There are two clothing items I abstained from completely as a morbidly obese person: jeans and bathing suits. The latter has to be pretty obvious, I think. I know there are plenty of plus-size women who have no problem wearing bathing suits, refusing to allow extra pounds to keep them from enjoying themselves. I am so not one of those women. Yes, I have been known to go to the beach FULLY CLOTHED. We’re talking long blouse, capri pants—the works—because I couldn’t bear the thought of baring it all in public. I think I would have rather died first. I felt much the same way about jeans. I thought once you reached a certain size, jeans were no longer an option. And I made that decision even before “skinny jeans” became so popular. I suppose taking that stance came of out of necessity in the beginning. Again, there weren’t many options when I first started to really gain weight, and other than buying a pair of husky men’s jeans at Kmart, an obese woman was pretty much out of luck. Of course that changed over the years, and now you can buy virtually any size jeans you want; but I still can’t make myself do it, even now that I’m not morbidly obese. I don’t know, something seems too binding about them to me. There have been many, many nights over the years when I wondered if I would ever put on a pair of sexy jeans for my husband again, if I would one day don a bathing suit and play at the beach with my kids. When I was deluding myself, I thought, No problem, I can easily do that in the next six months or so. At my lowest I felt as though jeans and bathing suits had passed me by forever. Sometimes, I still feel that way.
Ugghh … my back aches. Wanna know why? Because I’ve had to keep my legs and thighs exactly together all day. Wanna know why? I have a hole in my pants in the inner thigh area. Now I guess you want to know why I wore these pants when I knew they had a hole in them. BECAUSE I CAN’T FIND ANY PANTS TO FIT ME! I’ve been shopping at least five times in the last ten days, and I’ve come up empty. Yes, I have black pants … yes, I have gray pants. (Gray! Doesn’t that by itself sound terribly depressing?!) But I can’t find cream pants or khaki pants … and I can’t wear the same black pants over and over. In fact I already feel as though I’m doing that, and I am terribly self-conscious about it. So that’s why I knowingly wore a pair of pants with a hole in them. And I am now paying the price in backaches.
I wish I could say that kind of thing was rare, but sadly, it wasn’t. I was so determined not to confront my appearance issues that I let things like that slide all the time. I can remember blouses with permanent stains on them that I convinced myself weren’t that bad and wore them anyway. They were that bad. I can also remember taking a shirt out of a dry cleaner’s bag and discovering that one of the buttons had been broken in half. I was running late and didn’t have anything else clean, so I wore the blouse to work anyway. When you only have three or four blouses to choose from, it really puts you in a bind if something goes wrong. So I told everyone I didn’t notice it until I got all the way to work. I tried to laugh it off, but I knew how pathetic I was being.
Being obese makes clothing emergencies all the more difficult. When we went out of town to visit family, I couldn’t simply borrow a jacket if I forgot to bring one. No one had anything that fit me, not even the men. When I volunteered in the church kitchen, I couldn’t wear one of the standard aprons emblazoned with the church logo because they were too small. But perhaps the most embarrassing problems occurred when I was faced with unplanned clothing situations at work.
Winters in North Carolina tend to be pretty mild; if we get a good dusting of snow once a year, we’re doing pretty well. But in 2002 we had one big snowfall after another, and this meant extra-long hours of work because I was employed by a television news station more than an hour away from my home. Once I was caught off guard; I was still at work when the ice started to build up on the roads, and the forecasters were predicting widespread power outages and road delays. I would have to spend the night, perhaps several nights, in a local hotel so that I could make it into work. Normally this would only be mildly inconvenient, but for someone with a big weight problem, it seemed catastrophic. What was I going to wear? I hadn’t packed any clothes, and it looked as though I’d be stuck for several days. Finding clothes to fit me was difficult under the best of circumstances, when I had several stores to choose from; now, I had to go to Kmart, the only store that was open and just down the street, hoping and praying to find something I could wear.
I went first to the women’s section, picking out a few simple tops and bottoms in the largest sizes they had—24. I took the clothes to the dressing room and confirmed what I already knew in my heart: The clothes didn’t fit. They were too small. Fighting tears, I hung them back on the rack and made my way to the men’s section. They had some husky-size sweatshirts and sweatpants in men’s 3X. I swallowed hard and took the men’s clothes back to the women’s dressing room, hoping no one would notice. The clothes fit, but not entirely well. Still though, I had a problem. These were sweat clothes, and the only shoes I had with me were dress flats. I had to go over to the shoe section and pick out sneakers. I knew I would look ridiculous in these clothes, and I felt so much worse. But what choice did I have? I was stuck, with nowhere else to turn. I got through the next three days the best I could. And I was never caught again in wintertime without an extra set of clothes packed in my car.
