Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It

by Brittany Gibbons

  “Is she thinner than me?” I asked finally.

  Because it had to be that, right? I didn’t even see girls as prettier than me anymore, only thinner, and therefore better across the board. My biggest fear, that I would wake up and everyone would say, Just kidding, this has been one giant elaborate joke, no one wants to marry you after all, was coming true.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  Wrong answer. To me, to a girl who has always been fat and always felt less-than, it does matter. At least at the time it did.

  “I have to leave,” I said suddenly. I stood up and walked into the kitchen looking for car keys. Andy bounded off the couch following me, frantic and scared.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, his eyes wide and fearful.

  “I have to leave. I’m going to be sick.”

  With one swoop of my arm, I gathered the invitations into the giant box on the chair, opened the second-story kitchen window, and tossed them out into the falling snow.

  “Stop,” he pleaded, my movements almost robotic as I picked up Lucy with my free arm and my purse and keys in the other.

  I walked to the garage and got into the black Ford Explorer I’d bought after camp because it felt like more of a family car and put it into reverse, but before I could back out, Andy dove behind the car and lay down on the ground behind my tires.

  “What are you doing?!” I screamed. “I could kill you! Get up!”

  “Not until you talk to me!” he shouted back.

  I sat silent in the car for ten minutes as Andy lay on the asphalt covered in snow. Lucy looked at me, frankly embarrassed for the both of us. I sighed heavily and got out of the car. Seeing the door open, Andy leapt to his feet, meeting me at the driver’s door shivering and pale.

  “She kissed me,” he explained. “She was a friend of Mike’s and she kissed me and I didn’t stop her fast enough.”

  I winced.

  “I can’t tell you if she was thinner because I don’t see women anymore,” he continued. “I only see you, and everyone else is just noise. Please. Don’t leave me.”

  I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t even want to pretend I wanted to leave.

  “I threw the invitations out the window,” I said finally.

  “I know, I saw.” He smiled cautiously. “You are crazy and I love that about you.”

  I laughed and wiped my running nose with the cuff of my sweatshirt and then wrapped my arms around my body.

  “Our wedding is in a month and we have no invitations?”

  “So we’ll make them,” he said, suddenly hit once again with drunken enthusiasm.

  And make them we did.

  THE PARENTS OF THE BRIDE

  “Your dad wants to know if he has to wear the tuxedo the whole time,” my mom said into the phone.

  I pulled the receiver from my ear and silently mimed smashing it onto the counter in front of me.

  “Yes, he has to wear the tux the whole time,” I sighed.

  “And the shoes?” she asked again.

  “Yes,” I answered calmly.

  “Keith! She said you have to wear the tux and the shoes the whole time!” she yelled into the distance behind her.

  “That’s fine,” she said, returning to our phone call. “He’ll wear the shoes around the house to break them in, but he doesn’t like the tuxedo pants. He says they are hard to squat in.”

  I THEE WED

  I walked down the aisle to “Ave Maria” at six o’clock on a cold December evening, followed by an obnoxious reception featuring Rat Pack impersonators, poker tables, and food catered by our favorite Chinese takeout spot. Andy’s mother wore white, the priest forgot my name, and my dad took his shoes off. It was truly a night to remember.

  “I am not even sure we are legally married,” Andy said, falling backward onto the mattress sitting on the floor of our bedroom.

  “What are you talking about, of course we’re married,” I assured him sleepily, my muscles sore from dancing and feasting on Chinese food.

  “You said ‘I Brittany Take You Drew,’” he shot back.

  “I told you I wanted you to change your name to the Drew part of Andrew, and I thought this would be the final push you needed.”

  “But my license says Andy. I think you just lied in front of God.”

  “Well if God is checking licenses to get into heaven, I’m fucked because I lied about my weight on there, too.” I laughed.

  “You can get it corrected when you go to the DMV to change your name to Mrs. Gibbons,” he added. “Mrs. Gibbons, one hundred and ten pounds.”

