in control and pretty and validated unless I’m small.
I obsess about my size, the size of my muscles, my workouts, what I am or am not eating, from the moment I wake till the moment I sleep. It’s a constant background noise that I’m sometimes aware of and sometimes not. Sometimes it’s loud and shrill and othertimes it’s soft. I am always comparing my size to other women.
Weirdly, this fear of fat has worked for me, so I don’t want to give it up. I use the fear of getting fat again as motivation to workout. I use the fear of being messy again as motivation to clean up the house. I use the fear of losing my mother to her cancer to call when I’d rather tuck away from her frailty. One part of me says use the fear, because if I’m more than a size 4, messy and have my head stuck in the sand I am miserable. The other says there’s a better way. I believe that in principal but not in practical.
You have no idea how much I needed to read this today. Thank you.
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