Then I received another crazy email. This one was from the TLC TV network, and I fished it out of my spam box. It was a simple, three-sentence email saying that they had seen me on the Today show and were wondering if I’d consider collaborating with them on a project. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I said yes. I scheduled a meeting with a representative in New York, and after that they told me there was a long process ahead—they would have to find a production company to film a sizzle reel, and then the network would decide what they wanted to do with it. This could be anything, from saying “Thanks, but no thanks” to ordering a pilot and ordering episodes. It was March, and I wouldn’t hear anything about even meeting the production company until summer, but somehow I just knew inside me that my time in radio was done and there was something else in store. But, I should point out, I didn’t think a reality show was it. It seemed too implausible that such a huge opportunity would come to fruition. Plus, I wasn’t at all sold on doing reality TV to begin with.
Even though I was still broke and living with my parents, I decided to quit my job at the radio station and turn all my attention to No Body Shame. I was still regularly fielding interview requests and invitations both here and abroad, and there seemed to be no indication it would be slowing down anytime soon. I sat at my computer for hours each day, responding to the thousands of people who sent me messages and emails.
Reading these messages filled me with a strange feeling of both happiness and sadness, because what I found was this: people all over the world, regardless of race, gender, orientation, ability, size…they were all struggling, and so many of their stories mirrored my own. I was not unique, and it was tragic because I couldn’t believe how commonplace my depression and pain were for other people. I’d wished that it wasn’t as “normal” as I was learning it was. But then I realized something else. If I am not unique, then I am not alone. None of us is alone. I drew strength from the gay boy in Lebanon who told me that watching my dance video gave him courage because being gay is a crime where he lives. I felt for the thousands of young girls, some of whom had been diagnosed with PCOS like me, and had, for too long, let their weight stop them from living the lives they wanted. I could sympathize with every person who wrote to me about suffering from a skin condition, a physical disability, or who was just plain critical of their own reflection.
In the summer TLC scheduled me a meeting with a production company called Pilgrim. When I had told my mom that we might be doing reality TV, her only response was, “Whitney, I’m not doing it.” But the more I thought about it, the more optimistic I became. Of course, agreeing to let cameras into your home and personal space was absurd, but I thought the list of pros outweighed the cons. I had never seen a TV show that centered around a fat woman in a positive way, and neither had the thousands of young, miserable girls who wrote to me. I had never heard PCOS being discussed on a national scale. I knew that agreeing to do a reality show could be the worst or the best decision of my life, but after considering all the possibilities (it could be awesome, it could get canceled after an episode, it could tarnish my reputation, it could be fun, it could effectively squash any future job opportunities and ruin my life, etc.), I got on a plane and agreed to go to Los Angeles for the meeting with Pilgrim. I was nervous as all hell, and had spent two hours in my hotel room getting ready, only to end up with smudged eyeliner and sweat stains on my clothes. When I sat down in a huge conference room with a long table in the middle, I looked up at the walls and saw framed titles of all of their previous successful shows. When a producer walked in, he said, “Hopefully you’ll be up there one day soon.” The thought of it made my stomach turn. It’s not every day you go from being a normal person to having a worldwide audience overnight, and then get handed a television show. It seemed more like a movie than my real life.
When the meeting started, it was casual. I was hyperaware of trying to just “act natural” and be myself, because that is what they liked, after all. The producer asked, “What are your short-term goals?”
For some reason, in that moment, I lost all ability to think of anything, much less articulate it, and before I knew it I had opened up my mouth and said, “Well, I’d really like to get laid, for starters!” Oh GOD! Had I really just said that? I envisioned my mom clutching her pearls, and me getting on the plane downtrodden, shaking my head, wondering how I had ruined it all.
But then everyone burst into laughter. When the meeting was over, the producer said, “You’re the most positive person I’ve ever met.” I smiled and thanked him, and when I got into my car to head back to the hotel, I noticed a missed call from him. I listened to my voicemail and he said that it was nice to meet me and that he’d just booked me three nights in Vegas. The meeting had gone well.
