We Are Fat and We Are Legion

by Benjamin Duffy

  Zack wasn’t fat. I suppose he had a “normal” body, as much as I hate that word. His build was medium, let’s put it that way. We hung out a lot in the Melville lounge. We stayed up late talking, sometimes till three. Zack was probably the first guy who ever paid attention to me and it was such a natural high.

  I remember the night he invited me back to his room. It was Columbus Day weekend and his roommate had gone home for the three day holiday so we had the room to ourselves. I stayed the night.

  It was my first time.

  Tuesday was back to academics. I remember going to get some lunch at the dining commons. I filled my tray and went looking for a place to sit. I stopped dead in my tracks and smiled when I heard Zack’s voice from across the room. I spotted him over in one corner, sitting with a large group of his upperclassmen friends. All guys. I thought I would pull up a chair next to him. As far as I was concerned, he was my boyfriend. My very first boyfriend!

  All eyes were on Zack and he seemed to enjoy it. He was telling a story in a loud voice, gesturing wildly and grinning with self-satisfaction. His buddies were hanging on every word, lapping it all up. I stood there in his blind spot, a few feet over his shoulder.

  I nearly died when I heard what he was talking about. Zack was recounting the tale of the “fat chick” he had “porked” over the holiday weekend.

  “How big was she?” asked one of his friends.

  “Fuckin’ huge!” Zack exclaimed. The table exploded with laughter. “Bangin’ fat girls is like walking a tight rope—whatever you do, don’t look down!”

  It felt like a punch in the stomach. I stood frozen for a second and listened as tears welled up in my eyes. Zack and his buddies were yukking it up at my expense. When I had heard enough I escaped to the ladies’ room where I got sick in a nasty toilet bowl.

  The next time I saw Zack, I gave him the finger. “What?” he exclaimed, playing dumb. As if he didn’t know! Unfortunately, I couldn’t avoid him entirely. He lived a few doors down from me in Melville. It was always so uncomfortable to bump into him, which I frequently did.

  I think about him once in a blue moon. That was almost two decades ago and I’m over it…for the most part. I sometimes wonder if I ever cross Zack’s mind. I also wonder how many other girls he dogged in the same way. I’d be interested to know if he has any remorse for what he did to me. Probably not.

  It’s fun to imagine what he’s doing with himself these days. Married? Kids? I don’t know. If he’s like most Americans, he’s probably put on weight. I think I would take perverse joy in knowing that he’s gotten fat. Really, really, fat. Schadenfreude, as the Germans say. It would serve him right.

  Anyway, I dropped out of UMass after that semester. I never did make it to France. I went home for Christmas and never returned to campus. Too many bad memories haunted me there to ever go back. I settled in with my folks and stayed there until I was almost twenty-two, living as the townie I promised myself I would never be. And that’s the story of my one semester at college.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  No One’s Moped

  They shrunk the ice cream containers. The half gallon is a thing of the past; now it’s a measly one and a half quarts. Some people may not have noticed the dwindling ice cream containers, but I certainly did. It upsets me. The change was made nearly simultaneously across the industry, making it seem pretty obvious that it was coordinated. Big Ice Cream was in on it.

  They tried to be sneaky about it too. Sometime around 2002 the ice cream industry shrunk the package down to 1.75 quarts. When they got away with that, they shrunk it again, this time to 1.5 quarts. And the public put up with it! Less ice cream for the same price? Wars have been fought over slighter things.

  In order to make the packages smaller, they shaved a little bit off of each dimension. They also shrunk the package in two steps. If they had reduced the size of the package in one step, people would have noticed it right away. It kind of makes me wonder if there are any plans to reduce it even further. Where does it all end?

  I’m eating Turkey Hill ice cream right now. It’s called Party Cake. I’m sitting at my kitchen table and I’m scooping it into my mouth just as fast as I can. I still don’t appreciate paying the same price for 75 percent as much ice cream but the stuff is pretty fantastic.