I have reached a new wardrobe low. Eli’s baptism is almost here, and I have nothing to wear. And I don’t mean I have nothing that I like; I mean I have absolutely nothing dressy that will fit my body. Going shopping for clothes is right at the top of the list of things I hate to do, along with going to the dentist and having my taxes audited. But this is one special occasion I cannot—I will not—miss.
Nothing would make me happier than to buy a beautiful sundress in a pretty pastel color. It’s April, and we’re holding the party after the baptism in our backyard. Everywhere you look the colors of spring are bursting, and I’d love to match, or at least come close to matching, the joy of the occasion with my outfit. But pastel and three hundred pounds don’t really go that well together, and at the rate I’m going, color is not going to be a privilege afforded to me. I’ve been to all the major department stores and have come up empty—nothing fits. Fighting back tears, I make my way down to the mall to one of the specialty shops. I should be used to this by now: wanting something to wear for a special occasion and being utterly disappointed by my choices—or lack thereof. But this really hurts. This is my baby boy’s baptism. After some initial health problems at birth, he’s now thriving at nine months old and cute as all get out. I want to celebrate with my family and friends; I want how I look to reflect how I feel about Eli. But how I look only reflects the inner turmoil that rocks me on a daily basis, and a drab outfit bought in an act of desperation certainly will not help matters.
In the end I settle for a black linen jacket and a hot pink shell to wear underneath. I pair them with the same long black skirt I’ve worn on many occasions, a skirt that honestly looks like a bedsheet. Dressed in black, in the springtime, at an outdoor party for my baby boy’s baptism. Lovely. As unexcited as I am about the outfit, I’m even more depressed at how much the clothes cost me. At least Michael will have something to bury me in, I tell myself.
I certainly could have handled it all a whole lot differently, perhaps have even made myself feel better, if I’d simply done all I could to help my appearance. Even if I was heavier than I’d ever been, even if I had to shop high and low for hours on end, I should have made more of an effort. But truly, the reality of how I looked put me into a state of shock. As the weight piled on, there were things happening to me that I never thought possible.
You know how some people have double chins? Well I definitely had those, and I think one extra. But what was really weird is at one point I had three stomachs. It was right after my second C-section. I remember my sister-in-law saying her C-section permanently damaged her abdomen, that no matter what she did as far as exercise and diet, she couldn’t get her stomach flat again. I scoffed at that notion,
especially after my first C-section, in which my stomach went back to its normal (lumpy) state. Nothing looked different to me (unfortunately). But after my second surgery, it did change. I had the same roll of fat above the belly button, you know, right above where you fasten your pants (or for me, tie the drawstring). And then I had the same enormous roll of fat below the navel. But in between the two, I developed a third layer of blubber that added incredible insult to injury. Sucking it in? Not even close to an option, although really, it wasn’t much of an option before. Still, I looked like an absolute freak, and it wasn’t just my stomach making me feel that way.
About a year after I started gaining weight and was unable to stop it, I started to lose my hair. As I tell this now, it’s easier, because it started so long ago and I have since accepted it. But at the time, I was beyond bitter. Was my fate really meant to be this way? Not only was I on my way to morbid obesity, but I was now going to draw even more attention to myself by becoming bald? I panicked. I went to see a specialist. And then another and then another. No one could tell me why it was happening, and there were no suggestions as to what to do about it. Sure, I tried Rogaine. I tried hair supplements and special shampoos. Nothing worked. The pounds piled on, and the strands of hair littered my clothing, my sink drains. I started to get comments from well-meaning coworkers. “Do I see your scalp?” one lady asked me, looking closely at my head. I was mortified, and depressed beyond belief. I was heavier than I had ever been. I wore the same three to four black-blouse outfits every day. And now my hair was thinning. After a while I just grew kind of numb to it all. On better days I would convince myself that once I started to lose the weight, my hair would come back, even though the doctors I saw couldn’t tell me if my weight gain had anything to do with it. On my really bad days, I told myself that I already looked like crap and the hair loss just completed the shitty picture. I accepted it as though I deserved it.