A month or so later a crew came out to film for a few days, to gather material to make a sizzle reel. They filmed my normal life—talking to my parents, hanging out with my friends, dancing in the studio with Todd—and when they left, I wondered what on earth they were going to do with the footage to make it something anyone would want to watch on TV. But then a month after that I got a phone call from the same TLC executive who had emailed me after seeing me on the Today show.
“Do you want to be on TV in January of next year?” she asked.
Um, duh!
And just like that I suddenly became a person with her own TV show. I couldn’t wait for the next month, when production would start. When the crew arrived in Greensboro, any fears my family and I had about reality TV were quelled. They were normal, wonderful people whom we grew to love over the next three months as we shot enough material for nine episodes. When they left at the beginning of November to go back to California, I missed them.
Now that I was waiting for season one of My Big Fat Fabulous Life to premiere (and I couldn’t even talk about it until people.com broke the story in December!), and I didn’t have much of a daily schedule, I was just plain bored. I signed up for a new dating app called Tinder and crossed my fingers. Surprisingly enough, I matched with a handsome guy named Peter and we started chatting right away. Then we exchanged numbers and continued our conversation. After a few days he suggested meeting. I took my new kitten to meet Boo Boo for an ice cream cone on a nearby college campus. We sat at the picnic table outside, my kitten’s tiny head poking out of my sports bra, and she read all the text messages from Peter.
“Boo Boo,” Donna said, “he sounds so normal. I really think you have to meet him. What can you lose?”
“Besides my dignity?” I joked, but I softened a little. She was right: Peter was the first “normal” guy to come along in a while. I also realized that my standards of “normal” were pretty lenient. That is to say, he was smart, spoke to me respectfully, wrote in full sentences, and had a sense of humor. He’d never been crude, he’d never suggested Netflix and Chill, and he appeared to have substance. What made him different from the last few guys I’d dated was that he wasn’t exclusively into fat girls, and in fact had never been with a fat girl at all.
“It’s more about lack of opportunity than preference,” Peter had explained. “I do think I’m generally attracted to thinner women, but an attractive woman is an attractive woman.” I didn’t fault him for preferring thin women, nor did I think it was a deal breaker that he’d never pursued a bigger one, but the thought of being someone’s “first” felt like so much pressure. Still, the more I hashed it out with Donna, the more I felt I had nothing to lose. I wasn’t looking to fall in love or meet my soulmate; I just wanted some company. This dude had no bearing on my life, my self-worth, or my achievements. I should meet him.
A few nights later, while Donna was over, Peter and I were texting intermittently, when I broached meeting up in person.
Right now? he texted.
“Oh God! He meant right now!” I said to Boo Boo, holding up my phone so she could see the screen.
“Say yes!” Donna jumped off the bed and started gathering dirty clothes from my floor. �
��Get in the shower. Your room will be clean when you get out. Do you need anything? I can run to the store.”
I hopped in the shower while Donna filled hampers with clothes, made my bed, replaced the empty spaces on my shelves with books from various spots in my room, and lit a candle. As I blow-dried my hair, I had only minutes remaining before Peter was supposed to show up. I asked Donna to stay until he got there, and when there was a soft knock at my parents’ back door, we both went into the hallway. I let Peter in, and Donna—ever the wing woman—offered to get us Popsicles from the kitchen. Then she gave me a hug and left.
For all the anticipation of impending doom I’d thought up in my brain, the evening was totally normal. Peter was smart and funny and all the things I picked up on via text. We kissed before he left. We had sushi the day after that, followed by another week of serious make-out sessions. He was cool; it felt easy.
But when Peter invited me over to his place for the first time, I felt a little out of control. I hurried down the walkway in the cold and reached his building. I took the stairs as fast as I could, and when I got to the top I was a little out of breath. I paused, listening to his voice from outside his door, inhaling and exhaling slowly so I wouldn’t appear winded.
