Every Lie I've Ever Told

by Rosie Waterland

  I will never pose naked.

  (Whoops.)

  At the end of 2015, I accidentally fell into a bit of a social media scandal. It all started when I put up a post on my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at about 11pm on a Sunday night, not thinking anything would come of it.

  By the next evening, the post had been seen by millions of people and was a nationally trending topic of conversation. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that the post included a naked photo of me. A naked selfie, actually, because that’s how the kidz roll these days and I try to keep up with my hip contemporaries.

  The reaction was completely unexpected, although many people have told me they don’t believe that (I’m honestly not that media savvy). It lasted about a week and put the time I spent as an online writer into a whole new perspective. When you become the topic other people are writing about, you really notice how pointless – and often pointlessly nasty – a lot of that opinion and critique can be.

  Someone does something. Someone writes an opinion about what that person did. Someone writes an opinion about that opinion writer’s opinion. Someone on the radio says something about the opinion pieces. Someone else writes an opinion about the person on the radio’s opinion. The person on the radio writes a tweet, which online news sites then write entire articles about. Someone new jumps into the fray and writes an opinion about how we shouldn’t be so obsessed with the story in the first place. The morning shows debate about said thing on TV. More opinion is written about the debate that just happened on TV. A new person does a new thing, the whole cycle starts again . . .

  I can’t believe I was part of that system for a few years – just churning out opinion after opinion, every day, in a news entertainment industry that relies on writers being willing and able to do that, because writing opinions about opinions about opinions helps to fill the desperate need for constant content. If you’re always writing about what everybody else is saying, you’ll never run out of anything to say. And if everybody else is doing the same thing, neither will they.

  But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making a living that way. Some people are incredibly skilled and intelligent opinion writers, who put an incredible amount of time and care into sharing something that is worth saying. There are considered opinions, though, and there are fast-food opinions. Because of tight deadlines caused by the insatiable need for news, a lot of writers are just throwing together some thoughts in an hour, based on a Twitter fight that erupted between two commentators the night before. Fast-Food Opinions. I know this because I did it. I made money churning out content without a lot of thought. It was just the nature of the job in the industry I worked in. I was happy to be paid to be a writer (I felt lucky to be, really), but after a while, my brain just became void of opinions. I was exhausted with having to write my thoughts about everything, every day, without really having the time to even figure out what my thoughts were. It all just started to feel pointless.

  And then, when I myself became the subject of one of those fast-food opinion news cycles, I realised just how pointless it all really is.

  I posted one photo, and it resulted in a week’s worth of content, across many media outlets. And while I was bewildered and thinking, ‘Really, guys? Me?’ I also knew one thing to be true – if someone else had been the one to put up that photo, I would have been writing opinion about it. I would have come into a morning editorial meeting, mentioned the photo, and have had something written before lunch, complete with hashtags that were trending on Twitter. Then someone else would have written about my opinion, someone else would have written about their opinion . . . And it all would have gone on as usual.

  But when I was the one being written about, it allowed me to be outside the fast-food opinion cycle looking in. And that’s when I realised I was just so . . . over it.

  (I know – how narcissistic to only realise the error of my ways after I was the subject of media scrutiny. Scrutiny that I had participated in countless times. But I got there in the end, at least? I’m ashamed to say that’s the best I’ve got: I did get there in the end. It reminds me of when someone told me my first book could be illegally downloaded on The Pirate Bay. I was so excited at first, because to me, it felt like the millennial version of making the New York Times bestseller list. My book was so popular that people were stealing it? Amazing! It took a few days for the excitement to wear off, and suddenly I found myself thinking, ‘That’s my money, YOU DICKS.’ I stopped illegally downloading that very day, but I hate myself that it took me being personally affected to realise that it was wrong. Those pirating ads just never did anything for me. You know, the ones that were at the start of DVDs – ‘YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR. YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A HANDBAG. SO WHY WOULD YOU PIRATE A MOVIE?’ I always thought that was such a bizarre marketing idea. Putting those three things together made pirating look like much less of a big deal. I mean, no, I wouldn’t steal a car, I’m not a criminal, but that pirating girl was just sitting at her computer; that seemed way less bad.)

