DEDICATION
For all women. Especially the ones who don’t know they’re beautiful yet.
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
1 I WAS BORN A POOR FAT CHILD
2 HONESTLY, I DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE
3 FINDING YOUR TRIBE AND OTHER ASSHOLEY FEEL-GOOD EXPRESSIONS YOUR PARENTS PUSH ON YOU
4 SECRET GIRLFRIEND
5 MY ANDY GIBBONS
6 COLLEGE, I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M HERE, EITHER?
7 ADORABLY MENTAL
8 GIRL ON GIRL INTERUPTED
9 GOING TO THE CHAPEL
10 THE LIFE & DEATH OF PROCREATION AND ALL THE GROSS SHIT IN BETWEEN
11 THE 4TH TRIMESTER (THE WORST TRIMESTER)
12 DAUGHTERS: THE ULTIMATE MIND FUCK
13 LAST CAKE EVER
14 HOW TO BE PROFESSIONALLY FAT ON THE INTERNET
15 THE TED TALK
16 SEX WITH FAT GIRLS
17 THE EMAILS
18 WOMEN, WE’RE RUINING EVERYTHING
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
INTRODUCTION
“OKAY, BRITTANY, NOW if you could just walk out in your bikini and pretend you’re just a normal woman wearing a bathing suit?”
“I am a normal woman wearing a bathing suit,” I said.
“Right, right. So we’re going to pan the camera up, guys if you could go slower when we get to her stretch marks and chest, and Brittany, if you could just smile and act happy during all of this, that’d be great.”
“Smile and act happy while you pan the camera across my stretch marks. Got it.”
I stood on the cement patio of our rented vacation house in Orlando, while three men from Good Morning America adjusted lighting and discussed the best way to showcase the anomaly that was a chubby girl in a bikini. I glanced up at my publicist, Jackie, who sat behind the camera. She smiled and gave me the thumbs-up, and suddenly Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song” played in my head and I smiled as it hit me.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure . . .
I am the Internet’s token fat girl. If the Internet is still a thing when I am old and die, all this might be included in my obituary.
Brittany Gibbons: the jolly face of plus-size women. Known for taking her clothes off to make political statements and making skinny people everywhere uncomfortable.
Growing up, I had reoccurring daydreams about one day being famous, marrying Dr. Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters, and writing lots of books. I never planned to be Internet famous, which is a totally different kind of famous, by the way.
You see, there are lots of ways to be Internet famous, like being adorable British girls in tutus who rap, eating cups of feces with your best friend, or being absolutely any kind of cat. But for me, the keys to my success are just being not slim, making vagina jokes on social media, and having Nigerian men tell me I look pretty and then ask me to accept wire transfers of large sums of money.
One could also correctly assume that I never quite expected to be writing a book about being fat, either.
Nobody really spends their childhood thinking about how awesome it would be to chronicle a lifetime of people watching you not fitting into things, asking if you are really going to eat that, and giving you tips on how not to be a hideous boil on the ass of society.
If anything, I figured I’d follow in the footsteps of Jane Austen, or at the very least come up with a “literary masterpiece” based on a peyote-induced dream I had once about angry teenage girls who fall in love with broody vampires.
But here we are. I am the writer I always wanted to be. And the subject is me and my life as a fat girl.
Overall, I’d like this book to help readers realize that being chubby your whole entire life doesn’t mean you’ll end up alone, unhappy, or the subject of some TLC medical show. And if you happen to be turned on by sociology, obesity isn’t without its interesting aspects. For instance, being a fat kid afforded me the unique experience of witnessing the evolution of pejorative name-calling.
In elementary school, I was often called cow, chubs, or tubby. The latter two are adorable societal stigmas that might also double as the name of your pet hamster or determined cartoon tugboat.
High school labeled me as fat-ass or fat whore. Honestly, I think teen boys just like to mix together all the vulgar insults they know because they’re insecure about things like ball hair or their legitimacy as white rappers. Classic projection.
In college, I was what was often considered a buffer or cockblocker, which is the technical term for the large physical barrier I often provided between my super-cute friends and the sleazy douchebags at the bar. It was primarily hurled around 3 A.M. as I escorted my barefoot roommates back to our dorm.
And then finally, I reached adulthood. The period of maturity when I assumed most forms of teasing and bullying had been outgrown, until I discovered the comments section of absolutely any news site or social network. “What’s that chubby adult woman? You feel pretty today? Really, that’s weird because you look like Type 2 diabetes and rising healthcare costs.” Which is just a fancy adult way of saying I’m fat.
I feel like every fat-girl book on the shelf talks about how horrible being chubby is, then somewhere along the line, the author breaks up with gluten, buries her demons, and becomes one with the happy skinny girl who’d been inside her all along. I’ve actually long suspected there was a skinny girl inside me, but not in a metaphysical way. More like I probably had a twin, but I ate her.
This is not a diet book, guys. In fact, if I do this right, our cycles will align and we’ll be eating our feelings together by the third chapter.
