This Is Just My Face

by Gabourey Sidibe

  She tried to help in positive ways, too. Mom signed Ahmed and me up for swim classes near Aunt Dorothy’s house. Two days a week, we went to class and then walked home. I started to lose weight, but swim classes were soon over. Next, Mom enrolled me in dance class. That helped for a while, too, but when classes ended, the weight came back again. My diet never changed. It was whatever Mom cooked or whatever she’d bring home after singing in the subway. Burgers, Chinese food, pizza, whatever. There were usually Oreo cookies and ice cream around because that’s what my mom liked to eat. Shit. Me, too. She’d yell at me not to eat those things, but the yelling paled compared to the satisfaction I got from eating the Oreos. Also, fuck outta here! Maybe if the house was filled with salad.

  In junior high the panic attacks became an everyday occurrence. Children who were sweet little kids the year before become monsters in junior high who make fun of you relentlessly until you cry. And when you cry, they make fun of you for crying. There is no escape. Even your best friends hate you. And you hate them just as much. You only hang out with them because junior high is easier in packs, but it’s still horrible. Not only do kids not give a fuck about your feelings, they actually want to hurt you. My junior high was like a Vietnamese minefield. I would pray every day that God would make me less sensitive. I knew that no matter what someone was going to make fun of me every day, and I prayed to be able to hold my tears. The boys I had crushes on would call me a cheeseburger (now that I think of it, I don’t know why being called a cheeseburger hurt me so badly, but it was like a knife to the heart when I was twelve). Junior high is where I learned that if I couldn’t stop the jokes about my weight I could make them first. Like exaggerating my weight was part of some elaborate comedy act. If we were in phys ed and made to run around the gym a few times, I knew I’d be slow. So I’d make a big deal of how tired I was and how crazy it was that anyone would believe that I could “drag my fat ass around a gym.” My classmates would laugh and root me on as I loudly yelled, “Oh, GOD! I’m not gonna make it! I’m just gonna lay down and die!” while slowly jogging around the room. This way, at least I didn’t cry, and my fellow junior high psychopaths laughed and wanted to be around me. Sure, they were partly laughing at me, but the joke was on my terms so they were also laughing with me. I think. I had friends in junior high. Plenty of friends. Most of them continued to hurt my feelings one way or another, though. I would try to hurt their feelings, too. I don’t feel comfortable saying that I was a victim of bullying. Yes, I was bullied, but I was also the bully. Some of the worst, most regrettable things I’ve ever done in my life, I did in junior high. Junior high is a battleground. It’s as if every day there’s so much shit weighing on you that you have to find someone weaker to dump it all on. As horrible as it was, I had the greatest time in junior high. I just kinda wanted to die every day, too.

  High school wasn’t much different than junior high except there were even more cute boys who pretended to like me only to laugh in my face when I looked hopeful. By now I realized that my parents, Mom especially, held more responsibility for my weight than they ever claimed. It wasn’t all her fault, but it certainly wasn’t all mine, either. I didn’t cook for myself or buy groceries. I didn’t bring cookies and ice cream into the house. I didn’t know salad could be something other than my mom’s version: iceberg lettuce with ketchup-and-mayonnaise dressing slathered on every piece. (We’d all feel smug and satisfied with ourselves for eating that version of a salad, and then we wouldn’t do it again for like a year.) Oddly enough, as soon as I realized that my weight wasn’t entirely my fault, it became my responsibility from that moment on. I figured I could do better. Now I was always making meal plans with my friends. Trying new diets where I would only eat packs of ramen noodles and only drink Crystal Light. The women in the commercials for Crystal Light all looked so pretty, skinny, and happy. And the word light was in the title! Obviously, it was better for me than Kool-Aid. Those diets never lasted long because McDonald’s and soda felt better and the most consistent food in our house was still takeout.

