Accepting The Fat

As a twenty-something fat woman living in this, sometimes cruel, world I have found it rather hard to transition into the realm of accepting my body for the amazing vessel it is.

Instead of being thankful that I can walk, see, hear, talk, feel, smell and everything else my body can do, I have spent my life hating it because I was told, repeatedly, that it's ugly, fat and disgusting. Of course, it didn't take long for me to begin believing these comments and adding them to my own internal dialogue of why I'm not good enough.

At first I was confused by those nasty comments because a 5 year old doesn't really understand these things. Yes, you read that correctly, the nastiness started (at least outside of home) when I was five. The kicker? It was my teacher who started it off.

In fact over the years it has always been the adults in my life that have begun the fat hating dialogue. In grade six I was actually detained during recesses because I refused to run around the school during the morning runs. When I explained that I didn't adequately know how - I have this strange compulsion to hold my breath when I run - I was laughed at and had another five minutes added to my "detention". Needless to say this began the Age of Acute Anxiety and resulted in increased migraines. Good times man, good times. 

I'll spare you the rest of my experiences as I'm sure you get the idea.

The people who should have been supporting me, comforting me and encouraging me to be myself were lost somewhere in the wake of fat hate. The voices that were loudest and most repetitive had centre stage and they did so for a very, very long time.

I became introverted, shy and always the first to apologise. I learnt how to minimise my presence and effectively render myself invisible. My self esteem and self confidence were never developed and I hid behind the wall of silence that so many fat kids (and adults) hide behind.

The rhetoric became so ingrained I started to think it about other people. I would think - never speak - the awful thoughts about others and with that came a double stab to my fragile esteem. How could I, someone who knows how it feels to be bullied, think that awful shit about another person?
This cemented the idea that I was nothing more than an ugly, fat monster.

I held that dark little secret close lest anyone wrest it from me and expose me as the fat fraud that I really was.

Many, many years later after one particularly bad hospital admission I was surfing the internet. I was feeling disgusting and fat and monstrous and typed "fat chicks" into google. Lo and behold it brought up this thing called Fat Acceptance. My eyes very nearly popped out of my head. I laughed at first because I thought it was a joke, someone trying to build up fat people's self esteem only to set them up for that moment when of being drenched in pig's blood while wearing the beautiful prom dress you made by hand. Unlike Carrie, I wouldn't have telekinetic powers to unleash my vicious wrath.

Telling myself that even if it was a joke it wouldn't matter because I'm a monster, I clicked on the link. What I found was a blog appropriately named Big Fat Blog and my cynical laughter abruptly stopped. These were real people with real stories and who were really fat. I must be freaking dreaming!


I joined up and haven't looked back. But it's taken well over a year to even begin to accept myself in a peripheral sense. I know that I'm fat and I don't apologise for that any more nor am I ashamed of myself, but I still think awful thoughts about myself and I still lack any form of confidence. No one said it would be easy!

A year and a bit later the #thingsfatpeoplearetold hash tag surfaced, again, on twitter and I found another group of wonderfully real people that I could connect with. Le freaking woot!! I love you guys!!


So I may not be an awesomely confident fat activist, or even a confident fatty, but I'm still a voice to be reckoned with. No one has the authority to abuse me anymore. No one has the right to tell me things about my body. It is my body and I'm damn proud that it works! 


Take your fat hate elsewhere.