Let me tell you about one of the few memories I have from being around 9 or 10 years old. I remember this habit I had. I’d lie in bed, close my eyes, and pray to God -- begging him to make me skinny. I’d say, “Alright, God. When I open my eyes I’ll be skinny.” Every time I did this, I hoped it would somehow work. That somehow, God had listened to my prayers for once and transformed my body while my eyes were shut. It never happened, obviously. I’d open my eyes after giving God a reasonable 30 seconds to do his thing and my body would be exactly as I had remembered it. Why couldn’t he do me this one solid? Isn’t that the point of prayer?
The irony is I wasn’t even fat at that age, and yet, I was convinced I was. Even more so, I was absolutely terrified at the prospect of gaining more weight. I recall wearing long-sleeved t-shirts to hide the arm fat above my elbows. I remember forcing myself to jump rope after snacking because I needed to burn the calories I’d just ingested. I denied myself food as often as possible and as a result, developed an extremely severe case of constipation. I was a child, still in elementary school, with an eating disorder and no one in my family really knew. Fortunately, I snapped out of it on my own because it could have gotten much worse.
A few years later, as a freshman in high school, I actually became medically fat. My period stopped coming naturally, and I had gained weight quickly. I was diagnosed with a hormonal disorder called PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) at the age of 15 and was immediately started on a regular regimen of birth control pills. Until there is a more effective treatment or cure, I will probably take hormonal birth control for the rest of my life seeing that it’s the only thing that reliably regulates my hormones.
Now let me emphasize something important about PCOS. This condition was never clearly explained to me, nor was it taken seriously. It’s incredible to me how a disorder so prevalent in people with vulvas is still treated as if it’s nothing to worry about. Every doctor I’ve been to since diagnosis has spoken curtly of it. From the get-go, I was told to basically be on birth control for the rest of my life. That is, unless I “cure” it. Here’s the thing though, there is no widely accepted cure. Doctors would consistently tell me that losing weight is a potential treatment and not much else. And here’s the kicker, they know how difficult it is to lose weight with PCOS, but they never told me that to my face. With PCOS it’s easier to gain weight, and harder to lose it.
From this point on, weight loss was an actual burden I had to bear, and not losing weight directly meant I didn’t care about my health. From there, my mother turned my weight loss into her personal crusade. For the rest of my life, it will be about my health. An “acceptable” way to cover up the reality of the situation: fatphobia.
During these years, none of my friends were fat. They were thin, and dated other thin people. I often felt like the odd one out; always wondering when it would be my turn to talk about a guy flirting with me or sharing the funny details of a date I went on. But it didn’t happen all that much. When I started having one-night stands (in my early twenties), I still assumed that I was not their type physically. Hooking up with me was a fluke. I mean, I’d still try to date them, of course, but when I was inevitably rejected I felt instinctively it was because of my body. I mean, I was a really cool chick with a rockin’ personality so it couldn’t have been anything other than that, right? Right?
I strongly believed my fatness to be a deterrent to desirability. I quickly and easily concluded that my body was the problem because that’s what had been taught to me since birth. How else do you explain a child praying to God to make her thin? That’s not something you do as a fun game you play with yourself. That’s something you do because the media, friends, family, and even medical professionals instill the message that fat is bad. It’s ugly and it’s wrong. I wasn’t born feeling ugly. I was taught it.
Despite all that, in my early-to-mid 20s, I did grow a bit more self-confident. That is to say, I no longer thought of myself as ugly. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a pretty person with a flawed body. My body prevented me from seeing myself as anything more than cute. I didn’t think I was or could ever be hot. Being fat was my lot in life, and with that, I had to accept what that meant in terms of how I presented myself. During this period of my life, I was very particular about how I displayed my body. I tried to dress “cute” (or as cute as I felt my body type allowed). I never showed my stomach or wore tight clothing. Flowy skirts, dresses, and oversized shirts with leggings were my go-to. Of course, no matter how hard I tried to hide my fatness, it was ever-present and I never allowed myself to forget it either. I didn’t hate my body in the traditional sense – which is probably why it took me such a long time to understand my self-loathing. I blamed my fatness for my shitty dating life. I blamed my body for a lack of romantic interest and for preventing me from having a valid sexual identity. But, because I didn’t feel flat-out ugly, I didn’t properly register how much internalized fat-shaming I was still harboring.