  During high school, I stopped eating lunch. I never ate breakfast to begin with, and now I gave up lunch completely, too. There were no nutritionists around to tell me that it’s counterproductive not to eat, so it felt like the healthy thing to do. It wasn’t just because school lunch was horrible and there were mice running around our lunchroom. (Literally! The local news came to do a story on how terrible my school’s lunch was. They even interviewed ME! My first-ever interview!) I stopped eating lunch because I couldn’t help thinking that people were watching me eat and were disgusted by me because I was fat. I just stopped. Hungry or not, I wouldn’t eat until I was home from school, whether it was at 3 p.m. or 10 p.m.

  Exercising was out of the question during high school for several reasons. Swim class was long over. Also I was super lazy. Going to gym class was wildly inconvenient. It was the last period of my day on the tenth floor; most of my classes were on the fifth floor. Walking up five flights and changing clothes in a locker room full of high school bitches just to get picked last to play volleyball didn’t seem worth it. My senior year I had to take gym at night school and write an independent study on sports in order to graduate. Night-school gym class was from seven to nine-thirty twice a week in the basement of my high school. The final exam consisted of one hundred push-ups and three hundred jumping jacks. Every class got us closer to that final—if I didn’t pass it, I wouldn’t graduate. I couldn’t afford to be lazy. I started dropping weight fast. I’d get home starving at eleven at night, quickly eat dinner, and then go to bed just as quickly and get up the next day in time for eight o’clock class. It felt like finally someone was putting their foot down and making exercise a priority for me, and it was the New York City Public Schools. I lost a lot of weight; I graduated.

  I’d survived childhood, but the weight was back on in a matter of weeks.

  The other night I was at dinner with a friend, a woman eleven years older than I am but who looks my age and is gorgeous. She’s got shiny dark hair, olive skin, a beautiful face, a nice rack, and a small waist. She’s also hella smart and funny, for all you men out there reading this and wondering, But what about her personality!? While I’ve been friends with her for a few years, and we’ve gone out to dinner and lunch numerous times, we don’t know everything about each other. I was very surprised when the two of us began reminiscing about our eating disorders like two veterans of a secret war. We were fondly recalling times when we would sneak off to the bathroom during a night out with friends to throw up on purpose. We both rolled our eyes at the thought; if we did such a thing today, our friends would instantly know what’s up so . . . we’d better not try it anymore.

  It was nice talking to my friend about my eating disorder. I’d never really talked about it in this way before to anyone. I usually mention it, if I bring it up at all, as something terrible that I survived. That’s all most of my friends can accept. But my eating disorder was more like an abusive boyfriend. It was harmful, but it could be really sweet sometimes. It was hard to break up with because I loved it. I’ve never admitted to anyone how much I miss it. How much good it brought me even though it was constantly kicking my ass. Barrassing.

  Yep! If you’re keeping score, add an eating disorder to the growing list of cute and quirky facts about me. Panic attacks, unhealthy eating habits, and bulimia. Soooo cute! The bulimia started in my second year at college and stuck around for about three years. It took a lot of therapy to figure out why I was doing it and then how to stop. Even though it’s been years since I was in the thick of that behavior, I still struggle with figuring out how to stop thinking about throwing up after I eat.

  Even though—duh!—throwing up can cause so many problems. Stomach acid can give you sores in your mouth and burn the lining of your esophagus. Throwing up dehydrates you and can cause a host of cardiovascular problems. It’s dangerous. Also, HELLO! Vomit is nasty! It’s liquefied food that will soon be shit. LITERALLY!
It makes your breath smell, your eyes bulge, and your throat burns like hell so you cough every few minutes. Also, your friends know. You think you’re fooling them, but you’re not.

  Before I even knew I was having panic attacks, I’d start crying about whatever and be unable to stop. I mean really! I’d spend hours crying if some dude I liked was rude to me. Or if my best friend and I had plans but then she canceled to stay home and write her term paper. My emotions were out of control, and all I could do was cry about it for hours in my room. One day I cried so hard and long that I started vomiting. When I was done, I wasn’t crying anymore. I wasn’t even thinking about what had made me cry to begin with. I felt empty, which was a great thing—before this, I’d felt too full of emotions. It was like pushing a reset button. The next time I couldn’t stop crying, a lightbulb went off in my head, and I ran to the bathroom and jammed my finger down my throat. It made me feel high. It was a little like that happiness you get from the endorphins that are triggered when you work out. I felt a release around my head like a halo that made me feel lighter psychically and emotionally. I’d found a new way to deal with the emotions I was drowning in.

