I. Was. Un. Happy! For so much of my life! I hated everything about myself. Look at this little girl. She is miserable.
I would frequently be told things like: “You’re going to lose a bunch of weight one day and be so beautiful.” “Don’t you want a boyfriend? No one is ever going to want you when you’re this size.” I was called fat over and over and over in elementary and middle school. Every cool actress and model was super thin. Fat people were ridiculed and tormented for their size. Everywhere I looked everything around me drilled into my head that I was worthless fat. I needed to lose weight and then my life would begin. No one would love me or like me until I changed who I was.
So many fat people have these experiences and they start having them from a very young age. Yes, everyone has insecurities, but not everyone deals with the unrelenting torture that fat people face. Every experience I had reinforced that I was different and that I was wrong.
My uniforms were long and the sleeves were big, while all the other thin girls were in short little dresses and their sleeves were small and cute. It reinforced that I would always be "other". Girls would laugh and make fun of my knee pads at volleyball practices because they were tight around my legs and they thought it was funny that my thighs were so big. My body would be fair game for strange men to discuss on the bus when I was a freshman in High School. "Would you fuck her? I like them big like her but you like them thin, huh? Hahaha yeah, I knew you wouldn't want her. She's too fat for you. You like hot girls."
People cringe when they have to sit next to me on the bus or on a plane. People who barely know me have constantly wanted to discuss my health because they are "concerned". Boys throughout my life have been embarrassed that I had a crush on them, because what does it say about them that the fat girl likes them? Boys in High School and College who were attracted to me wanted to keep our dating a secret. I wouldn't impress their friends and I would make it seem like they couldn't get anyone better. I would try on clothes and weep in the dressing room when nothing even barely fit. I was relegated to playing old Aunts, men, or ugly mean people in plays because that's what fat girls were allowed to be.
There are so many other little examples of how every single day of our lives fat people are told over and over and over again that we are pieces of shit. Worthless. Fat people in our society are demonized. No one is ever actually concerned about my health, no one is ever actually saying any of these things for my benefit, they just hate me. They hate having to look at my body.
What would have helped me combat this hate when I was young? Even just one positive fat role model. An actress who was big and who everyone thought was cool. Who played roles that were hot and confident and fun, and who could be that in real life in interviews too. Growing up there was no one who looked like me who I could relate to in a positive way. Fat characters either have to cry about wanting to lose weight or be a punchline.
If I had seen the representation of one happy fat girl in my life who was portrayed as desirable it would have made a huge difference. It would have changed my life.
A new show for Netflix called “Insatiable” is making headlines because it reinforces a dangerous cliche for young fat people.
A girl is fat and unhappy in school. She is made fun of and bullied for her weight. Then she loses a bunch of weight over a summer and everyone now calls her “hot”. She exacts revenge on the people who made her life miserable. The actress who plays the formerly fat character wore a fat suit for those scenes....the lists of what’s harmful about this show just keeps going on and on.
This show exactly reinforces every negative media portrayal of fat people and shows exactly what the harmful stereotypes in media are. Like, it’s so bad it’s a wonder how it ever got made in 2018 in the first place. It sounds like a bad 80's movie.
Except for it's not actually a surprise. It's actually very common still in our culture. The ugly duckling gets revenge once she becomes conventionally attractive. But we shouldn't keep telling girls, and especially fat girls, that they need to change everything about themselves to be accepted. It's a lie sold to us for profit and I'm making it my mission to fight it.
I want to be an actress so that when a parent says to a fat young woman, "no one will ever love you when you're fat," she can look to me and the roles I play and be able to say back, "you're wrong".
She will have better representation to look to for support than a thin actress in a fat suit for one episode. She will know she has worth and value now, not 40 pounds from now.
Little fat girls need actresses and characters that they can look up to. Let's do better and give them that.
