In a fascinating illustration of simple physics, as Mom—or, as I liked to refer to her, my “TM,” for “Thin Mother”—dieted, I ate more. And as Mom criticized her body, her perfect shape, I began to notice my own imperfect one. I didn’t yet hold the deep-seated hatred of my body that would manifest in just a few years, but even as a little girl, I started to wonder why hers was hard and mine soft, her stomach flat and mine lumpy. I didn’t understand why she was seemingly satisfied eating a tiny, cardboard-encased diet TV dinner, while my robust blackened cheeseburger with steak fries, and canned peas with margarine (to get my veggies in), was never nearly enough. Add to that my inability to share a normal meal with Wayne, and, in retrospect, I can see the emergence of my convoluted relationship with food and my body. Eating became a private affair for me, as often as I could manage.
—
That was about the time that I began eating my bagged lunches in the privacy of a bathroom stall at school.
My TM always packed me little notes telling me she loved me and encouraging me to do well that day. And so my reassuring notes and I sat on the toilet lid while I ate our sandwich, which was generally filled with bologna as well as my beloved cheese. Many years later I learned that bologna is a product that the USDA insists must be “comminuted,” or reduced to minute particles, so that you can’t recognize the flecks of lard in it. You might as well call it “lard paste” and save the term “baloney” for the marketing that convinced my mom that this so-called food would give kids a healthy, compact meal when in fact it probably would have been nutritionally preferable to eat actual paste. But at the time, it was welcome company, comminuted or not.
As I became less the new kid and more just the different one, and my classmates reacted to my presence with a mix of acceptance (not to be confused with approval) and perplexity, I slowly left my shyness behind. By fourth grade, I spoke up when I had things to say. When a newer, younger girl was being teased on the playground, I screamed at the perpetrators and defiantly hung out with the new kid. She appreciated my effort to stand up for her, but soon enough realized that I was a pariah—not the girl you wanted to form your social circle around.
Once uncool, always uncool, and it seemed my reputation preceded me. I was already considered unworthy and unattractive. Damned was the dodgeball team that got me on it—I was their wart, and the other team brought attention to that fact whenever possible.
Food was my salvation and my companion. It was the piece of me that came along when I left Pumptown Corners for Anna Lane. It was an intimate extension of my thoughts, my moods, even my body—Smarties were commonly stuffed into the pockets of my bright orange Windbreaker, Twinkies in the small pocket of my backpack, Twizzlers slipped up my sleeves. Food was safely situated in the cabinets of my father’s house when I would sneak into the kitchen late at night. It was scrupulously stocked in the breadbox of my house on Anna Lane, where I could easily and quietly take my share, or more than my share. Food knew me, and knew it had a hold on me.
And in spite of everything else that I was unsure of—my burgeoning body, my unfamiliar family, my unseemly father, my damaged reputation—I knew food.
Oh, how preciously and precisely I knew food.
THREE
there are no small parts, only fat actors
I was seriously going to pee in my pants. Why did I have that extra Coke at lunch? Something had to be done, or my classmates would have an actual reason to make fun of me. I hesitantly raised my hand, asked to please be excused, then braced myself for the worst eight seconds of my day—the exact amount of time it took for me to walk from my desk to the classroom door.
I stood up, and the first of what would coincidentally be eight insults (one for each second it took me to get to the front) was hurled.
By Margaret. I should have known. Margaret was your classic definition of beautiful—a fact not lost on her, or on any other of my fifteen-year-old classmates. That day, it was she who started the coughing fit—a ritual my classmates reserved just for me—complete with a crescendo of fake throat-clearings that hid inside of them words and phrases like “Fatso,” “Fatty,” and “Fuck you.” Lizzie, Melinda, and Stacey quickly joined in, poorly disguising their insults (cough, cough, whale . . . cough, cough, pig). Everyone seemed to be in on it—except the teacher, that is, who ignored their taunting, which was easier for him than dealing with it. He kept his head down and his mouth shut as he reviewed the imminent homework assignment—and as I began my walk of shame to the front of the room to grab the bathroom key.
