A change in the beholder’s eye August 2, 2009

In February of 2007 I bought my first home. I love it. It was built in 1949 and it only had one owner before me. It is built like a fortress and is perched on top of a hill that gives me a fantastic view of the neighborhood and the trees beyond. I can see the fireworks from the city baseball stadium from my bedroom window. It is a tiny dollhouse of a place and it is perfect for me, in all but one way. Closet space.

I guess in the 40’s people didn’t have very many clothes, because the closets in this house are abysmally teeny. So, among the first things I did when I moved in was convert the office off the living room into a closet. I have no need of an office — my laptop lives mostly in my lap, and goodness knows I needed the closet space. I have a lot of clothes. Of 180 school days last year, I only repeated an outfit maybe 30 times, and that was mostly due to 6am-I-just-need-to-get-to-work-I-don’t-care-what-I-wear-this-early laziness. I have, on occasion, entertained a bit of guilt over the volume of clothes I own, but I figure that everyone has their thing — some people have dogs, some race cars, some produce offspring — I dance and play with clothes. Now I have a fantastic 10×6 closet.

Now for the shameful confession portion of this post — I moved 30 months ago and I still have unpacked boxes. A lot of them, actually. I am ridiculously lazy, and I have wondrous don’t wanna do it skills. Tonight I got inspired to unpack some boxes, namely the ones full of clothes still sitting in my closet. If I haven’t worn it in 2 1/2 years, I probably need to rid myself of it, right?

Mostly right, as it turns out. I now have a huge pile of clothes to give away, but I did manage to find a few things that I had been looking for or wondering about, and a few more things I had completely forgotten about but fell back in love with as soon as I saw them.

The past few years have involved some pretty profound changes for me, not the least of which are a major shift in how I see myself and how I feel about my body. There were quite a few things I tried on tonight that didn’t fit, and quite a lot that I can remember buying as “motivation” items — that thing so many of us do where we buy something too small as an incentive to lose weight, as if we aren’t good enough for pretty clothes as we are right now, but we can earn that right by being thinner. Such disordered, destructive behavior, that. There were also, sadly, quite a few things I bought because I loved them but never wore because of shame — not shame about the clothes, but shame about the body wearing them.

The whole unpacking-sorting-clothes process involved quite a bit of trying on, which any woman, fat or thin, can tell you can be a harrowing experience. We are all so disposed to blame our bodies when clothes don’t fit, instead of just moving on to another item. That’s why I was surprised to find that this evening’s clothes-fest was not only remarkably sane (no crying, no self-recrimination, no shame), it was actually fun. I have some awesome clothes y’all, and the whole process made me excited at the prospect of a new school year and a new 180 days to try and not repeat an outfit. I looked at myself in some of those things I was so ashamed about long ago and thought, “damn, that looks awesome!” Here’s the kicker — I am fatter now than I was when I bought a lot of that stuff. Not a lot fatter, they still fit, but fatter nonetheless. Sane, happy clothes trying-on. Who knew such a thing existed?

There is one discouraging thing though. Now I have to go put all my re-found beautiful clothes away. Wonder how I can put that off?

In which I learn a vital, if painful, lesson. February 1, 2009

I recently spent some time engaged in what I will politely call a discussion in the comment thread for an article in a British Magazine.   The article was about a recent finding in obesity research, and the comment thread was, to quote Motormouth Maybelle, “a whole lotta ugly comin’ at you from a never-ending parade of stupid”.

Actually, it was more than that.  It was raw, undiluted hate.  And it made me sick.

I guess I have lived in a bubble.  I am white, middle class, and college educated.  I have lived a life of privilege, and I can’t pretend that it has been anything else.  I have encountered my fair share of people who dislike me, and endured the same asshattery as any other person on the planet, plus I live in the South, so I have seen more than my share of racism, but I had never experienced anything quite like this.

I am not going to go into details, and I am not going to link to the article, because I would hate for any of my readers to get a concussion banging their head against their desk.  I will just tell you that people said, over and over again, in a variety of words that all mean the same thing, that fat people are stupid.  ALL fat people are stupid.  And they are liars.  ALL liars.  That they are delusional, that they are lazy, that they are a plague on society.  One guy said that if he ever had kids he would not allow them to play with fat kids.  One guy said twice that the person who wrote the article could not be believed because “she’s on of the obese” and that no matter what one of “the obese” writes about or what she says, it is wrong.  Once I actually got involved in the conversation those insults went from the general to the specific.   Strangers, people who have never met me or spoken to me, told me over and over and over that I was stupid, and deluded, and lying, simply because I am fat.   When it became clear that I refused to buy into their bullshit and that I was not a good little self-hating fatty, things got even more vicious.  I won’t lie, I was not always pleasant myself, I can throw around some serious sarcasm when I want to.  But I was responding to individual asshats — they had judged me to be inferior before I even stepped on the scene.

