Friday, September 3, 2010

The world is NOT a fat joke, Bethany.

The fact that I accept myself doesn't mean that I'm not sensitive about my weight, and this confuses a lot of people.  I was very fortunate to have never really endured bullying in school.  My classmates didn't make jokes at my expense (or if they did, I wasn't aware of them and therefore they didn't have much impact on me) and, for the most part, my "fat kid" self-image was the result of my own insecurities.  (My father's second wife is one glaring exception, but even with my lingering hatred for the crazy woman I cannot blame her for the sum of my body issues.)  Sad truth:  this is still true today. 

I can't recall any instance in my adult life of someone actually insulting me because of my weight, and yet I am still chronically aware of the potential fat jokes that arise in my everyday life.  Every little blip relates back to my weight.  Spill food on myself -> sloppy -> fat.  Knock something over -> clumsy -> fat.  I am aware of the fact that people with far smaller butts than mine have knocked things over before, and that sometimes ketchup just doesn't stay where you put it, but somehow these mundane hiccups in human activity immediately trigger the thought that someone saw it and thought to themself "Hahaha... that fat girl just dripped ketchup on herself!"  Even in explaining that, I feel a little crazy, and yet I find it incredibly hard to train myself not to do it.  The saddest part is that it isn't even just my screwups that trigger this kind of response.  If I go to the grocery store and buy ice cream, I worry that the cashier thinks I'm fat because I sit around eating ice cream all day.  The good news is that this crazy train of thought doesn't keep me from doing normal things, but it does bother me that I have to actively set aside such thoughts sometimes.  A chubby friend of mine (who will remain nameless unless she so chooses) once admitted to me that if she went to a fast food place, she would always order two drinks so that the cashier would think she was sharing her meal with someone instead of eating it all herself.  Meanwhile, I have thin friends that will walk into a McDonalds and order a #1 super sized with extra sauce and down it in public without thinking twice.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Do we really think that the 16 year old kid running the Taco Bell drive-thru cares whether we eat TWO tacos???  And even if he does... why on earth do we care?

Dear Bethany,

The world is not one giant fat joke.  Get.  Over.  It.

-Me

3 comments:

  1. Spill food, knock something over, buy sweets/too many groceries, buy too many things off of the $1 menu at a fast food restaurant ... all things that make me think that people will attribute something about my actions to the way that I look. Its really sad because these people usually don't have any bearing on my life, yet I do so many things to please them. Its almost as sad as doing something to please my family. I'm 26 and it has GOT to stop!

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  2. oh and by sweet c, i mean Cecily :) LOL

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  3. Tell me about it! I mean, who are these people, and why have I devoted so much of my life to trying to impress them?? Let's be honest... I'm sure they don't give a damn. lol.

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