  I sighed. “This is why I married you. You think I weigh a hundred and ten pounds.”

  10

  THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PROCREATION AND ALL THE GROSS SHIT IN BETWEEN

  THEY SAY THE ultimate act of love is having a baby. I say the ultimate act of love is deciding to not have babies, so much so that you are willing to have your ball sack cut open to make that happen. This is how I found myself on the other side of the recovery room staring at my husband’s swollen and hairless testicles. Love had brought us here.

  Three years earlier, love had looked much different. I remember standing in the living room of our rented yellow split-level house, holding the spoon I’d been using to stir shrimp scampi on the stovetop when I’d heard the news anchor make the announcement. Andy walked through the front door from work moments later and found me still standing stone-faced staring at the television.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, panic spreading across his face.

  “Britney Spears is pregnant,” I answered, turning to him with tears in my eyes.

  It was just like people in generations before me who would always remember where they were when John Kennedy was shot. I now know how ridiculous it is that I’d hung my emotional happiness on a pop star, aside from the fact that we are the same age and have the same name, hers, of course, spelled incorrectly. Andy and I had been trying to have a baby for six months, and while that isn’t a long time in fertility terms, it felt like forever when it had been browbeaten into us in high school that if you let a penis hang out in your vagina, or even get in questionable hot tubs, you will get pregnant. One time in high school I had accidental anal sex with a wrestler named Kyle who had one testicle, and even though it wasn’t vaginal sex, I was so freaked out about it, my body made my period be one week late. I had spent every night in my room before my period came rehearsing how I was going to tell my parents I was pregnant and having a baby with a high school wrestler I’d had butt sex with. So wrapping my head around the fact that it was taking a long time to get pregnant through my vagina with my husband was difficult, and I found the whole high school sex education message to be very misleading. I almost wish that women’s bodies prevented them from getting pregnant until they reached a certain age, or voted in one nonpresidential election, or knew how to change a flat tire on a busy highway.

  As a twenty-four-year-old not-pregnant person, I found that every baby announcement and new episode of Teen Mom began to sting. I was perfectly healthy and a voluptuous size 18. My obstetrician, the aging Dr. Sim, who years before had once peeled Scotch tape from my vagina, was now thoughtfully checking over my chart each visit, encouraging me to keep trying, and while never outright asking me to lose weight, he ended every visit with a smile and a gentle pat to my belly, saying “Get healthy in here, it’s better for the baby.”

  I’d been living on a diet of salmon and apples because I read online they made for a hospitable cervix and increased blood flow to my reproductive organs. Sex had become less about intimacy and more of a game of how many things I could cram under my butt after my husband came inside me. Pillows, piles of clothes, unassembled boxes of IKEA furniture, the higher I could get my ass in the air, the more likely gravity would help the sperm do their jobs. I’d sit there elevated for hours, one time watching the entirety of Pearl Harbor, which as we all know is about three hundred hours too long. But it worked; it was after that showing
that I stood up not only with a massive UTI but also impregnated with the help of Ben Affleck, Jon Voight, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Andy Gibbons.

  As in many of our life decisions, Andy and I were relatively early in the game compared to our peers. We were the first to get married and the first to move into a house, and now we were the first to get pregnant. When I told my friend Lindsey over lunch, she grabbed my hand wide-eyed and said, “Oh shit, what are you going to do?”

  I was going to have a baby, Lindsey, on purpose.

  WELL, THIS IS SUCKIER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE

  At eight weeks Andy and I walked eagerly into our very first prenatal appointment. It’s all very standard and noneventful. I met with the nurse as she rattled off a million medieval diseases that I may have possibly had, and I said no to all of them except for water elf disease; she gave me a captain’s log worth of blood work scripts, and sent me on my way with a huge bag full of free products, which is the main reason why I got knocked up in the first place. I am a swag whore. But, despite the endless influx of free changing pads and a full-color Fetus of the Month calendars, pregnancy wasn’t the rainbows and bubble-gum that Rosemary’s Baby had painted it to be.

