Youre not fat, youre beautiful!
Its a refrain with which Ive become familiar.
And although its designed as an intimate kind of reassurance, it always leaves me feeling so isolated.
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Undeniably, indisputably fat.
I wear a U.S. womens size 26.
Throughout my adult life, my weight has fluctuated from between 300 and 400 pounds.
By any measure, I am fat.
In the eyes of friends and family who say this, this should be affirming.
To them, me calling myselffatcan only be a terrible insult, the mark of dangerously lowself-esteem.
They long to cleave me from the image of pitiable fatness theyve built in their heads.
They imagineIm fatto be a bomb they must defuse.
For me, being fat is a simple statement of fact.
I am undeniably tall, at 5-foot-10.
My eyes are deep blue, and my hair dishwater blonde.
Those facts about my body are rarely disputed.
Still, somehow,my sizeis hotly debated.
Youre not fat, youre beautiful.As if I couldnt be both.
As if their size had any bearing on theirs.
As if the fact of my body was up for debate.
As if this friend or family member hadnt wondered whether their dinner table chairs would hold my weight.
As if they hadnt shrunk away from my body when we sat together in a movie theater.
As if both of us werent intimately familiar with the breadth of me.
As if beauty had been my goal.
Of course, the friends and family who offer this reassurance dont intend to convey all of that.
But their limited imaginations of fatness and fat people betray them.
Regardless of their best intentions, this one small affirmation reveals so much about theirassumptions of fat people.
In their minds, the greatest rebuke to fatness is its supposed opposite: beauty.
They dont approach the conversation with curiosity.
They dont seek to clarify.
In their minds, my body is a disaster to escape.
So they rush in to rescue me from their imagined emergency.