  Even so, I’m crying. I’m bawling my damned eyes out. I’m eating and crying and eating. I can hardly breathe between the ice cream and the tears. I’ve already gotten two brain freezes since I sat down with this container of delicious Party Cake ice cream. I might have a stomach ache later on, but I really don’t care. Not now.

  I found the note on the refrigerator, attached with magnets. I recognized right away that it was written by Denny’s hand. The note tore me apart, weighing down on my chest with the crushing force of despair.

  Gabby,

  These last few months have been difficult for me. As you know, I was diagnosed with diabetes back in February. Since that time, I’ve been struggling to make deep changes to my life. I’m faced with the task of unlearning years of bad eating habits.

  I wasn’t sure how you would react to this. I knew that you were deeply involved in the fat acceptance movement, but I always thought that you would support me if I wanted to do something for my health. Sadly, you have not done that. You have fought me every step of the way. You have denied that I even have diabetes and that weight was a factor in its development. You still argue with me about blood sugar levels and whether my diabetes is really the result of my weight.

  Yesterday, you sabotaged my diet by throwing away my doctor-prescribed meals. It was only then that I realized the depth of your insecurities. You will stop at nothing to keep me fat. While I’d like to think that you mean well, I can’t convince myself of a lie that big. You don’t mean well. Your obsession with keeping me fat is not in my best interests. If you cared at all about me, you would be supporting me in my struggle. Instead, you have been nothing but a nay-sayer, discouraging me from even trying.

  This relationship has become unhealthy. I need to break free of you if I am ever going to beat this thing. I’ve neglected my body for too long and it’s a long road back to health. It was yesterday that I realized that you would never accompany me down that road, no matter what. I had to choose between our relationship and a better life. You know what my decision was.

  I wish you the best of luck in the future. Find someone else, I don’t care. Have a nice life and God bless.

  Sincerely,

  Denny

  P.S. I fed Nutter and took him for a walk before I left.

  I placed the letter down on the counter and threw open the refrigerator door. His cans of Diet Coke were gone. I began to cry, running through the house, crashing headlong into the bedroom, screaming his name as if he would answer me. I was hoping that this was some kind of cruel joke, a ploy to get me to drop my opposition to dieting. No such luck. If he was trying to knuckle me under, to get me to say ‘uncle’, well—I was ready to say it. I was ready to scream it: uncle, uncle, UNCLE! I would have gone along with his silly diet if it meant I could have him back. I prayed that this was all a prank and that he was actually hiding in the closet just to see how I would react to his walking out on me.

  I saw that our computer was gone. He must have taken it with him. It was his computer, actually. His clothing was gone from the closet, his razor missing from the bathroom sink. I slid the bathroom mirror open and saw that his Ralph Lauren aftershave was gone too. Not a single trace of Dennis Emory remained in the whole house. I seized upon his pillow on the bed. Shoving my face into it, I inhaled deeply. It smelled like Denny. I curled up on the bed with that pillow, soaking it with my tears.

  That’s when I returned to the kitchen and cracked into the Party Cake ice cream. I gorged myself on the rich, silky treat. At first, I was overwhelmed with sadness. I could feel the immense loss in my bones. Over the previous years, Denny had become an integrated part of my life. Living without him was inconceivable.r />
  Then anger crept in. How selfish of him to leave me when I needed him. What a cowardly fink to slink away like that, leaving only a note to explain himself. He should have had the courage to confront me directly, to tell me to my face that he was leaving. I knew why he was doing it this way—because he knew he would destroy me and he didn’t want to see the wreckage he was leaving behind.

  Run away, Denny! Just run away like a coward!

  Creeping doubts bubble up into my throat. If Denny never comes back, I’ll have two choices, neither of which appeals to me. I can either grow to be an old spinster, the neighborhood cat lady; or I can enter the dating scene again and find someone new. Dating can be an emotionally exhausting experience for fatties. Putting yourself “on the market” opens up all sorts of old wounds. I’d rather not revisit those days.

