fat woman walking

[lapietra]

I just got back from a nice, refreshing walk in the brisk night air. Nothing especially eventful happened; I have a regular route that I walk (when I'm inclined to do so - I also go through phases when I do step aerobics or just crazy dancing - a la ze - in the living room - freaks the cats out mightily) that increases its orbit as I get in better shape - but always includes a couple of nice challenging grades. It's my first walk in a while, so I puffed and blew a bit, but it was overall a pleasant experience. Los Feliz is a pretty nice place to walk. But it's also fraught with danger - not usually from anything exterior, since my surrounding neighborhood is sufficiently patrolled by the local police. The danger is generated by me, my imagination, my memory of past insults and unkind behavior, the kind that makes a walk like this a personal act of courage and steely determination.

Like many people, I've struggled with my weight my entire life. I wasn't an especially heavy child (I was an avid swimmer in my early childhood, and loved to run and run - still remember the feeling of my legs kicking up in back of me), but as I got older, for various reasons, I began to carry an above-average amount of chunk. Back then, it wasn't very much, but it was enough, combined with my tendency to be sedentary (I love to read; excelled at it at an early age, and tended to prefer the worlds and characters in my books to the world around me), to invite a few teasing comments from unkind peers in my early teen years, and more than a few obsessive attempts by my first stepmother to put me on various freaky diets (which I now know did much more harm than good). I finally took matters into my own hands in the summer following my sophomore year in high school, and dieted and exercised manically to the point where I looked so different, I caused possibly a record number of double-takes from people (especially boys) who had never noticed me before. I became addicted to the attention, but wasn't emotionally ready for it - attention equalled love to me then (now, too, I'm ashamed to admit); no matter that it was all only about an attraction to my exterior with no interest in my intelligence, my inner dream world, the person I was underneath the lithe and tanned exterior I began to display to the world. And that person was no different than the heavier one; I think that's why I've always been bewildered when men are attracted to me - happy, but bewildered, and certainly distrustful - how am I so very different? How is it that the thin me is so much more valuable than the heavy me? Because it seems to be true...

When I'm thin, I'm a goddess; I am celebrated, I am courted, I am seduced. I am complimented and flattered; I am wined and dined; I am offered visits to go sailing on yachts and invitations to partake of various expensive narcotic substances in long shiny limousines; I am encouraged to have my body treated to sublime pleasures. People listen to me. Shopkeepers give me free stuff and flirt with me outrageously. Add a few pounds to my frame, and I am mostly ignored. Add a few more, and I am vilified. I am insulted, both personally and by the world I live in via the miracle of mass media and endless personal ads requiring that only the slender need respond. I become a member of a group of humans who are largely considered to be lazy, stupid, greedy, vulgar, gross and disgusting; or, at the very least, inconvenient and pathetic. Certainly not worthy of love, or being taken seriously. Yes, we have Cameron Mannheim; we have Queen Latifa and Star Williams; we have Mode Magazine and Lane Bryant. But we're a long, long way from a world without "No Fat Chicks!" stickers or people who yell "Save the Whales!" at the slightly dumpy but pretty woman bicycling to work early one morning, faster than the buses and traffic on Hollywood Boulevard, enjoying the feeling of wind on her face until the words cut through the morning air, and her face becomes wet with tears.

I kept the weight off for a number of years; in fact, flirted with anorexia in my first year of college - and finally settled into my current pattern of successful concentrated weight-loss campaigns, followed by unsuccessful relationships with sexually fascinating but ultimately shallow and immature men, followed by a descent into disappointment, Drew Carey reruns and a love affair with All Things Creamy. Of course, I eventually always pick myself up by my bootstraps and haul my butt out the door to begin walking off my layers of insulation. But I'm always apprehensive; always hyperaware of the people around me, the cars; any moment a window might open, a randomly violent comment flung from within, and I will be left to process it, like a boxer absorbing a punch. I practice comebacks: "Yeah? Well, you're ugly - and I can lose weight!!!" and try to think what to do if that provokes a physical attack; I generate an inner dialogue of supportive comments such as "This is as hard as it will be; next time it won't be so hard; just keep it up; this is the only way it's going to come off..." and I get through it. I come home, do a few celebratory situps, and enjoy that serene glow that comes after completing a vigorous activity...knowing that tomorrow I have to go out there again, the trenches, my personal battle, not just against The Bulge, but against a lifetime of living in a world that seems to need scapegoats desperately. Never mind guns; words do plenty.

It would be hypocritical of me to leave a reader with the impression that I'm personally free of this prejudice - unfortunately, I find myself judging others by the same standards that have been imposed on me. I think this may be the saddest part - not only do I tend to think of myself in the same terms I imagine I'm being judged, but I often unconsciously judge other overweight people by those terms. These terms are poisonous, just as derogatory words directed at people of different ethnic groups poison that culture - I don't care if that group of people takes a word (you know which one I'm talking about) and tries to turn it around, make it theirs, transform it into a word of power. It's still an ugly word, and it isn't a word that should be used among people that love each other and themselves. It's a word that should never have been created. But there it is, like a pile of excrement, to be flung by the next vicious chuckleheaded perpetrator looking for a weapon. How convenient that someone provided it for them.

So what's to be done? I don't have any answers. For me the solution is to shove my feet in my cross-trainers and trudge out the door in search of my society's approval, hoping that this time I haven't waited too long, that age and gravity haven't finally made it impossible for me to regain my proportional shape, pert bust, small waist and smoothly curving posterior - my all-important shield against the painful rocks of indifference and discourtesy I will otherwise encounter, my calling card into an illusory world of acceptance and appreciation.

Maybe I just need to get away from L. A.

Heh.