  So, what exactly happened when the Fast-Food Opinion machine got a hold of a story about me? Well, settle in, my friends. Here is An Autopsy Of On An Online Scandal.

  It actually started much earlier in 2015, when I wrote a piece about the likelihood of me ever posing naked, which at that point was zero. Ha. I wrote about the fact that my fat body meant if I ever did decide to pose naked, people would probably call me brave, rather than sexy.

  Pearl-clutching. Whenever Kim Kardashian gets naked for a photo, it inevitably leads to quite a bit of horrified pearl-clutching. Also a bit of indignant eye-rolling, a bunch of ‘put it away sweetie’ status updates, and a whole lot of opinion pieces about her ‘provocative’ and ‘overly sexual’ exhibitionism. When Kim Kardashian gets naked and poses for a photo, people get uncomfortable.

  Do you want to know what would happen if I got naked and posed for a photo like that? There’d be no uptight women clutching at their pearls and no indignant eye-rolling. There’d certainly be no opinion pieces asking me to tone down the sexiness.

  If I posed naked for a photo like Kim Kardashian, I wouldn’t be admonished for being overly sexual; I’d be celebrated for being ‘brave’.

  Why? Because I’m fat. And if I dared to flaunt my sexuality as a fat woman, I’d be called brave. And that is such bullshit.

  I don’t want to be called brave. I want someone to look at a naked photo of me and clutch their fucking pearls.

  I cannot tell you how patronising it is to see a woman of my size being called brave, just for putting her body on display in a sexual fashion. It’s patronising because it implies that there is something so abnormal about a fat woman’s body that it would take bravery to show it to anybody. Looking at a fat woman posing for a sexy photo and calling her ‘brave’ (usually including a solemn head nod and some kind of #sobrave hashtag) is actually code for: ‘Wow. You’re obviously not sexy, so trying to be sexy makes you so, so brave.’

  Um, thanks?

  For a long time, I was one of the people who thought it was brave for a fat woman to insist she was sexy. ‘A fat girl got naked! What a legend! Good for her!’ are probably all things I’ve said in the past. I never understood that it could be patronising rather than empowering to label a woman as some kind of trailblazer just for taking her top off.

  Then I got fat. After a lifetime in a slim body, I developed myself a nifty little eating disorder and ended up gaining a lot of weight in my mid-twenties, along with a whole new perspective on life.

  Gaining weight as a woman is a little paradoxical; for every kilo that you gain, you actually lose something along with it. Respect. Visibility. Dignity. Stores willing to make clothes for you that don’t just include stretchy tights and T-shirts with cartoon cats on them. I could no longer walk down the street without being yelled at for having the audacity to go outside (the very creative, ‘FAT!’ was something I heard almost daily). I couldn’t eat in public without being sniggered a
t. Bouncers practically laughed in my face when I tried to get into bars with my friends. I felt like a ghost in the spotlight, invisible while being the centre of humiliating attention. But, despite having basically lost the ability to go outside and live a normal life, that wasn’t the most obvious thing I lost. When I got fat, the most obvious thing I lost was my sexuality. When I gained weight, my sexuality disappeared.

  It happened without me even realising it. You see, as a fat woman, society no longer puts you in the ‘sexually desirable pile’. You are not playing by the rules, not providing the world with the aesthetic they expect and value in women, so you are no longer considered sexy. But not being considered sexually desirable by other people doesn’t mean you don’t still have sexual desires yourself. And that’s where I got confused. How could I not be a sexual being if I still had sexual urges? I still felt sexy. Still masturbated. Still wanted sex. But the overwhelming sense I got from the world around me was that I was no longer invited to the club.