Before I get too hard on myself, let me call out some shit I know to be fact. The reality is that some men did, undeniably, reject me because of my weight. Let’s not pretend that 23-year-old guys are anything but shallow, en masse, and especially young guys in the early aughts. College-aged men, circa 2008-2011, didn’t have body positivity memes buzzing around the zeitgeist like they do today. Even if they did, I doubt much would have changed. I think it probably still holds true that the average heterosexual man in his early twenties would not date a fat girl. Let’s face it, even the guys I put on a pedestal for being “not like that”... well, they were like that. Young, stuck-up, idiots. Women of the same age can be like this too, yes, I am fully aware. At the end of the day, young adults crave the same thing: approval.
Ultimately, what I really had to overcome was the desire to prove them wrong. I had to look inward and ask myself and myself only what needed to change. Was the immense effort required for me to lose weight while having PCOS worthwhile? Did I want to try to look like the girls I knew men were attracted to? Would doing so actually make me happier? I ultimately decided no, it would not. Obviously, this means I chose the path of self-actualization. I confronted my internalized fatphobia, and conquered it like a goddamn warrior queen! And it all happened really quickly, was super easy, and now requires zero ongoing maintenance. So, that’s that. Thanks for reading!
Just kidding, hehe. It’s been a battle. To this day it’s still a battle. But I keep fighting and in no small part because I realized that I was not alone in my struggle. The rise of the body positive movement on mainstream platforms, like Instagram, showed me that. For the first time, I saw other women embracing their bodies – bodies that looked like mine. A new world opened up to me which made clear that being both fat and sexy was possible.
So, once I knew I wanted to be part of the movement, I had to learn to forgive my body for its so-called detriments (not being able to regulate my hormones naturally). Then, I began thinking about my family. My mother gains weight the same way I do: around the midsection, stomach, and hips, primarily. My aunt — mom’s sister — has always struggled to maintain a thin body. My maternal grandmother has a similar body type too. Surprise, surprise: wider-hipped and with a round-stomach, one and all. And yet, despite the clear similarities, my weight and body have always been positioned as a problem in need of a solution. Rather than let our bodies exist as they are, my family chose to do what families do to women all over the world (but especially in Western culture): burden them with shame and guilt for simply being themselves. It was at that point I took it upon myself to unlearn the fatphobia present within my family, and to learn more about the beauty standards – not only that they exist, but why they exist and how they’re perpetuated.
Here’s the thing: Capitalism, rooted in misogyny and white supremacy, taught us to hate our bodies for being anything but thin. It beat us over the head with this knowledge for generations, and eventually, we stopped questioning where these body standards came from. We accept them and now dangerously conflate them to health and well-being because that’s what our capitalist structures want us to believe. The reality is, modern-day fatphobia originates from anti-Black racism. It’s rooted in early white colonizers pushing the narrative that Black women’s bodies are “thicker” and “fleshier”. Puritanical “values” sought to ensure thinness was the standard because fatness was associated with Black women. My summary of this history comes primarily from sociologist Sabrina Strings, author of an in-depth book on the subject, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia as well as this Bust article summarizing some key points from the book. Over time, beauty became a legitimate industry. A money-making entity profiting from women’s socially imposed insecurities. These forces do a damn good job of dictating what is and isn’t attractive.