  I’ve assembled a list of my top fat-girl pregnancy pros and cons. This list is actually really similar to a normal pregnancy pros and cons list, because even though we’re curvy, we’re still basically human and our reproductive organs are in the same general area, right under the rib cage, above the empty cans of Red Bull.

  Con: The high-risk pregnancy

  I hate to come right out of the gate with a negative, but this is a real slap to the newly pregnant glow of many overweight expecting women. Because of my size, around 190 pounds when I got pregnant, I was sent to the maternal fetal medicine department of my local hospital to see a high-risk neonatologist. I sat in the waiting room among anxious women there for very different reasons, some for genetic disorders, others for congenital anomalies. I was there because of my pants size. I felt embarrassed but also vastly insignificant. Here were families facing very scary statistics and outcomes, and I was waddling in to take up an entire appointment to reinforce what was already blatantly obvious: my fat body was growing a baby. The only thing I was at a high risk of was consuming all the cupcakes.

  Pro: The dreams

  I don’t know what happens in pregnancy exactly; perhaps it’s the moment in life when the layer between real life and The Matrix is the thinnest, but holy hell, I think I just climaxed. The majority of my dreams during pregnancy were sexual and very realistic. Every time I closed my eyes it was like the orgy scene of Eyes Wide Shut. The feelings and images became so blurred against reality, I began to forget if it was just a dream or I’d actually just had sex. Andy would wake me up expectantly each morning, only to find me already blissfully postcoital and uninterested.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be really into sex while pregnant?” he’d ask, confused at my indifferent annoyance.

  “I am,” I assured him. “I’ve just done it twice and I’m ex-hausted.”

  Con: The Glucose Tolerance Test

  In an effort to detect and curb the instance of gestational diabetes in pregnant women, we are herded into laboratories around the twenty-four-week mark to drink a bottle of sugar solution and have our blood checked an hour later to ensure our glucose levels are within normal range. There isn’t anything particularly horrible about this whole thing except that downing goblets of flat Fanta on an empty stomach is a little bit vomit inducing. Even though I passed my one-hour test with flying colors, I was still made to take the three-hour test, which included multiple blood draws over the course of two additional hours, as a precaution due to my weight and fearmongering words like Obesity! Preeclampsia! Sixteen-pound baby on the cover of US Weekly!

  Con: The stomach

  When you are overweight, it takes just a little bit longer for the baby bump to show up. For a while you just walk around looking like you live on an endless supply of Chinese takeout and beer, until one day you finally pop, thus confirming the baby you swear to every stranger giving you the side-eye in the grocery store you’re totally having. It took me twenty-two weeks to finally show during my first pregnancy; dogs are only pregnant for nine weeks. It took me over two entire dog pregnancies to look human pregnant.

  Pro: The stomach, seriously

  Okay, so when I finally did look pregnant, I fell in love with my body. It was as if all my curves had been legitimized, and my abs had never been so rock hard. Sure, you could do an endless supply of core work and a diet of lean proteins, or you could just fill your stomach with babies. I don’t have to tell you which option sounds more logical; it’s obviously baby abs.

  Con: The weirdos

  Pregnancy elicits two weird responses from bystanders. First, everyone wants to talk to you about their birth stories. I barely look my mail lady in the eye, but I do know that her second son was breech and covered in baby poop when he came out. I also know that Andy’s great aunt tore from tit to taint giving birth to his uncle. It’s like the way old people like to talk to you about the war; these women went through vagina hell, and you’re obligated to sit and listen to it out of respect and patriotism.

  And if that isn’t awkward enough, they want to touch your stomach in a very stranger-danger fashion. Bonus points if they hum while they do it. To combat this, I gently place one finger, the one that smelled like the burrito I just ate, across their lips shushing them, and then place my free hand softly across their genitals, almost cupping them, and then sigh dreamily. Creepiness doesn’t have to be a one-player game.