Instead, this book is full of hilarious and painfully true stories about my life as an overweight girl with an unconventional career path. I feel odd prematurely qualifying my own stories as hilarious, because you’re an adult and you can make your own decisions, but my therapist says it’s totally healthy, and I read, like, four chapters of this out loud to him and his eyes didn’t glaze over once.
I think it’s important to talk about things that make people feel awkward and uncomfortable, because that’s how I navigate a good portion of my life, and misery loves company. Unless you’re only coming over to talk about Jesus or sell me magazines from your kid’s school, in which case, I’m good.
I’m going to talk about what it’s like being the only chubby girl in a rural town in Ohio. I mean, there was this one other kid, but he had a legitimate thyroid issue, allegedly. And I am also going to talk about how I struggled with dating and relationships (fat girls suck at this as much as the skinny girls do, and we have more back fat), gave the middle finger to dieting, embraced an adorable case of anxiety disorder that led to me dropping out of college and trying to teach a pug to flush the toilet, learned about womanhood by failing at lesbianism, accidentally had three kids, figured out the secret to loving my curves, and became a nationally recognized body advocate.
Oh, and I’m also going to write a lot about sex and what my body really looks like, and I’ll even show it to you. Hopefully you’ll be entertained, and maybe inspired to show off your skin, too.
You just flipped through the book looking for pictures, didn’t you? Reading ahead is like not forwarding a chain letter. You just killed four people in Arkansas and none of your wishes will ever come true. Unless
your wish was to see me with some of my clothes off, pervert.
1
I WAS BORN A POOR FAT CHILD
FIRST THINGS FIRST, I’m going to tell you why I’m fat, because I actually get this question a lot, much in the way people are asked how they got into live-action role playing or funeral home cosmetology. The answer I’d like to give to people who ask me that question is that God made us all different, and she made some people round-shaped, like me, and some people asshole-shaped, like you. Too direct? Fine, here’s the deal.
Most kids inherit their best qualities from their parents. I inherited mental illness and fat thighs. Oh, and astigmatism and coarse body hair.
I have a friend whose brother makes millions harvesting deer semen from giant bucks that he then sells to other rich people so they can grow their own giant deer to then shoot and hang their heads on the wall. It’s all very Island of Dr. Moreau. The point is, if my parents were deer, nobody would jerk them off. I mean, they’re lovely people, but in terms of genetic sperm value, you might as well just put them out of their misery. Nobody likes chubby deer hooked on extended-release Xanax.
My father had been a state-ranked wrestler in high school. He still has the trophies on the dresser in his bedroom, and cauliflower ear on each side. A remnant left behind from the days of having his head smashed into mats and the sweaty body parts of other boys in spandex singlets. Despite being called what the authorities referred to back then as a longhair, a hippie pot head identified by his shaggy long locks, my dad was also built like an athlete. He stood six feet tall with thick muscular thighs and calves. It was the type of body that could go a decade or so with little upkeep and still be seen as in shape, then kinda in shape, and then just plain dense and heavy.
My mom was short like her Irish mother, but with the dark features of her Spanish father. She had all the makings of a slender woman, long fingers and small hips, but due to severe bouts of depression spent most of her youth and adulthood at varying degrees of obesity. When she was stressed or upset, we ate more. When she was happy and upbeat, we ate more expensive food. I walked away from this combination with the pale porcelain skin of an Irish woman, a mental state that self-medicated with food, and the thighs of Hulk Hogan. I was fat because it was really easy for me to be fat.
Being an overweight child in the 1980s is nothing like it is now. We weren’t tagged like animals and targeted on billboards or news stories about GMOs and high-fructose corn syrup. We flew under the radar with no real concern about athleticism or portion size. Sure, we weren’t exactly desirable for things like dodgeball teams in gym class or the sexy covers of car magazines, but we weren’t hurting anyone. Fat was a normal body shape for me, and after seeing my parents in their underwear, I knew thin was just not going to be in the cards.
I have been skinny only three times in my life.
1 At four months gestation.
2 After getting my stomach pumped as a toddler following the accidental ingestion of an industrial carpet cleaner my dad absentmindedly stored in a baby bottle.
3 Following a marginally successful run as a bulimic.
I remember there was a period of time when I assumed I was, like everyone else, normal looking. You don’t exactly go into kindergarten expecting to build an entourage of attractive rich friends. You glob together with a shared interest in the alphabet, sandboxes, and head lice. And so life went on like that, friendships formed based on logistics and the year in which we all collectively fell from our mother’s vaginas. We were friends not because of how pretty we were, but because of 1981.
