I'm going to try and get this out without being offensive.
I have, as of this writing, hugely internalised fatphobia. Over twenty years of sporadic abuse (even as I write that I keep looking up at the opening paragraph and cringing, but I'm trying to call a spade a spade even if it does sound a bit melodramatic) from my brothers, kids at school, friends and from myself has ingrained the notion that I'm a big heffalump and that my body is a giant slab of unwieldy pork.
As a kid, my brothers gave me shit for being a fatty long before I would ever be considered 'overweight' by whatever standard people might care to use. Having two garden rakes for siblings meant that, after my satellite dish ears got pinned back at the age of six, they had to come up with something to taunt me with, and so fatty it was. High school... well it's high school. If you don't leave with some kind of emotional trauma then you didn't do it right. By the time I was 18 I hated my body, which is a shame really because I didn't look all that bad underneath the dorky goth makeup.
Between 18 and 23 my weight ballooned until I was 140 kg. My self loathing grew in equal measure but weirdly it also seemed somehow right and fitting, because everything I'd been told was, well, now accurate. I'd alternate between getting hugely angry at myself for getting 'that way' and sinking into a black depression or even bursting into tears on occasion. Annah, my partner at the time, had to pry me out of my teeshirt with a crowbar; I almost never undressed in front of her for most of the 5 years we were together.
Soooo, most of you know the next bit, along comes the Diabeetus and suddenly it's lose weight or die/have my penis fall off. I took option B and quit the mountain dew and pies and took up occasionally regular exercise and over a few years I slimmed down. Cue success story pictures in Women's Weekly and writing the next best selling weight loss book and hanging out on the beach shirtless and tanned and having an amazing life.
...what actually happened is that all the bullshit in my head mostly stayed where it was and while I did things like sunbathe shirtless in Australia and wear singlets that, gasp, showed off all of my arms, nothing all that much changed on the inside. In fact in some ways that I'm just coming to appreciate it's almost worse because now I'm catching myself doing stupid things like checking myself in mirrors and looking down at my stomach when I'm sitting and still refusing, over my dead body in fact, to go swimming shirtless at the beach with friends.
I've told myself that I'll be happy when I've lost the 'final ten' that will put me down at a mean, lean 95 kg (there are All Blacks rugby players heavier than I currently am) and that with no gut or moobs I'll be free to prance about like a gazelle with just shorts to cover the essentials. But really that's bollocks. I can feel the fake smile I put on when Tamsyn tells me I look sexy or attractive. I get uncomfortable when people praise me over losing weight. I worry that it's never going to be enough, and in worrying I freeze up and stop taking the care of myself that the diabeetus demands.
As a male feminist who's blessed to have female friends smarter than myself, I can see the tie-in with the movement and fat acceptance. I'd like to think that I'm merely judging myself and not other people's weight. It could be that I'm capable of such heroic compartmentalisation, and I think in some ways that has indeed happened, but if I'm thinking less of my friends because of their body shape at even a subconscious level then I want to stop it.
What I want more than anything though is to be happy in my own skin, without having to make my skin into what I think it should look like. This is so mixed up with my health and the diabeetus and my own fucked up perceptions of what a sexy male is supposed to look like I hardly know where to start, though. Somewhere there's a balance between keeping my body functional and healthy, and accepting it for what it is. Damned if I know where that balance is, but I guess writing all this down might be some kind of start.
3 comments:
Hey --
Poke me about this when you're on? I know I'm a ladyperson but I'm going through the same thing.
Either the nostalgia vision is affecting me or I dont ever remember you being anywhere near a size which could be considered 'overweight'.
And goths are cool.
Hey man,
That was a really good post. Thanks for making it.
Some of your experience is similar to my own. I was fat enough to be "the fat kid" and got teased for that, and when I wasn't being teased I was still *feeling* like I could be teased.
I think I weigh about 105kgs now, and I feel pretty ok with my body. But the second I feel like I've put some weight on, or I see a photo of me that doesn't match with my perception of how I should look, or someone says something even slightly uncomplimentary about my body, it all comes back. There's this feeling of crushing shame, of worthlessnes, of guilt.
I think that feeling would exist no matter what I weighed, no matter what my body looked like. Being fat exists in the mind as much as in the body, I think. I could be some bronzed Adonis and still feel that fear of my own body.
Maybe I've managed to excise some of the worst of my fat-hatred when it comes to other people. Fat women for sure, I don't feel that kind of fear and disgust like I probably used to. I tend to be attracted to fat ladies more often than thin ones (which is its own complex thing).
Fat dudes not so much though. I find myself thinking all kinds of dumb shit about them, and have to consciously push those thoughts away. Maybe I'll be at peace with fat dudes when I'm at peace with myself?
Post a Comment