The fat thing
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009My roommate my freshman year of college once told me, “You’re a bigger girl, but it works for you.” I recall that at the time, I was pretty crushed. She fretted when clothes ran small and a size 2 wouldn’t fit, once semi-bragged that she never allowed herself to eat more than 15 grams of fat in a day, and even with the glorious metabolism of a teenager, did an hour of cardio a day. She was pretty in that tiny, cute way all women at least vaguely envy, and she had nice clothes and nice things and was intimidatingly well-organized. At 18, I was just learning all the things one could be insecure about, and, despite our differences, she was the kind of person I wanted to think I was more or less like her. Read: the kind of person I didn’t want to think I was fat.
Thanks to the introduction of empty alcohol calories, eating buffet style three times a day, and lots of late night pizza, I had gained some weight since high school, and while I won’t say I liked it, I did see putting on the “Freshman 15″ as a kind of rite of passage. It didn’t make me any more likely to have a salad instead of fries with dinner, or any less likely to drink beer and eat a fourth meal later on.
Later that year, I remember being at a party and that someone’s friend from home was visiting. She was a “bigger girl” with a loud, dirty mouth. She bragged about having had sex with a guy universally known to be “hot” and, hoisting glass (or, in those days, more likely a mug or plastic bathroom glass) said heartily, “Score one for the fat girls!” and made eye contact with most of the other girls in the room, as if surely we identified as “fat girls” and would understand the sweet victory of a one-night stand with someone who probably has a “no fat girls” policy, even in the case of alcohol-induced hook-ups. (An obvious catch!)
Of course, this girl was trying to settle the score on a few of her insecurities at once. You can’t make yourself thin just by worrying that you might be fat, but it takes the edge off if you don’t have to be fat alone. And no woman, of any age, is ever 100% sure that meaningless sex is a good idea. I hope I am never that cynical, and the thought that someone who was only starting out in life could see the world as that cruel and limited has haunted me since. At the time, though, all I could see was that I had been labeled officially as a “fat girl.” That was the club into which I had been inducted, and I could prepare for a destiny as a character actress in real life, a lifetime spent as the romantic lead’s funny friend.
But, still, something in me understood that the weight equals fate formula is something one has to agree to. And I just didn’t. I just didn’t identify as “fat,” and couldn’t really see that society’s obsession with thinness had much to do with me at all. I will never know how I could have been so wise when I knew so little about so much.
The summer after my sophomore year, without consciously trying to lose weight, I lost the Freshman 15, and have been pretty much the same size since. I never blot the grease off my pizza. I have never had a gym membership. I drink Diet Coke because I genuinely prefer the taste (actually, that’s an addiction probably worthy of a blog of its own…) My exercise is the walking necessary to city life, and while my diet is diverse enough to be nutritious, I don’t deny myself the foods I like. It is almost certainly true that I weigh more than many women my age who are considered attractive. But, since we’re talking about looks here, isn’t it the “attractive” part that counts?
I don’t know what my old roommate, who was defined by being thin, may have intended me to hear when she said, “You’re a bigger girl, but it works for you,” but what I hear now is: it ain’t broke. Score one for the girls, all of us.