  And it wasn’t just that men didn’t want to date me. Stores didn’t want to dress me. Lingerie companies decided that I didn’t exist once I exceeded Size 16, like it was just assumed that a woman any bigger than that would never need sexy underwear. I couldn’t find myself in magazines, unless it was in a self-celebratory ‘Look! We’ve got a fat girl this month because #diversity!’ If I ever saw myself on screen, it was as the woman whose personality was great enough that a guy would be willing to ‘forgive’ her size. In porn, I was just a fetish, the ‘BBW’ (Big Beautiful Woman) who would put up with all kinds of degrading treatment because she was so desperate for any kind of sexual contact.

  It was as if everybody on earth had collectively decided that I no longer had the right to be sexual. My vagina was closed for business. My body was not to be put on show. I should never look in the mirror and smile, I should just put on that cat T-shirt, forget about sex and apologise for not meeting the aesthetic standards expected of me. At twenty-six, my time as a sexy woman was done. That I still felt sexual was irrelevant. Too bad, too sad, fattie.

  And that was when I realised I hated the word ‘brave’, because calling a woman brave for ‘daring’ to be sexual is just another condescending way of telling her that she isn’t.

  Fat women are sexual, because they are women and women are sexual. Their sexuality doesn’t disappear because they don’t have bodies that are considered desirable by modern, conventional standards. Sexuality doesn’t work that way. Its existence can only be dictated by the person who has it. So when a fat woman considers herself a sexual being, decides to put that sexuality on display and is then called ‘brave’, it exasperates me. How can people not realise it’s just another way of telling a woman that she’s not actually sexy?

  As frustrating as the ‘brave’ label is though, I understand that it comes with the best of intentions. Being a fat woman in today’s society is not easy, and when I gained weight, I noticed that people often wanted me to know that they empathised with that fact. They wanted me to know that they understood how hard it must be for me. It’s like I was considered brave just for existing in the universe as a fat woman. I was often told I was brave for working in a job that required me to be in the public eye. Seriously – just working in a job, as a fat woman, was considered brave. No wonder sexuality for fat women with the absence of bravery is a mind-boggling concept for many.

  And yeah, facing discrimination for being a fat woman isn’t easy. In fact, it can be fucking horrendous. But calling fat women ‘brave’ for putting up with that shit is not helpful. All the ‘brave’ label does is imply that fat women are achieving something in spite of who they are. And the ‘in spite of’ implies that who they are is wrong.

  Insisting on existing in the universe and living life shouldn’t be considered brave. Insisting on working the job you want, wearing the clothes you want and being as sexual as you want shouldn’t be considered brave. It should be considered completely unremarkable. It should be considered as boring as when anyone else does it.

  So please, please, if I ever decide to pose half naked in a Kardashian-style Instagram photo, messy hair falling to my nipples, bum glistening, each of its cheeks barely hiding the lacy string of my tacky G-banger, I don’t want you to say that I’m ‘brave’. I want you to clutch your pearls, head to your computer and write a furious op-ed about how inappropriate the whole thing is, because a naked photo of me would just be TOO DAMN SEXY.

  Not fucking brave.

  I filed that piece away in the back of my mind, not really thinking I would ever get the chance to find out what people would say if I posted a naked photo, because there was no way in hell I was ever going to post a naked photo.

  Then I posted a naked photo. And everyone called me brave. Damn.

  I’m not sure why I did it, to be honest. It was a very spur of the moment thing. I was up late one night, thinking a lot about body image, and getting sick of flawless Hollywood women complaining about their ‘fat’ bodies, so I took a photo of my body and posted it, along with the following text:

  Alright. I can’t believe I did this but . . .

  I’ve been reading/watching a lot lately about women in the public eye who are implicitly arguing that they’re ‘brave’ for being a few kilos heavier than the average fashion model. Like, not being thin automatically makes them flawed, and therefore ‘brave’ for daring to live their lives in the public eye. What frustrates me about these women is not that they’re way thinner than me (and thus sort of implying that if they think they’re some kind of fat yet successful miracle, then I must be a sea monster with no hope), but that despite their success, they still see weight as a major contributing factor to their value.

