Thursday, July 29, 2010

O, Fatty Day! ... Week.

Today, dear friends, was a fatty day! Actually a fatty couple-of-days. But anyway! I did many things with my fat body and saw other fat bodies that were wonderful, beautiful, and out in the warm air!

First, my family's refrigertator (I say it that way so I spell it that way) pooped out on us. Off to the scratch & dent place we go to find a new one at a bargain price! It's awesome. Huge. But awesome. As my father was loading it onto our truck I was told to hold this strap. Why? I don't know. Maybe it was go make me feel useful. I'm kind of too short to do many big, refrigertator moving type things. So I diligently held onto my little red strap, standing next to the bed of the truck, the fridge towering above me. My father, want to be sure of how secure the machine was, took it in both of his strong, laborer's hands and used his body weight to push and pull it back and forth as I stood there in it's shadow.

There's something you have to know about me. I joke about fatness. I don't make fat jokes, I make jokes on people's stereotype of fat and fat people. I say things the stereotypical fat-hating bigot would say and I make it a joke.

As I stared up at the black, metal mass quaking above me, I murmured, just loud enough for my mother and the store employee to hear, "What a way for a fatty to die. Crushed by a fridge." This caused my mother to laugh, and the fellow helping my father load the refrigertator onto the truck smile awkwardly. It's funny when people are less comfortable with my body than I am.

After that, while driving home with the hulking machine strapped and cardboarded to the truck, I saw someone. Someone on a bike. The only person on a self-propelled vehicle in a sea of motorized machines. A fat body on a lovely bike and I wanted nothing more than to take a picture and shove it in haters' faces and go "HA! See that?! SEE THAT?!"

Today, I did even more. Got my hair cut for one. Yay! And got myself some gummy worms. Yum!

And as I sat at a red light, I saw a pair of boys on skateboards- one thin, one fat. Awesome!

I watched the fatty on the bike and I was proud to be a fatty. One fatty of many fatties in the world. One fatty of a growing number of fatties who are proud to be who they are. Who climb onto their bikes, skateboards, into their roller blades and walking shoes or into their wheelchairs or scooters and say "This is me! I'm a fatty and I'm just as good and worthy as anyone!"

And lastly, while at IHOP with my friend, Rocky, eating pancakes, I noticed a woman who was larger than I. I weigh 300 pounds and it's rare for me to see anyone larger than I am or who I think is larger than I am. I saw her and smiled at her, genuinely happy to see her out. Living life at whatever size she was, haters be damned. But I had to think... I wondered was she nervous? Did she fear the people around her? Did she fear the waiter? Did she fear me? The other fat girl on the other side of the restaurant eating two cheesecake pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream? In her mind could I just as easily spit bile at her for her size as any thin person?

Or was it the opposite? Was she uncaring what others thought? Did she plan on eating her meal and enjoying it and fuck the rest who thought her wrong? Even me, if I thought her wrong. I didn't think her wrong. I don't think her wrong or bad. But, in that brief moment, I knew there were kindred thoughts, even if she didn't realize it. Whether nervous or apathetic towards haters, they were feelings I had had at one point and will have in the future. She was me and I was she in that moment, connected by common body shapes, common emotions, common struggles perhaps.

We are all in this together. We all know the pain of being looked at and judged. Fat or thin, we know what it's like. Next time you look at someone, I implore you, do not judge him or her. Next time you look at someone imagine what they're feeling right in that moment. Even if you couldn't be more physically different, find something that connects you to that person. What makes you unspoken partners in the struggles of life?

Other than that, post what you have done with your body recently or what you have seen other fatties do with theirs?

Big Smiles!
-LexieDi

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Body Hate is the Expectation.

My family and I have been working for a few weeks preparing for a garage/yard/rummage sale. Today was our second day hawking our stuff for pennies on the dollar.

A lady, with a friend, was going through a Richard Simmons weight loss kit and, laughing, asked how old it was. I said, quite seriously, "I was using it in elementary school."

And I had used it in elementary school. I would pluck the plastic piece which held a card covered in little food symbols like a chicken leg for meat, and a piece of broccoli for veggies, and I would bring it to lunch, holding it with the little lunch card needed to get food from the cafeteria. I would get my food and sit down to eat. And as I ate, I would slide the little windows closed one by one according to what I ate. I did that every day.

The lady looking at it just laughed.

And that shocked me.

I was in elementary school! That was in the late 90's! Fat hate wasn't as bad as it is now, and even at 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, I was hating my body and putting myself through torture. And she just laughed- understanding, knowing, expecting. It wasn't weird to her. It wasn't odd or out of the ordinary. Young girls were and are supposed to hate their bodies. Young girls are supposed to struggle to change what they can not. That's how it's supposed to be.

It needs to change.

Big Smiles!
-LexieDi