  Con: The big . . . ger boobs

  Big boobs sounds like a pro, and in truth, it’s nice to have perky boobs every now and then. But at some point they just get so engorged they are downright suffocating. It’s like living your whole life with the neck pillow people take on airplanes sitting backward across your face.

  Pro: The parking spaces

  If this decade has brought us anything, its new-age narcissism, and I love it. Overpriced organic supermarkets that sell us the food people in third-world countries involuntarily eat to survive, forward-facing cameras on our cell phones, and pregnancy parking spots. Finally, someone realized that being pregnant puts us in the same category as the handicapped. If this isn’t happening where you live yet, write your congressman. It’s hard unwedging myself from behind the steering wheel. It’s hard walking more than three yards without urine slipping out. Now if only they could add a few more close spots for hangovers, I might actually venture into public more, thus spending more money, and boom, that’s how you stimulate a dragging economy, Mr. President.

  Con: The hypochondria

  When I was about fourteen weeks along, I accidentally shocked myself on an exposed area of the cord on my curling iron. Naturally, I assumed I had just electrocuted and cooked my baby. Hysterical, I called my OB, who calmly tried to assure me that the baby was probably fine, to which my response was “whatever.” I then had Andy drive me to the ER to explain to them what I had done and to check and see if the baby had been fried by my curling iron. The entire car ride there I keep asking Andy if he’d smelled cooked meat and if he’d still love me if I’d killed out baby over vanity. It turns out I’m a psycho and amniotic fluid isn’t even a conductor. Seriously, you could stand in a puddle holding an umbrella and get struck by lightning and your baby probably wouldn’t cook like a turkey. But basic logic and rationale didn’t matter to me in my pregnant state. Keeping me alive was hard enough. Keeping another person alive inside my body was a nightmare. But not as much of a nightmare as cholera, which I was totally convinced I had.

  Con. The fashion

  Plus-size maternity is barely a thing. Plus-size people sometimes wearing maternity clothes is a thing, but actual clothes developed for pregnant plus-size people is exceedingly hard to come by.

  “When I was pregnant, I just wore my husband’s sweats and T-shirts around. I didn’t care that people thought I was sloppy,” my
friend Melissa once stated matter-of-factly.

  That’s adorable, Melissa. But I don’t even fit into my husband’s clothing when I’m not pregnant. In fact, if my house was on fire, and we had to jump out of the window with only what we could safely grab, and I accidentally grabbed my husband’s jeans? I would have no pants. I’d be standing next to a fire truck watching my house burn down with no pants on unless a really giant fireman, like the out-of-shape one they let roll up the hose and drive the truck, let me wear his fireman outfit.

  I don’t know if they assume plus-size people don’t get pregnant because eww, or if they just assume we’d be fine buying larger sizes of our already disproportioned clothes. Either way, dressing myself in the height of my maternity meant embracing options that dated me back to Kid N’ Play times. Which is why I wore giant men’s overalls with one strap hooked to my baby shower.

  Con: The diet

  The average woman is told she can gain around 20–25 pounds during the course of her pregnancy. I was told I could gain 10 pounds. So, naturally, I gained 60 pounds. Restricting my cravings during my pregnancy made me very bitter, and as a result, I revenge-ate quite a bit. This happens to me in my nonpregnant life as well, and is a huge reason dieting doesn’t work for me; it makes me resentful. I get angry at the people who don’t diet. I get angry that I can’t live like they do. I mourn, in a very real way, a life I will never have. And during my pregnancy I was so envious and angry at the depictions of pregnant women enjoying their indulgences and sending their spouses out for ice cream at 2 A.M. that the thought of not being able to do that took a large part of the experience of a normal pregnancy away from me. I didn’t expect my pregnancy to be like a movie cliché, but I did expect to be able to have steak fajitas and sauerkraut when I’m craving them. To combat the weight gain anxiety, I just began standing on the OB’s scale backward. If I don’t see it, it’s not really happening, and I can just gauge my failure based on the level of sighing from my nurse.