What am I doing? I thought. Who cares if you look a little out of breath! You just flew up the stairs! As a fat woman, I am acutely aware of stairs, hills, and other “complications” when I am in mixed company. Call it leftover insecurity or too much pride, but I struggle with accepting that I am incapable of doing everything a fit person can do. Around my close friends, of course, this is not a problem. So what was Peter? A friend who I wanted to have sex with? Did that mean I could unzip my insecurity? I wasn’t sure.
When I entered his apartment, I saw another obstacle. Peter’s friend was sitting on the one small couch and Peter was in an armchair. I am horrible at estimating how much space my body takes up, and I notoriously underestimate my size. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to shimmy between two parked cars only to almost take someone’s rearview mirror clean off. Conversely, there have been plenty of times I take the long way around in a restaurant only to realize I could have maneuvered through the open space easily.
I couldn’t tell if I would take up more than my half of Peter’s couch, but when it comes to seating arrangements, surface area is only half the battle. I can tell, simply by looking, if a couch or chair will swallow me up, leaving me leaning far backward, feet almost off the floor with my boobs nearly suffocating me. To get off of this type of couch, I have to grab the armrest and first wiggle to the end before my feet can touch and then I can stand up. I call this move “walrusing.” Because of all of this hassle, I routinely sit on the edge of couches and chairs so my back never goes near the back of the furniture. That way I can remain upright, assertive, in control, and non-walrus. Being in the intimate space of a man who I wanted to be sleeping with heightened my anxiety. But instead of letting it devour me, I simply motioned to the chair.
“Would you mind if I sat there?”
Peter immediately got up and joined his friend on the couch, none the wiser to my concerns. This might seem like a simple thing, but it’s something I’d been working on for a long time. In my quest to never be specially accommodated because of my size, I had either quit going places or suffered in silence in full-out walrus. Part of my journey in body-positivity has been about becoming able to ask for simple things that made my body more comfortable, instead of feeling ashamed of how much space my body takes up. We talked and laughed, watched YouTube videos and played Heads Up on my phone. Peter’s friend eventually left and I stretched out on the couch. Peter walked over to me.
He bent down and put his mouth on mine, his curly hair dangling on my cheek.
“Come on,” he said.
“Come on where?”
“To the bedroom.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I was off the couch in a second (imagine that), but when I got to the door of the bedroom, I stopped, almost afraid to go in because of what I saw. He was in the process of buying a new bed, and all he had was an air mattress on the hardwood floor.
“Is that…an air mattress?” I squeaked.
“Yeah. What’s wrong?”
“Don’t those things have a weight limit?”
He laughed. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. Come on.”
“But what if…what if I break it?”
Hearing myself have this conversation out loud was shocking, even to me. With any other man, at any other time in my life, I would have run at the sight of that air mattress. But here I was, calmly explaining my concerns about bursting this man’s twin air mattress during the sex I felt sure we were going to have, and he wasn’t budging.
“Whitney. Come on.”
Even lowering my body to get on the air mattress was awkward, as it was only four inches off the floor, but I made it down. “If something horrible happens, please let me replace it.”
“Deal,” he said as he pulled me out of my shirt.
He kissed me with the passion of a man who had loved me for lifetimes, expertly covering every inch of my body. And he listened, not to what I was saying out loud (which wasn’t much besides breathless gasps), but he intuitively listened to my body. Even more surprising: though my body was at least twice the size of his, we maneuvered together with ease. One minute he was on top of me and the next I was on my knees with no real memory of how I got there. There was no awkwardness, no changing of positions, and no time for me to worry about what my body looked like from his perspective. There was only pleasure. As I lay there on my side, processing what had just happened—on an air mattress, no less—I looked over at the lamp on the floor and did something I’d never done once with my boyfriends in the twelve years I’d been having sex. I turned the light off. We even both managed to lie side by side and cuddle afterward.