  How sad. How sad, that after becoming admired trailblazers for women, they still feel the need to talk about their size, as if mentioning it is their responsibility to cancel out some kind of elephant in the room.

  It shouldn’t even be an issue. When you are spectacularly intelligent and talented, your appearance and weight should not even be an issue. I know as a woman, it’s not easy to say that. As a woman, even if your appearance isn’t an issue to you, it is to everyone else. I get that. But, fuck everyone else. We need women in the entertainment industry willing to put their intelligence and talent ahead of their looks. It may not be easy, but if we want values to change, it’s necessary.

  And how do we change those values? By being unfucking-apologetic. By refusing to explain. If you find that you’re successful and a woman and not ‘conventionally’ attractive, don’t give it a second freaking thought.

  Your body is your history. It’s your battleground. It’s what makes you who you are, and you wouldn’t be as intelligent or as successful or as funny as you are without it.

  I survived a childhood filled with abandonment and trauma. Then I survived mental-health struggles and eating disorders. I had weight-loss surgery and continue to question that decision. And in the end of all of that, this is me. This is my body. I have stretch marks. I have flabby skin. I have a belly. I have saggy boobs and I’m covered in freckles that made me cry when I was younger.

  But I’m also a bestselling author. A famous writer. An admired and funny woman. I’m touring a live one-woman show this year. I’m attending writing festivals with my heroes. I’m writing and starring in my own TV show.

  I don’t look the way I’m ‘supposed’ to look, according to a select group of people. But I just don’t give a fuck. Because I’ve achieved more than I’ve ever dreamed of in spite of people assuming I wasn’t pretty or thin enough. I don’t even think about being pretty or thin enough – I just think about writing the best, funniest shit I can write. My body has nothing to do with that.

  So here it is. The body that was meant to hold me back. The body that I’m supposed to apologise for. The body that is meant to keep me off your screens and out of your minds. But my intelligence and my talent is more important than my appearance. And those qualities are what will force me onto your scree
ns and into your minds. So there.

  Sharing a picture like this should end my entertainment industry career. Fuck that. I can write for and play multi-faceted, complex and brilliant women because I am one. And I am one because of the life I’ve lived and the body that I’ve lived it in.

  I am not flawed. I am brilliant. I am a survivor. And I make no apologies.

  (And yes – I used a very flattering filter on my face in this photo. I’m posing nude, give me a freaking break.)

  I put that post up, called Tony, who was in the US, to laugh about it, then went to bed. The next day, I noticed that the Fast-Food Opinion machine had started with a bang overnight. I was asked to go on TV and radio to explain myself. Countless articles and social media statuses, tweets and comments were throwing their two cents in. I freaked out, and felt like I needed to explain myself more clearly, so I put up another Facebook post.

  Why write about how important it is not to focus on physical appearance, and then attach a naked photo of yourself?

  Good question hahahaha.

  So . . . This whole nudie pic thing became a much bigger deal than what I anticipated! Your reaction has been overwhelming. I will say this though:

  I get that it may seem counterintuitive to post a status about how appearance shouldn’t matter, and then attach a naked photo of myself. I get that. I thought a lot about that before I posted it actually. I mean, if the physical really doesn’t matter and I don’t want it to be an issue, why did I put up a photo that very clearly made it an issue? Well, I had a message to get across I guess, and being a bigger woman, I felt like I was in a somewhat unique position to do so visually.

  I have been seeing so many women, much thinner than me, constantly talking about how they’ve achieved things in life in spite of their flaws. The thing that bothers me about that discourse is that ‘flaws’ are even being talked about at all, and so damn often. Why is the physical always so important? So high on the agenda? There just seems to be this overarching attitude that the physical should always be top on the list of values and priorities and attention.