I pretended not to hear them. That was what I was supposed to do. I was still a good kid then, still played by the rules. The rules also said, in bold print, “Don’t cry in front of them,” and so I didn’t.
But inside I screamed. Inside, I took my oversized, underread history textbook and I smacked it clear across Margaret’s pretty, petite face.
I reached the front of the room, knowing that this was the moment I was the most exposed. My hair was in two French braids, and my long hippie skirt collected debris at the bottom. “Nice outfit,” remarked Sandra—her comment, though clearly sarcastic, was offered in a manner covert enough that it almost vaguely resembled kindness. I looked in her direction, caught a glimpse of her overeager pretend smile. And I thanked her.
—
By this point, my classmates had long before decided where I stood in the hierarchal order of desirability—namely, the bottom. My freckles had long diminished and my waistline expanded. My crooked bangs grew out and my outcast status settled in. Like other teenagers, I adored getting new outfits, and yet shopping had become a frustrating and disheartening activity. At size fourteen, standing at five foot two, for me the Juniors section was simply not an option.
Even though that was over twenty years ago, frustratingly, this kind of sizeism continues—alienating heftier girls (and women) by delegating them to the tent section of the department store, where the only “cute” things in their size are often the necklaces and espadrilles. At fifteen—and for a lot of my life—I didn’t even have the option of shopping in plus-size stores (and the clothes in the Misses department were more suited for the older ladies Grandma hung out with than for a teen like me). Like so many other girls and women, I was in the dreaded purgatory of an “in-between” size: too voluminous for Juniors, too small for Plus.
Not that my TM would have allowed me to set foot into the Plus department anyway.
We were at Menlo Park Mall when I tried. Though Mom’s department of choice for herself was, indeed, Juniors, she understood that my bulbous belly and watermelon-sized breasts were not going to fit into a trendy and figure-hugging slip dress anytime soon. Our shopping expeditions always started in Juniors anyway, which was due more to my own insistence than hers. Though I understood, on some level, that I was much larger than my waiflike, still-gangly peers, I still held out hope that my fatness was my mirror’s doing and did not reflect reality.
So Mom and I would venture to the Juniors section of Macy’s, where she would inevitably find an adorable, stylish, and arguably too-young-for-her skirt or sweater. I’d pout behind her on line at the checkout, popping bubble gum, staring at the square pattern on the floor, and hiding the sadness on my face with my very long black hair and feigned blasé attitude.
It was one particularly rainy day—I remember that because my raincoat refused to button in the front—when, after Mom’s Juniors expedition during a trip to the mall, I noticed a glimmer of hope in the window of Lane Bryant. Lane Bryant was the all-plus-size, all-the-time haven for the humongous among us—a store I had never even noticed before, except for the fact that I regularly passed it on the way to Cinnabon.
For some reason, on this rainy day when my sweatshirt was soaked down the middle, it held my gaze, slowing my pace and quickening my heartbeat. Mom, holding her crisp brown Macy’s bag, stopped walking a few steps in front of me when she realized I was distr
acted by something.
I stared into the store window. The first thing I noticed was that Lane Bryant featured thicker mannequins than its neighbor, the Gap. The second thing I noticed was that those mannequins were wearing slip dresses and short denim vests—exactly the wardrobe popular at my high school, and at virtually every other high school in the United States in 1994.
I looked around to make sure that nobody from my school was nearby. I didn’t want to be seen, maybe not even by myself. When the coast was clear, I gathered up my resolve and quickly asked the question that was burning on my tongue. “Mom, can I go in here?”
My TM looked up and saw the store I was referring to—Lane Bryant. A store for fat people, not for your teenage daughter. (Well, not for her teenage daughter.) She tried to speak, then choked a little on her saliva—elongating the moment even more. Finally, when she could speak, she said, “Jazz, you’re not going to find anything there.” Her gaze was still fixed on the store sign—she was clearly a little horrified.