Hate is a strange thing.  It’s so completely irrational.  It is a waste of time to try to reason with it, and yet that very fact makes me want to try.  I can’t understand its blindness.  I can’t understand how some one can look at an individual and see only one characteristic about them and hate them for it.  The ratio of adipose to muscle tissue in my body has no bearing whatsoever on my intelligence, or my ability to reason, or on my value as a human being, but to those people, it didn’t matter who I was orwhat I did, all that mattered was that particular characteristic.

I don’t regret the experience I had.  It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t fun, but it was important.  I learned that I am stronger and more resilient than I thought I was.  I learned that what I claim to believe really is what I believe, even in the face of violent opposition.  I gained some empathy for those who have to deal with this irrational hate every day, directed at skin color or sexual orientation or religion or any of the million other things people find to blindly despise.  But I  have to grieve a little for lost innocence.  Naivete is never a good thing, but it’s loss is painful.

So thanks, all you who participated in that thread.  I have taken your hate and turned it into good, and I will pray that sometime you can do the same.

In which I identify with someone from THAT show. January 13, 2009

Thanks to the miracle of DVR, tonight I was watching last night’s Superstars of Dance (it’s nice that way, you can skip some of the prattle).  Usually I fast forward over commercials, but I got distracted and let them run.  I happened to catch an ad for The Biggest Loser.

Understand, I am not a fan.  I’ve never watched, I’ve never wanted to.   I think its premise is inherently flawed in a thousand different ways.  As a fat acceptance activist, I abhor the message it sends, I abhor its focus on pounds lost vs measurement of actual improvement or decline in health, I abhor the way it is marketed, reinforcing every fat person sterotype and misconception in the fat hater book.  I resent the whole “saving their lives” bullshit.  But this particular commercial caught my attention, because the girl in it…

well…

she was ME.

Obviously she is not really me, I am at home watching Superstars of Dance, not hanging out on the Biggest Loser Fatfarm O’ Doom ™.  But the similarities were striking.  She looked about my age, maybe a little younger.  Her face was shaped like mine.  I’ve had her haircut, and her hair color.  And when the commercial cut to the weigh-in shot and I saw her in the requisite BLFfO’D sports bra and spandex shorts, the starting weight was pretty damn close to what I weighed the last time I was placed on a doctor’s scale, and her body looked eerily familiar.  Her belly and mine share the same curves.  Her breasts were shaped like mine.  Her hips and thighs would have fit beautifully into the pants I wore to work today, and although I did not see her behind, I am guessing that she too could rock a good booty shake.

It was, to say the least, shocking.

This is the point in the post where I am supposed to start talking about what a wake-up call it was to see something like that, and how now I am all inspired to work really hard to drop all that weight, because OMG I can’t believe I really look like that.  But I am not going to.

I was inspired by seeing her.  I was inspired, because I looked at her and thought “wow, she’s beautiful“.  And that, my friends, is revolutionary.

She made me sad, sitting there crying about how no guy has asked for her number in 3 years.  While I can definitely sympathize with how she is feeling, more than anything I wanted to tell her that if that’s the case, then getting thin is maybe not the answer.  Maybe she’s hanging around the wrong kind of guy, the kind that is more concerned with the size of your ass than the light in your eyes.  Maybe now is a good time to learn how to be alone, and be happy.  Maybe it’s just not the right time.

Thanks to her, I am inspired.  I am now inspired to bare my belly when I bellydance.  I am inspired to continue on with my life the way I am right now, being alone and happy, refusing to worry about my singleness, and leaving my future up to a Power greater than myself.  I am inspired to embrace every ounce of my body, to love the curve of my belly, and the heft of my breasts, and even that beautiful booty.  I am inspired to save my life by living my life, and not spending one more damn second worrying about my weight.  I think that makes me the biggest winner.

Worth breaking the silence. November 21, 2008

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.

To Write Love On Her Arms

My people will never be put to shame. January 24, 2008

When I was about 12 I went on vacation with my mother and sister and another family. The other family had a son, the son brought a friend, and both boys discovered a fun game that week: torment the fat girl. I don’t need to explain the game, every person who didn’t grow up on a deserted island has either played or been a victim, or maybe both. That week they were vicious, and the message was obvious; that I was not worthy of even basic human dignity or respect because I was fat.

I have a very distinct memory from that trip of sitting in a restaurant shortly before we were supposed to go home. I am sure it was a good restaurant — it was Hilton Head, after all, and the people we were with had expensive tastes — but I don’t remember what I ordered. All I remember is sitting at the end of the table trying desperately to look like I was eating so no one would pay any attention to me, possessed of the absolute certainty that if I put so much as one bite of that salad in my mouth that I would throw up. I remember being beyond tears at that point. I remember shame. Worst of all, I remember thinking that I deserved it.