  Because I was depressed, I had no appetite, so on days when I couldn’t stop crying and needed to throw up even though I had an empty stomach, I would eat a slice of bread, drink a bottle of water, and then immediately throw that up. I wasn’t even trying to lose weight—that’s not the way it works. I was trying to stop myself from crying, and throwing up made me feel like I had some magic trick to keep my negative emotions at bay.

  After I got some therapy and figured out how to deal with most of my emotions while keeping my fingers away from my throat, I turned my attention to actually trying to lose weight. I figured that since I was becoming mentally healthy I should focus on becoming physically healthy as well. At the age of twenty-two, when I hadn’t purposely thrown up or starved myself for six months, I made an appointment with a bariatric surgeon to discuss having weight-loss surgery. Part of that process is a psychological evaluation. I had to see a therapist, not my own, who would determine if I was mentally capable of having the surgery. Surprise! I wasn’t. The therapist said that because I had just battled an eating disorder I needed much more time to heal from it before I got surgery. When people get weight-loss surgery, their stomachs are reduced to the size of an egg. Overweight people usually continue to overeat, and when that happens on a stomach the size of an egg, you throw up. For someone like me who enjoyed throwing up, the surgery was too risky. The therapist suggested that I give it a year or two before having another psychological evaluation. I had screwed myself out of the surgery. I started throwing up again later that night; quitting is for quitters. Luckily, I didn’t have to do it for three more years. I was able to break the habit.

  When I got my first film role, no one was more surprised than I was. I did take pleasure in the fact that someone had hired me to star in a real live movie. And I was clear that I wouldn’t have gotten the role if I was skinny. Precious was a role for fat girls only! What a weird world we live in, huh? Lee Daniels said he wanted me to be a star even after Precious; he wanted me to be able to endure the grueling pace of making movies. He immediately signed me up for a gym, hired me a personal trainer, put me in tap-dancing class, and hired a yoga instructor for me. He wanted me to be moving six days a week, and I did. I didn’t complain at all! I was ecstatic that someone was taking charge of my body in this healthy way and, on top of that, paying for it! All I had to do was not eat like an asshole, and that was pretty easy when being a movie star was going to depend on it. I was up every morning at six. I would kind of eat breakfast and then go to the gym to work out with my trainer. Then I’d rehearse with Lee, and then he’d drive me to the production office where Lee’s staff would order me a healthy lunch. I’d do some fittings for clothes, sign some paperwork, have a meeting, and then I’d go to tap-dance class for two or three hours and then home to make myself a healthy dinner, and I did it all again the next day. On the weekends I’d go to yoga. I lost nearly thirty pounds in the first month of this, and for the first time, the only thing I gained was a strong hate for yoga. Fuck yoga yo.

  I continued to lose weight as we filmed. When we were done, I stopped the yoga and the tap-dancing lessons. I kept up my good eating habits. I continued going to my trainer, Kris, who was an ex-bouncer and club kid. He was a break-dancer and a karate master. He always knew if I’d skipped breakfast. If I was super catty and mean to him, he understood it meant I was following the meal plan he’d given me and didn’t take offense. He called me Sarcastro because of my sarcastic nature. He and I would work out and talk shit about people who were too dumb to realize how funny we were. No one was more proud of my weight loss than Kris. He helped me to realize how physically strong I was and could be. He taught me the importance of breakfast! (Seriously, I hate breakfast. I spent so many years waiting until I was alone to eat that I don’t even get hungry until around two-ish. On some days, four-ish. My metabolism was as slow as molasses until I started eating breakfast. Now look at me! I’m still fat . . . and rich! Fuck you!) Kris found that I was a strong swimmer, so we would do workouts in pools sometimes, and I loved it. I started walking to the gym and back home afterward. It was a mile each way, so I was really on my grind.