I looked back at the mannequins. I imagined myself wearing those clothes, and again, I felt like maybe I should at least try. They were so much more in style than my hippie skirts and big sweatshirts. But Mom’s reaction hit me in the gut, because even though all she said was that those clothes wouldn’t work for me, she couldn’t disguise the curtness and the lack of enthusiasm in her tone.
Perhaps she meant for me to hear it. I’m sure that my chubbiness was terrifying to her. She didn’t know where to put it, how to rationalize it, or how to fix it. She had been trying time and time again to get me to shed pounds—often bringing me with her to her Weight Watchers meetings or feeding me diet shakes and fat-free frozen meals that tasted about as good as you’d imagine. Her attempts at getting me to lose weight sometimes worked, and I plodded through my teen years in a constant cycle of chubby, chubbier, and fat, then back again. Of course I wanted these dieting forays to stick, too. I saw my body as an annoying roadblock that was getting in the way of the rest of my life. But, much like the Juniors clothes I attempted to squish into, nothing I tried seemed to work.
The Lane Bryant sign in front of me seemed to glisten. “Just . . . a real quick look?” I asked again as I shifted my weight from left to right, left to right—and Mom finally relented, dismissively saying that she’d wait on the bench outside the store.
But it turned out she was right. The clothes didn’t fit me. Though the store did indeed carry a size fourteen, the clothes were built for a shape different from mine. The jeans had extra space beneath the waist; the dresses were roomier in the shoulders and armpits. They fit me, but didn’t. I wasn’t plus sized, but I wasn’t regular sized, either. I was the perfect size for the oft-forgotten make-your-own-fucking-clothes demographic.
Mom seemed to be relieved that Lane Bryant did not work for her floundering daughter; which isn’t to say she didn’t understand my extreme frustration. She was certainly capable of being empathic, and she understood—probably more than most—the dire importance of looking good. When I left the store empty-handed and joined her on the bench, she looked at me kindly and delicately moved a strand of hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, meaning it. Despite her ambivalence about her kid venturing into the world of plus sizes, she wanted nothing more than for me to be happy, comfortable, and maybe a little bit more ordinary.
Thankfully, in the early and mid-1990s, wide-legged, elastic-waist palazzo pants were in style, probably because I and I alone kept up the demand. Pair them with an oversized sweater, and you’ve got yourself a shapeless, hidden teenage girl. But at least the clothes fit.
—
Despite the fact that I felt safe enough and hidden enough inside my palatial outfits, at school my eclectic clothes, wide black headband, waist-length black hair, and thick black eyeliner made me an easy target. I looked a little like Mama Cass, which doesn’t quite gel when you’re trying to get through the day without being made fun of. Thus, navigating the rather brutal social scene of the average American high school was, shall we say, challenging.
But I found ways to get by. When it wasn’t food that was comforting me, it was theater. I was excellent at it, a natural, and though the oddball actor kids didn’t exactly welcome me with open arms, neither did they seem to care that I was fat, and they carved out a place for me—and it was there that I thrived. I entered acting competitions and won them—including the prestigious New Jersey Governor’s Award for the Arts (the category was Improvisation). But it was during a performance about date rape, which we had to present in front of our whole school because it was considered “educational material,” that my two very polar worlds (the freeness of theater and the confinement of class) came crashing together.
Because of my girth, and my by-now ginormous breasts, I always played the adult characters. Frequently, they were the juicier roles, and though I knew that, I longed to be the ingénue anyway. For this particular play, my role was the therapist—not exactly juicy, but a good fit for me since it required a student who looked ages older than her still-developing peers. Frustratingly, it was a small part (there are no small parts, only fat actors) and I only appeared during the last scene. I stood backstage and waited as the play unfolded, and during the second-to-last blackout, I took my place on the chair left stage center.