In differing degrees, shame is a part of every fat person’s experience. There are messages everywhere screaming OMG TEH FATZ IS EEEEEEEEEVIIIIIIIILLLLLL and it is impossible to screen out every one of those messages, particularly when you are a child. When no one ever tells you those messages are bad, or worse, when the people you most love and trust reinforce those messages, they become internalized to the point where they become personal truth, and it is nearly impossible to conceptualize of anything else.

I am currently wrestling with a pursuit of truth, not just in the arena of body acceptance, but in many other areas of my life, and in that pursuit I discovered something yesterday. It’s in the book of Joel, one of those minor prophets that most people, even those of us who went to Christian college, forget even exist. Joel 2:26 says

“You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied
And praise the name of the LORD your God,
Who has dealt wondrously with you;
Then My people will never be put to shame.”

Maybe this is a radical interpretation of the text, or maybe this is just what the verse says to me right this minute, but it seems to me that God is not so much a fan of starvation OR shame, and is pretty much about eradicating both.

Today I wanted hot fries. I rarely eat them, but for some reason they looked really good to me today. I started to do the rationalizing mental dance in front of the vending machine, thinking how I didn’t really need hot fries, maybe some nice fruit would be better, how bad I would feel if I ate them, what if someone found out I ate them, blah blah blah, all those old lies that come along with the shame of being a fat person in a thin obsessed Calvinist food-as-sin culture. But then I realized, if I want hot fries, I can eat hot fries.

I am not ashamed to say they were delicious.

To make a perfect heart December 28, 2007

Begin with an amorphous mass. Rough wool may be hard to work with, but it will create a sturdier piece. As flimsy and disconnected as it may seem, you must tear it apart before you can put it together. Pull the fibers from one another, and feel the wool. Rub it between your hands and wonder at its texture. Think about those things, all those moments in your past that tore at you, the ones you thought you would never survive. Lay the fibers in layers, lying in different directions, and consider the parts of you that no one sees, the gifts you only use in anonymity. Take your needle and pierce the layers, again and again and again. Your arm may begin to ache, but you will forget about it when you begin to see those disconnected strands coalesce. Add more layers and be amazed at how something so flimsy can become so solid. Let the shape of the piece emerge; trying to exert too much control will only create frustration. Move your needle around the piece, not to create the shape, but to bring it to life. Be cautious, but not afraid of the needle — you may prick your finger, but that same dangerous point is necessary to make those many fibers into one. Realize that pain is inseperable from beauty. Once your shape has emerged, add colors as they please your eye, not anyone else’s. Use your fine needle to make patterns, and layer the colors to create new ones. Twirl the wool to make designs. Stop to hold it in your hand and really look at it, not to criticise, just to drink it in. Understand it may never be complete, but that its very incompleteness is fundamental to its nature.

Above all, remember that a perfect heart is never what you thought it would be.

Thankful November 4, 2007

Years ago I sat in a car with her and held her hand and prayed. I don’t remember the date, but I do remember her tears, and her fear that her most cherished dream would never be realized. Infertility is so cruel that even the fear of it is daunting. Afraid that she would never have children, afraid that the mistakes of her past had destroyed her future, afraid that she would spend her life wanting, she still had enough faith to pray. I often wonder if my faith is that strong.

Years later, in her living room surrounded by women, I prayed again, this time for the child whose presence in her womb had been met with such joy and then such pain. A week of waiting and weeping and wondering if the child was still there, if the God who had given would also take away. A week out of time, when once again I marveled at her faith in the face of such fear.

Tonight I sat in a different living room with her and touched her growing belly while her daughter ate cheerios off the floor and turned the pages of her new books. I ate a cupcake and celery sticks and again marveled, not only at her faith, but at the fruit it had borne, and wondered again if my faith is that strong; strong enough to wait and see if the dreams stay dreams or if they really come true. Strong enough to accept new dreams.

Happy Birthday Chloe. May you have your mother’s faith, the faith that can move mountains.

A Change of Lens October 5, 2007

Across the street from the house where I grew up there is a horse farm, and directly across the street from the driveway is a grove of trees.  Every day for years and years I stood in the driveway waiting for the bus and looked over at those trees, and the horses that meandered in and out between them.  I spent many, many hours looking at those trees.   I remember distinctly the day I saw individual leaves.

 

Previous to that point I did not know what I was missing.  I was used to seeing a mass of green with no distinction, and the appearance of individual sharp edges was a revelation to my 4^th grade mind.  Even today I sometimes marvel at leaves, at such a mass of color made up of thousands of individual little parts.

 

What changed?  I got glasses.