“I don’t think I can sleep over at your house,” I said with a laugh.
“Probably not the best idea if either of us want to get any sleep,” he agreed.
I said goodbye and made my way back to my car. As I drove home, I replayed the events in my mind and thought about the freedom I’d felt during our encounter. And I felt really proud of myself. Here’s why: before my fling with Peter, I’d always thought that having sex with the lights on, completely unencumbered by insecurity or body image issues, was something a man gave you. I thought this kind of sex, which I’d only read about and seemed as common as a unicorn, must exist only within the four walls of a bedroom that belonged to a man who (1) loved you, (2) was in a monogamous relationship with you, and (3) had more or less taught you to love your body because, by some crazy fluke, he did.
I figured a man would have to systematically break down your walls, steadfastly chiseling away at your self-doubt and inhibition, kind of like fashioning a beautiful ice sculpture out of a glacier—it was only the right man who could make you into the kind of woman who had sex with the lights on. The right man would be equal parts understanding and encouraging. It was the kind of narrative rom-coms had fed me, and until this night I had wholly bought into it. But here I was, without the right man, doing it with the lights on. So why now? Why Peter? Why on an air mattress?
By the time I reached my house, I had the answer. It was because of me. I had changed. Sure, Peter was a nice guy, and I needed a little coaxing with the mattress, but the confidence and the comfort weren’t something a man had taught me to have or feel; they had come, genuinely, from inside of me. I liked Peter a lot, but I didn’t love him. We were on the same page there. And so, after many years of chasing this elusive satisfying sex life, I found it precisely when I didn’t expect to. It turns out that I didn’t need relationship security; I didn’t need a Superman to play the role of therapist while he got me out of my pants. I just needed peace. Peace with my body, peace with myself, peace with the notion that I—even in all my imperfections—deserved good sex.
It was the beginning of January, just day
s before the premiere of My Big Fat Fabulous Life, and my family and Tal and I were in Pasadena at TCA. The Television Critics Association conference is a twice-yearly event where critics watch clips from upcoming series and have the opportunity to ask questions of the guests and interview them. We were asked by TLC to attend, as My Big Fat Fabulous Life was the show the network would be presenting to the critics. I, of course, had not seen the show. I was only privy to the same short clip as the rest of the world and prepared to answer the same questions my existence usually prompted, such as, “Aren’t you promoting obesity?”
The TCA panel went smoothly, and I was shocked at the softball nature of the questions. Not one journalist questioned whether I was promoting obesity (still curious? Read chapter 11!), but plenty of them were interested in talking to me afterward. As I did the rounds of AP, Entertainment Tonight, and Inside Edition, I was struck by how people seemed to connect to my story, whether it was a perfectly coiffed woman who resembled a Barbie doll or the middle-aged man who approached my dad to tell him he really identified with my struggle. My family left California excited about the upcoming premiere, and I got on a plane to Chicago to kick off another press tour, which included a second appearance on Today, Steve Harvey, and CNN Headline News, as well as an appearance on Dr. Oz and a host of magazine interviews and phone calls.
My flight home was scheduled to land just an hour before the first episode of My Big Fat Fabulous Life would premiere, and my parents and friends were waiting for me at the restaurant where we were having a party.
As we sat on the tarmac, waiting to take off, my stomach filled up with butterflies. It seemed like an eon ago that I was told I was getting a show, and ages since we’d filmed it. It was hard to believe that it was real. I opened up Facebook and saw a post from my alma mater, Appalachian State University, congratulating me and announcing the premiere. As I scrolled through the comments, I saw people mostly talking shit, groaning about how awful it was to be associated with such a fat bitch. Just as I was about to close the app, I noticed a comment from an old roommate whom I’d not heard from in eight years.
I Do It with the Lights On Page 18