The lights came back on, and within ten seconds, I was assaulted by the roar of hundreds of unseen voices. It had started with just a few heckles—hisses, cackles, boos—and those instigators paved the way for more and more insults, until the auditorium was buzzing with a raucous din of uncontrollable students, my peers. I was like an elephant in a zoo—confined and confused, an easy target. I was in the spotlight, literally, and had no choice but to sit there and stare silently at my scene partner, Kara, until it became quiet enough for me to get out my first line.
In class, when I’d walk to the front of the room to get the bathroom key, I could willingly choose not to respond to the insults. But on this stage, I had no choice but to remain in character, keeping my gaze on Kara—who, after a few seconds, awkwardly looked down at her feet, refusing to bear any of the pain alongside me. Perhaps even more than the audience’s sharp words being poured onto me like buckets of pig’s blood (Carrie, I have long felt your pain), it was Kara’s turning away—her subtle, unstated, “I don’t know you”—that got to me the most, branding my heart with the reality that I was on that stage and in this world all by myself.
When the teachers and principal finally shushed the students, I delivered my first line, and the heckling picked up again. I managed to finish the scene, but not unscathed. My classmates had taken my one diamond—my acting, my make-believe world where I could be anyone—and shattered it, and shattered me. I walked offstage, shaken and weeping, with one comforting thought in the back of my head: “Tonight, I will go to Burger King.”
—
Food, especially fast food, had not faded in its ability to comfort me as I stumbled through adolescence. If anything, I loved it more and more each year that passed. Double cheeseburgers were now the name of the game—providing me with the steadiness and solace that I coveted. They were always there, always the same. Of course, there was a darker side to this relationship. Perhaps not surprisingly, the more of them I ate, the more of them I craved. They satisfied me, until they didn’t. They assuaged my angst, until the absence of them added to that angst. Such is the definition of an addictive relationship—not that I thought of it that way then. But I wasn’t stupid, and I knew that I was somehow in the middle of a vicious cycle of eating crappy food and then feeling crappy about my body.
Still, my love was too strong to resist. By the time I got a car—an enchanting 1986 Toyota Camry that I called “Henry,” which only accelerated (barely) if you stepped full-force on the gas pedal—there was no longer an obstacle between me and eating a second (or sometimes third) dinner. The fact that I was petrified of driving on
highways was not a problem—just down the road was a strip mall with everything I could ever need: a grocery store, a Chinese place, a pizza joint, a brand-new shiny Taco Bell, and, of course, my first and still greatest love, Burger King. A tub of chocolate icing from Foodtown was the perfect appetizer to a dinner of two cheeseburgers, extra-large fries, and a vanilla milk shake. The blessed drive-through was like icing on the cake (or the pie, as it were—since the apple pie at Burger King was always an option to go with the shake). I would sit in the hidden part of the parking lot, blasting my Patti LuPone cassette and eating my dinner at record speed.
It was how I imagined heaven. I scoffed to myself when I thought of those kids who—like me—wanted a buzz, but wasted their money and their brain cells on drugs, when they could have this much better, cheaper, legal, and more functional high. Who needed marijuana when you could have the perfect, orgasmic combination of fatty, sweet, and salty that made French fries with ketchup so succulent?
While my teenage journals were full of incredibly tormented poetry that made Sylvia Plath sound like Dr. Seuss, what I really should have been doing was writing love sonnets to my cheeseburger. Nestled behind the protective shield of Henry (whom I perhaps anthropomorphized a bit too readily), I finally felt genuine. I took a bite of my burger and I was myself. There was no other place in my life—not even in theater, not since the incident with the heckling—where I was safer, where I was calmer. I sipped my shake and, in my head, I had already escaped to New York City—where I knew I would live one day, though I wasn’t entirely sure whether I wanted to be there so that I could achieve anonymity or fame.
As I took a break from my burger and dug deeper into my tub of icing, my hopes and fears arm wrestled in my head, both certain they were destined to win: I will be incredibly famous. (I will be amazingly fat.) I will star on Broadway. (I will be ugly.) I will be rich. (I will be a failure.) I will be legendary. (I will be forgotten.) I will be loved. (I will be loathed.)
Always Too Much and Never Enough Page 4