 

It’s funny how two pieces of concave plastic on frames can change a perspective.  Suddenly objects lacking distinction come into focus, and items previously unnoticed become significant.  It can be almost disturbing to realize how previously skewed our perception of the world was when everything comes clear.

 

I have realized of late how often I view life though the wrong lens.  This time it is not my myopic eyes that are causing the problem, it is my myopic heart.  When I value the wrong thing, or let myself become entangled in selfishness and pride, my perception becomes more and more twisted and I begin to see reality as if in a funhouse mirror.   

 

I think that is scariest danger in sin.  Not just the damage it does to others, or the damage it does to ourselves, but the way it skews and twists our view of reality until it becomes virtually unrecognizable, and we are trapped in a false universe of our own making, or the making of those around us whose view is equally distorted.  It is much harder to learn to see things clearly than to slide into myopia, and there is only one lens through which we can truly see the real world as it is.  It is unfortunate that the church, the intended purveyor of true vision, is often too caught up in its own agenda to help people learn to see – instead, they teach people to trade one pair of cloudy glasses for another.

 

I pray that just like that day when I saw the leaves for the first time, God would teach me to see with His lens, and that as I see clearly, my wonder would never cease to increase.

Filling in the spaces October 2, 2007

Saturday night I went to see Derek Webb in concert.  To be perfectly honest, before last week I had not even heard of Derek Webb, but my friend Brian was opening for him and I went to hear Brian.   I would have gone even if he was terrible, because I think it is important for artists to support one another.  Fortunately, he is awesome, and I love his music and his lyrics, so it was no great hardship to go.

 

The whole concert experience was pretty thought-provoking, but not altogether in ways I would have anticipated.  I went with a girl I really enjoy but whom I don’t know very well – I am trying to be more deliberate about spending time with the people I care about, and this was a perfect opportunity.  I had dinner with she and her roommates, and then we went along to the show.  All three of the girls are significantly younger than me, which usually is not an issue, but that night somehow I felt…old.  Out of place.  Even though the concert was held at my alma mater, it felt like lifetimes had passed since I had been there, or as if my time there was a part of another life.  It was time out of time, and my discomfort was pronounced.  Standing in line surrounded by 20-somethings (and younger) I saw clearly the difference between my life now and my life then.

 

I remember when I was one of those 20-somethings, when life was both easier and more difficult than I had ever imagined when my friends were all important and a weekend was wasted without some sort of excitement.  I remember Sunday nights watching the X-files with a basement full of people, hoping desperately that a certain one of them would look my way and dreading that he never would.  I remember long, earnest conversations about God and life and boys and God again, and how we all took ourselves very, very seriously. 

 

Saturday night I ran into the owner of that basement where I watched the X-files so long ago, eight years since the last time we spoke.  We both had changed – my hair has evolved (several times) and I dress better now, he’s a little heavier and has grown facial hair, but seeing him made me remember those late nights and those days, heavy with anticipation.  Until that moment I had forgotten about him, and his roommate, the subject of all those desperate longings, and in that moment I when I remembered, something inside me was healed.  I remember easily the pain of my past, but I tend to forget the spaces of mundane time that dominate real life.  I am thankful for the mundane time.

Freedom…or not? September 28, 2007

I’ve been thinking about freedom.

The idea of freedom is generally pretty important to Americans. We like to talk about how free we are, how we’ve cornered the market on liberty, and how we are fighting, right now, as we speak, for the freedom of others.

Ironic, considering how enslaved we are.

A few days ago I overheard a couple of students talking about their hair, and how unhappy they were with it, and how they needed to get it straightened. Last night, reading a message board, I saw women comparing themselves with other women’s cleaning habits, and berating themselves for being terrible people because they didn’t mop as often as the last person. Every we are judged, often not on our skills, or personality, but on the size of our body, the label on our jeans, or the potential profit we offer our judge. This is not freedom.

Worse yet is the bondage we place upon ourselves; we are never good enough, cool enough, talented enough, or pretty enough to meet the standards that exist in our own mind, standards whose origins we ourselves can’t, or won’t unearth. Who, after all, wants to admit at 25, or 35, or 52 or 70 that he is still haunted and driven by the voice of a long gone critical teacher, or that every day she goes through personal rituals she hates, simply because that’s what her mother told her was done? Who is willing to be the contradictory whisper among all the shouting, the one who admits that she is not as free as everyone seems to think she should be?

I have spent my life in bondage, enslaved to a past I could not control and a future that loomed dark. I have spent my life desperately serving my need to control the world around me. I have been my own marionette, mercilessly yanking my own strings to fulfill some undefinable need, and sinking farther and farther into despair with every pull.

No more.

On April 23, 2007, on the floor of a friend’s apartment, I was set free.

This is my story.