Many of us don’t want to admit that not all our ideas and opinions are our own. We resist the reality that a large portion of what we believe is dictated to us by a formidable power structure. We are told by those in power that we must value a specific kind of beauty, philosophy, or behavior. This is then reinforced through social pressure and amplified in media. Humans are copycats, particularly in the early stages of growth and development. We do not generally think about why we hold our personal preferences. We, for the most part, are told what is good and what is bad and internalize these to be objective truths, without much critical introspection. By the time we develop tastes and preferences of our own, we are then still pressured to subdue or repress attraction to anything that doesn’t conform to social norms. Logically, this is the only way to explain the popularity of Ed Hardy shirts. We were all just pretending that was hot, while maybe only four people actually thought it looked good. The rest of us were teenagers who wanted a fake sleeve of tattoos hoping it would indicate to their strict, Jewish mothers that tattoos aren’t the end of the world. Okay, so maybe that example was just me, but you get my point, yeah? Everything we think we know, and love, is just an Ed Hardy shirt.
After the lessons and introspection came the most difficult task of all: showing the world my fatness. I knew I had the desire. The yearning to do so was there. I wanted to show my fat self, belly and all, without fear. Even though, initially, I did have a great amount of fear within me. Something I admire about myself is my ability to just fucking do it anyway. Fear and anxiety are a constant for me so might as well do the shit and keep experiencing feelings that are second-nature, right?
I started small, of course. If I remember correctly, it was a photo of me with shorts on. Short shorts. My shirt was tucked and my belly was hidden but for the first time ever I publicly showed off my self-described tree trunk legs. To my amazement, nothing happened. This is a good thing, by the way. I loved that nothing happened. It wasn’t a big deal to anyone but me. From there, the confidence grew inch by inch. I eventually posted a photo with my bare stomach out in the open. The caption was some joke calling my stomach “Tum Delonge” (yes I regret that). Again, it was not the end of the world. I was in my mid-twenties and finally feeling sexual. Soon, an onslaught of slutty, bare belly pics took over my Instagram account. It was terrifying, but also thrilling. Especially as a comedian. At that time, not many other comics were posting thirst traps. “Hot girl comedy” was yet a phrase to be coined, let’s put it that way. I was combining both of my worlds in a way that made me feel my most authentic but was still scary in terms of overall respectability (read my previous piece for more on that). But, I fucking did it anyway.
It was a process, but I was growing more confident in who I was and thus, less and less afraid. In 2017, I even wrote about my FUPA (look it up if you don’t know) for VICE that was coupled with photos of my bare belly out in the open. This was the first time I exposed myself in this way, on an actually huge platform, and not just to my Instagram followers. The negative public comments I feared in my initial stages of posting came to fruition, tenfold. By this time, though, I was genuinely unaffected by the unsolicited and bad opinions. A Christmas miracle! (Even though it was published in March and I’m Jewish).
Today, I can tell you with extreme confidence that I truly do love my body and this love from within has improved how others view and interact with me. My dating life got better, as did my sex life. Self-assuredness is what made a world of difference. More than struggling to conform to a body ideal ever could. I mean sure, I’m still dealing with a lot of bullshit on the romantic front, but I’m blaming my body less for that and men more. As I should be.
To put it simply, I love my fat. My actual body fat. I love seeing it jiggle and shift. I find myself intentionally moving my body in ways that make it sway and bounce. I’ll lie in bed and see my upper thighs’ widen as if spilling, and note to myself how gorgeous that looks. It’s enjoyable for me to hold and squeeze my own fat. It’s doubly enjoyable for me to feel my fat being held and squeezed by someone else. I revel in being squishy and soft, like a neurotic plush doll. I appreciate having a bounce in my step (even if it’s originating more from my stomach than my ass). Plain and simple, I love this flesh that others may deem as “excess” or “too much”. In fact, I love being too much in every sense and this is what body positivity is to me: loving all of me, a lot. I wanted to love my body, so I put in the work and changed my perspective, visually and emotionally.
I finally arrived at the point in my body’s journey where, instead of closing my eyes and silently praying to become someone else, I’m able to worship my body with eyes wide open.