All of that changed when my parents decided to become small business owners, or a period of time I like to call “When We Became Poor.” Prior to this moment, we bounced in and out of the lower middle class regularly. My father worked in maintenance for the Ohio Turnpike, my mother did the bookkeeping for my grandmother’s bridal salon, and we lived in a three-bedroom ranch on three wooded acres gifted to us by my grandparents. Incapable of saving money, my dad drove a leased BMW and my mom ordered preppy duck boots from fancy magazines even though we often didn’t have enough for groceries or utility bills. After receiving a windfall settlement from the airport after the airplanes on the flight path of a cargo company began flying so low that the plane vibrations cracked the walls and windows of our house and filled our bedrooms with the stench of jet fuel, my parents decided to forgo typical investment opportunities and instead put the money into what my father repeatedly assured us was the “flourishing entertainment sector.” When he would say that around the dinner table or at family gatherings, his eyes would light up and he’d reflexively rub his hands together like Scrooge McDuck counting gold coins. I feel the need to add a disclaimer here to mention that my parents are really amazing people; they just make terrible financial decisions.
Video Exchange was housed in a tiny strip mall between a dingy bar and a cowboy supply store. In an Ohio town of three thousand people, this was the third video rental store to open. There were officially more video stores than gas stations. Video Exchange felt millions of miles away from the flourishing entertainment sector my dad promised. It was a depressing establishment, dark wood-paneled walls, cheap black shelves lined with empty laminated movie boxes, and a rusty carnival-themed popcorn machine on the counter.
The back room housed the actual videotapes on bookcases jammed with rows and rows of numbered plastic cases. Even though I was seven and had absolutely no involvement in the purchase of an eight-hundred-square-foot VHS rental store, every day after school and on weekends the back room became my life. This is actually a pretty normal situation when your family owns a business, sinks all their savings into it, and therefore can’t afford to hire employees. Providing child labor can sometimes mean the difference between having electricity in your house or not.
Unfortunately for my parents, the new business owner euphoria had a shelf life of about six months, and then it became painfully clear why my dad had gotten such a great deal on a roomful of video tapes: nobody wanted them. Despite numerous renovations, new paint, and flashy Hollywood movie signs, the business continued to struggle, and my little brother and I became unintended victims of its downward spiral. Money became so tight we traded in our BMW for a used station wagon. We stopped opening our pool each summer because the upkeep was too expensive. The depression and stress in our home were palpable. I remember my friend Laura and I walking in after school one day to find my dad crying in the kitchen. Seeing your parent cry is a very uncomfortable experience that makes you also, reflexively, cry. It’s Pavlovian.
Within a year, our lives had changed completely. I wasn’t seeing my friends as much; between maintaining their full-time jobs and the business, my parents no longer had time to take us to soccer practice; and dinner became my brother and I schlepping half a mile down a busy highway to McDonald’s and eating in the back room of the video store while watching sports-themed kids movies. Rookie of the Year, Angels in the Outfield, Little Giants, The Big Green, Ladybugs, The Mighty Ducks . . . the nineties was a decade made for preteen athletic underdogs with little to no parental supervision.
Now, before you get all riled up, I’m not blaming McDonald’s for my obesity; it’s just that when you are a kid who is suddenly inactive and living close to the poverty line in the back of a video store, fresh veggies are expensive and chicken nuggets take a toll. You would think my parents would have been concerned about my growing waistline, but they said nothing. Although I come from a household that struggled with weight, I didn’t grow up on diets. My mom was never overly feminine, opting instead for short hair and sensible jeans and sweatshirts, so vanity and fad diets were never really her thing. I remember asking her once if she would join the local Jazzercise studio like my friend Audrey’s mom, because Audrey said that while the parents worked out, the kids got to hang out in the playroom and play free arcade games. My mom brushed it off as too expensive and said if she wanted to work out, she had a perfectly good Jane Fonda vinyl record
at home she could stretch to. This was true, my mother did own that record, but she never stretched out to it. Instead I’d pull it off the shelf and stare at skinny, feather-haired Jane and wonder where she hid her pubic hair in all those high-waisted leotards. The point is, if my parents didn’t recognize I was overweight, how was I supposed to?
ZHIRA IS RUSSIAN FOR FAT
The summer I was eight, my parents took my brother and me on vacation to an antiquated mobile home park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in a borrowed RV. The majority of the inhabitants of this park were retirees who spent their days driving around in golf carts and walking the early morning beach with metal detectors. I was able to befriend two girls around my age, Mischa and Marlena, who were there visiting their Russian grandmother in the campsite behind ours.
Mischa was younger than me, with thin tanned arms and a short blond bowl cut. Marlena was slightly older, with dark curly hair that fell to her shoulders and summer freckles across her cheeks. I loved going over to their camper at night. Their grandma would braid my hair while we ate powdery spiced cookies and she talked about all the men she slept with during the war. I don’t even know what war she was talking about. I just assumed there always was one back then. If there wasn’t, old people would basically have nothing to talk about besides “Oh hey, I got polio again.”
After dinner the three of us would walk the paved loop around the beachside community, talking about makeup and our favorite New Kid on the Block, mine of course being Danny, an early foreshadowing of my preference for men with mouths built for cunnilingus. One night two boys on bikes stopped in front of us and asked our names. Talking to boys was only mildly exciting to me at this point, even though I only had four of them in my class, and they were about as appealing as my brother. We chatted about the ocean and the warm weather, and then one of the boys asked Marlena if she had a boyfriend, and after she answered no, I added that I didn’t have one, either.
Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It Page 1