  There are always the dating websites, of course. The BBW sites. Thanks goodness for those. Without them, I’d just have to sit around waiting for a man to ask me out. For crying out loud, how long would that take? I could grow old waiting for Mr. Right to seek me out. I’m thirty-six years old and I’m fat. I’m not a little chunky, I’m not big-boned, and I’m not zaftig. I’m fat. I sob deeper and louder as I contemplate the dating scene in all of its hollow desperation.

  This cannot be happening to me. It’s all a bad dream, I’d like to believe. But no, the nightmare is real. The nightmare is my life.

  * * *

  Tyra Banks knows a little about the plight of fat women in the dating world. The supermodel turned talk show host donned a fat suit in 2005 in order to experience life as a 350 pound woman. With the help of Hollywood’s best makeup artists, she even took on a fat face. I must admit that she looked quite convincing. If I had seen her on the street, I would have had no way of knowing that there was a supermodel beneath all of that faux fat. Tyra played the part of the dowdy, dumpy fat woman like a pro, looking downright miserable, as most fat women do. The hallmark of a fat woman is the glint of defeat in her eyes. She certainly looked like a beaten down person to me.

  Kudos to Tyra for drawing parallels between fatphobia and racism. “I used to think black people had it the worst, because of history and because we have dark skin, but I started to notice it’s people who are overweight (who get it the worst)”.

  Certainly. And if anyone ever treated a black person that badly on account of her skin color, society would rightly recognize the injustice and put a stop to it. Why then is it socially acceptable to dump on fat people?

  Social critics have long understood that fatphobia often serves as a mask for other forms of bigotry that modern society no longer tolerates. Increasing weight is strongly correlated with decreasing economic class, as well as with the darker skinned races. America’s fat majority consists mostly of blacks, Hispanics, and working class whites. Visit the housing projects of New York City or a trailer park in the Ozarks, and you will find fat people in spectacular abundance.

  Affluent white professionals are rarely ever fat due to the social stigma that exists at their particular intersection of race and class. As a consequence, respectable upper-middle class whites tend to project their disgust for the poor and ethnic minorities onto another distinguishing characteristic, namely fatness. This allows them to avoid the risk of being called bigots.

  No self-respecting white professional would be caught dead demeaning another person because of race or social class; at least not in polite company and not in the modern age. A hundred years ago, wealthier people would have had no qualms about expressing their disgust for tenement dwellers, and white people would not have hesitated a moment to demean African-Americans. There was no social penalty for such bigotry so hateful sentiments were aired in public.

  Oh, how things have changed! These days, that same white person makes snickering remarks about the fat lady he sees on the street. The fact that the fat lady is poor and Latina are pure coincidence; or so the respectable white person would have you believe. In reality, he’s simply learned to translate his bigotry into the last remaining socially acceptable form of prejudice—fatphobia.

  But back to Tyra Banks. As a part of her social experiment, Tyra was paired up on three blind dates. She claims that one of the three dates was openly rude to her. She asked him what his parents would think if he brought her home. His answer? “They’ll be like: ‘What’s wrong with you?’”

  Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Fat women know what it’s like to be on the wrong end of belittling comments. When you put yourself out on the dating market, you open yourself up to a barrage of barbed insults. It’s a fact of life for fat women but apparently a rude awakening for supermodels. Is she honestly trying to tell me that she didn’t know?

  Actually, the answer is yes. “The people that were staring and laughing in my face—that shocked me the most,” she said. “As soon as I entered the store—when I went shopping—I immediately heard snickers. Immediately! I was just appalled, and, and, and hurt!”

  At the end of the fifteen hour experiment, Tyra took off the fat suit and went back to being a supermodel. I can’t take mine off. I’ve been wearing it for thirty-six years and next year’s not looking too good either. I’m the fat lady and I always will be.

