Taexalia

wild.life

The Big Issue

I am rich! I have ninety pounds more than I need to have! It's positively wonderful, isn't it?

You would think so, but no... or is that butt no?

You see my ninety extra pounds did not come from the surprise Paypal payout as eBay finally closed the doors on the much maligned seller rewards scheme... and I'm afraid I can't spend these pounds in any retail therapy exercise.

My ninety extra pounds are fat.

FAT.

That's right, FAT.

I can be anything I want to be, but if I am fat then I am also:

invisible
to be pitied
to be told "you're gorgeous really"
to be described as goddess shaped, voluptuous, obese, rounded, plus size, ugly, beefy, etc etc etc
unable to buy clothes that I like
someone who ate all the pies
thin on the inside
unable to control myself
thick skinned
the butt of jokes
the object of pitying glances and raised eyebrows
greedy
lazy
unattractive to men
unable to enjoy sex, or perhaps that is undeserving?

and so on and so forth.

Yes. I have committed the worst sin of womankind and failed to maintain the ideal weight. I am fat.

How I got to be fat is a long and convoluted story, and by long I mean decades. There is a picture of me when I was a bridesmaid at 18 where I look positively skinny - but I distinctly recall that I felt fat the whole day. I would post the picture but it is in storage.

Here is one from a couple of years earlier:

Teenage Taexalia

But in my mind I was fat fat fat.

When I look in the mirror today I see the fat person that has always been in my mind. It is like I self fulfilled my prophecy.

But my blood is boiling this week as I have been exposed to various things that all relate to women and fat. Some in the form of "meaningful commentary" in discussions and some in the form of the ridiculous way the media treats and portrays women.

I think that my blood began to simmer when I accidentally caught the tail end of an episode of America's Next Top Model. I can assure you that I did not intend to expose myself to such tripe, but I am now scarred for life. It turns out I caught the tail end of the series that concluded in February, better late than never I suppose.

What boiled my blood was that the winner, Whitney Thompson, was described as Plus Size. Now I am going to break my own rule and use a graphic that was not made/photographed/otherwise created by me to demonstrate why I thought about throwing my television out of the window:

A plus-size woman?

I am telling you I am plus-size and I do not look like this. If this is what women and girls are being told is a fat woman, then it is no surprise to me that we are living in an age where women and girls starve themselves, stick their fingers down their throats, abuse themselves mentally and physically and generally hate themselves and the way they look. I'm in the mental self despising brigade in case you are wondering.

It is de rigueur that I maintain a sense of humour about the way I look, not least because fat is one way in which women love to tear each other down with "jokes"... but I did genuinely giggle when I read the following whilst scoping out some blogs this morning:

I even once moved my scale around in the kitchen to see if there was a "sweet spot" that gave me some signs for optimism.

I have actually found the spot in my hall that reduces my body bank balance by 0.2lbs.