  One day Lee called me and asked how working out was going. I told him how great I felt and that I was now sixty pounds down from when he hired me. He was impressed. But then he said, “So, Gab . . . we’re going to have to do reshoots for the film soon. How different do you look from Precious?” I sent him pictures. I looked different. Lee instructed me to stop working out until reshoots were over. The next week he called me, and carefully said, “Precious, I think if you concentrated and maybe ate some cake, it could really help us. You’ve lost too much weight.” This was a sentence I’d never heard directed at me. I immediately started bragging about it instead of paying attention to the literal weight of what was being asked of me. I reversed everything that I’d been doing over the last nine months and tried to put weight back on. I didn’t actually gain enough by the time I had to shoot again. In fact, it’s pretty noticeable in the film. There’s a fight scene where I look big, and then in the next scene I’m noticeably smaller and have darker skin (I had a tan from walking to the gym every day). In the next scene, I’m bigger and lighter again. Even without regaining all the weight, I did completely screw up all my progress. I fell back into eating like an asshole. Skipping breakfast for chicken wings and french fries in the afternoon, and eating cake all the time because I “deserved it.”

  People have a lot of weird misconceptions about bigger people. I already knew that, but I knew it for sure when I started traveling to film festivals. I can’t tell you how many times I had to hear, “I have to admit something. I thought that fat people were stupid, I thought they were lazy, and I thought they smelled bad. But meeting you, I realize that you’re a normal person like me. And you smell really good and you’re so smart!” What the fuck, right? People not only thought it, but they thought it was appropriate to mention it to me. Interviewers saw fit to ask me if I ever thought about losing weight. As if 1) it hasn’t been on my mind every waking moment of my entire life, and as if 2) it’s any of their business.

  Precious and The Blind Side were released the same year. Both were nominated for Oscars for best film and both featured bigger people than we are used to seeing star in films. One was me, a woman (duh), and the other a man, Quinton Aaron. Truthfully, we were probably very near the same weight. He is tall and handsome, and part of me thought (thinks) we could be good friends. But back then I made the mistake of googling the comments about myself and comparing them to the comments section of Quinton’s IMDb page. I was called a “Fat Fuck,” “Fat Bitch,” “Whale,” “Gorilla,” “Elephant.” I was “ugly,” “uglier,” and, finally, “the ugliest.” I was a “planet-sized bitch,” “the BP oil spill,” “dark as midnight,” and don’t even get me started on the “fat nigger” comme
nts. Some people were “truly just concerned about” my weight. I was “a heart attack waiting to happen.” People were predicting that I would “die any minute” and “won’t make it to her 30th birthday.” A lot of people were concerned that I was “promoting unhealthy eating habits.” Funny, I could’ve sworn I was promoting a movie. Quinton was described as “ridiculously handsome” and a “big teddy bear with beautiful brown puppy dog eyes.” I was pissed! I was so hurt that when I met him I was mean to him. I had no choice! Junior high school rules took over! He told me that he cried while watching Precious, and I replied, “Oh. Like a pussy?” He was really sweet and pleased to meet me so I immediately felt bad about saying something rude. So I only said like two more mean things. He remained sweet and humble. I’m not even sure he realized I was shading the shit out of him. He was really nice. And handsome. Damn those puppy dog eyes. Whenever I see him now, I try not to dwell over how differently we’re received by the public. It’s not his fault. Besides, that other shit is just business. The business of being different and being a woman at the same time. Don’t even get me started on the many times I’ve been questioned about where I get my confidence.

  I sometimes get so mad at myself. Mad at my body. I call it “my personal 9/11” when I am feeling really down. My body sometimes feels like a tragedy. But I’m trying very hard to change my mind about that. This is my body. It’s going to be with me forever. For all the ways it’s failed me, it’s come through for me a million times more. I’ll never be skinny and don’t really want to be. I want to be smaller and I want to be healthier. My body will get me there. Every day I have to remind myself to be good to my body and allow it to be good to me. I’m also trying to stop my urge to make the joke first. I know my body is not funny. I choose me and my body over my fear of someone making a joke of it.