The Fatslayer Chronicles

I’ve been thinking a lot about my last post – and the thoughtful comments it generated – and having analysed my ambivalence some more, I have to admit that in part at least it’s down to old fashioned sour-grapes and jealousy.

Seeing those women acting so confidently makes me uncomfortably aware that I’m one of those overweight people who have allowed their weight to blight their lives.

I’ve not agonised over it constantly, or allowed my feelings of bodily dissatisfaction to metamorphose into self-loathing, but I’d be lying if I said that in a million and one small ways it hadn’t affected how I’ve conducted myself since very early childhood.

In my family weight defines whether you’re good or bad, attractive or ugly, a success or failure – everything is measured against it. I realised this, and internalised it, from a really early age.

I loved sports and dancing when I was a very young child, but as I became increasingly aware of maternal disapproval of my size, I gradually became more and more of a wallflower. Then the shyness and self-consciousness spread into other areas, until there were clothes that I would feel uncomfortable wearing (sleeveless, clingy, revealing etc), places I would feel uncomfortable going (nightclubs, parties, holiday resorts etc), things that I would feel uncomfortable doing (flirting, dancing, water sports etc)….and so on and so on.

I’ve never been uninhibited and unabashed and carefree when it comes to size. I’ve always been aware of feeling unattractive, undesirable – almost unworthy in some fundamental way because of it.

So when I see a whole new generation of young women acting as if they’re large and proud of it, it stirs up some uncomfortable feelings. Feelings of frustration and annoyance against myself, mainly. I see them enjoying themselves and having fun, and I get angry at myself for having spent my life being so damn hung up on shallow trivialities like what people (strangers!) were thinking about me. I just wish I hadn’t cared so bloody much, and then maybe I wouldn’t have let so many opportunities pass me by.

When I think of the summers I’ve wasted being hot and miserable because I wouldn’t dare wear gauzy sleeveless blouses or go swimming or wear shorts I could scream. So maybe to some people I’d have been an eyesore, but I’d have been a hell of a lot more comfortable. Why did I give those people so much power over me, and why did (does!) it bother me so much whether I gain their approval or not?

K’s mom is a lovely woman, who I love and admire with all my heart, but she has one flaw, and that is her predisposition to judge everyone – but particularly women – by their appearance. I’ve always deplored this tendency in her to determine a woman’s merits by the amount of designer labels she owns or by how slim and attractive she is, but I’ve always cut her some slack because I think that’s the sort of trivial worldview you develop when you’ve owned designer boutiques your whole working life and have steeped yourself in the covers of Vogue.

But really, when I come to think of it, I censure myself just as much as K’s mom censures other women. I rule myself with a rod of iron, and am not only my own worst critic but also my own judge, jury and jailer.

I’ve imprisoned myself my whole life in a restricting web of what I’ve judged acceptable for a fat woman to do and wear. I can’t blame anyone else - I robbed myself of all those opportunities, and that’s a hard pill to swallow.

So yes, when I see fat young women letting it all hang out, I have ambivalent feelings. Part of me exults in their freedom and wishes I was like them, but another (nasty) part of me wants to see their spirit broken so that they become like me and don’t act as reminders that things could have been different if I’d just had more courage.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s hugely important if I’m ever to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming a nice person that I don’t let the sour-grapes side have the upper hand. Surely the goal is to break the bars of my own prison, not wish there were more inmates incarcerated alongside me!