  I have conflicting feelings about Tyra’s expedition into the fat-o-sphere. On the one hand, it seems that she underwent a bit of humiliation in order to bring to light a topic that our society rarely talks about—anti-fat discrimination. More discussion of this topic is always a good thing, no two ways about it. I applaud for her for taking the opportunity to walk a mile in my shoes.

  “There’s no excuse for rudeness,” she said. “There’s no excuse for ugliness. And there’s no excuse for nastiness and that’s what I experienced.”

  Amen, Tyra. That’s just a day in the life of a fat lady. It’s what we experience when we venture out of our houses each morning to go to work, to go shopping, to see the doctor, to drop the kids off at school. People stare at us until they realize that they’re staring, and then they avert their eyes. On behalf of fat chicks everywhere, I’d like to say thank you for highlighting the degrading treatment that we endure on a daily basis.

  On the other hand, I still don’t think she gets it. Her noblesse oblige is cute, but in the end, Tyra is no less clueless and condescending than Marie Antoinette. Tyra mentioned that one of her suitors went “gaga” for her once he found out that he was actually on a date with a supermodel. Even that guy admitted that there would have been no second date if he had believed she was 350 pounds. Tyra was shocked by this. Geez, what did she think? Did she honestly believe that all of the men she’s dated her entire life were interested in her winning personality?

  She also claims that she would be more accepting of a fat man now that she’s seen things from another point-of-view. She says that she likes all different types of men, which I find hard to believe. Hey Tyra, I’ve got great news for you. Denny is available! This hunk of man is back on the market, so now’s your chance!

  Yeah right, I’m sure she’d jump at the opportunity. Does she frequently date truck drivers and auto mechanics in the three hundred to four hundred pound range, or does she prefer rich, powerful, men with movie star good looks?

  Actually, Tyra has been romantically linked to the world’s most highly paid actor, Will Smith, as well as John Utendahl, founder of the largest African-American investment group in the country. Neither man is fat. Previous boyfriends include basketball player Chris Webber (not fat), Hollywood director John Singleton (not fat), and musician Seal (not fat). This is what she means when she says that she likes “all different types of men”. Judging from this impressive list of jet-setting hunks, I would guess that Tyra likes her men to be tall, dark, handsome, and definitely not at all fat. Don’t let her tell you otherwise.

  Furthermore, I don’t see Tyra taking any responsibility for the role she has played in cementing our thin-obsessed culture. As the host and executive producer of America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks picked young wome
n apart for having the tiniest physical flaws.

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; nothing good comes out of the modeling industry. It seems that it serves only one purpose—to confront women with an unrealistic image of ideal womanhood that only a miniscule percentage of us can ever hope to achieve. The modeling industry nurtures poor body image which inevitably leads to eating disorders. Modeling is deeply misogynistic.

  America’s Next Top Model does not feature a single fat woman. Heck, the show doesn’t feature a single average-sized woman. Every contestant on that show is thin and most of them are so emaciated that a reasonable person would suspect an eating disorder. There’s just no way a woman could look that thin naturally, not unless she just arrived here from a famine-ravaged third world country.

  One girl on the show spoke openly about her bulimia after she was eliminated from the competition. London Levi of Arlington, Texas came onto the show with a secret—she was trying to overcome an eating disorder. Although she was sickly thin at the beginning, she gained about fifteen pounds over the course of the season. Gaining fifteen pounds while recovering from bulimia is not out of the ordinary. It’s quite healthy in fact. Unfortunately, her weight gain was too much for the judges and she was eliminated from the contest.

  Photo director Jay Manuel noticed her weight gain and asked, “Has she gained a lot of weight? And this is not subtle weight gain. This is not professional.” He later sat down with London and breeched a difficult subject with her. “It just really shocked me today,” he said. “I’m seeing such a huge change physically.” Fifteen pounds is a huge change! “When you’re in a competition, I understand there’s stress, and people react to stress differently. It’s just clear that you’re not taking care of your body in the short period of time. And if this is tough, how are you going to deal with it in the modeling world?”