I felt like a shell of the young woman I once was. Granted, I was never a beauty queen, but I took pride in looking the best that I could, wearing cute clothes and styling my long auburn brown hair in a pretty decent way. I wasn’t bad looking, I told myself. But now I was beyond bad. I bordered on grotesque. And it all seemed to happen so quickly that it took my breath away. The quicker the changes came, the more powerless I felt to do anything about them. When I tried to get motivated to lose weight, I would think, What’s the point? I’ve got stretch marks covering my body. My hair is gone, and my skin has never looked worse. How can I possibly improve all of this? And when I tried to find solutions to my hair, perhaps a wig or a weave, I would get discouraged and wonder why I was going to such trouble and expense when I was helplessly—hopelessly—fat. It was a vicious cycle, and I was forever trapped.
The John Hughes film The Breakfast Club is one of my favorite movies of all time. In it Judd Nelson’s character asks the teenage girl played by Molly Ringwald her name. When she tells him it’s Claire, he tells her that’s a fat girl’s name. “I’m not fat,” she protests. But Nelson’s character says one day she could be: “You see, I’m not sure if you know this, but there are two kinds of fat people. There’s fat people that were born to be fat, and there are fat people who were once thin but became fat. So when you look at them you can sort of see that thin person inside.”
Whenever I’ve watched that movie over the years, especially once the weight started to pile on, I’ve felt as though Nelson’s character was speaking to me. Growing up I was never considered thin. But compared to the morbidly obese, I was certainly on the average side. But that changed, and I felt trapped in a grossly bloated body—an overstuffed version of what I once was—unable to get out, unable to do anything about my health. Unable to live my life.
Even though I kind of gave up on my appearance at times, I constantly worried about what other people thought. The stereotypes of fat people were forefront in my mind, including the notion that all fat people are lazy (no, we’re not) and fat people smell. For the longest time I dismissed that as silly. I was heavy, to be sure, but I didn’t have any hygiene problems. On Oprah I once saw a woman who weighed five hundred pounds admit that she had trouble washing herself. I’ll never be that fat, I vowed to myself.
You know where this is going.
At my worst I was 336 pounds.
And I had trouble keeping clean.
If you think about it, it makes sense. Your arms are only so long; if your middle keeps growing, sooner or later you’re going to have problems reaching all areas. And I did. Admitting this makes me sad beyond words, but it’s important to me to be honest, to let others who are suffering know they are not alone. This does happen, and it is devastating, especially to women. How much more basic can you get than your ability, or inability, to wash your body parts? You take a person whose self-esteem already takes a daily beating and then add this to the mix, and you’ve got a real mess on your hands. Unfortunate pun not intended.
What did I do? Thank the Lord for handheld showers. I tried to sound casual when I mentioned to Michael that I preferred our kids’ shower to the one in our bedroom. Really I don’t know how he didn’t see right through me; we both knew their shower had terribly low water pressure. But it had a handheld shower, and the one in our bathroom did not. I was too ashamed to simply ask Michael to install one in our shower; as it was, I hoped he would never discover the real reason I was using our kids’ bathroom. If he ever did figure it out, he never let on, and I love him for it.
It’s for these humiliating reasons that I have a hard time believing there are people out there who are happy being overweight. I mean let’s forget for a moment about the physical tolls obesity inflicts on your health—the increased risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, joint pain, sleep apnea, heart disease, cancer, and early death rates. What about the daily embarrassments and humiliations you suffer when you are so heavy? You can’t fit into a restaurant booth. You break toilet seats. You have to go to extraordinary measures to bathe. Could anyone possibly be happy with that? Some say they are, but I’m sorry, I don’t believe it. Maybe saying so is a defense mechanism of some sort, and I can totally sympathize with the need for that. But the truth is, being morbidly obese is a disgusting, humiliating, torturous existence that threatens your very life. There’s nothing to be happy about.
Now does that mean that all morbidly obese people are as miserable as I was? Absolutely not. I think many, many people handle it much better than I did, and I applaud them for it. We only get one life, and we all have challenges to face. I believe it is how we behave in the face of adversity that really defines who we are. And it’s that belief, I think, that caused me even more unhappiness. Why couldn’t I get it together? What did it say about me that I couldn’t care enough about myself to do better, to make the most of a bad situation? I allowed the weight gain and subsequent physical problems to prevent me from maintaining friendships, from seeking career opportunities, from bettering my marriage and my family life. I collapsed under the weight of obesity. I totally lost who I was and all the things I cared about.
It certainly didn’t help matters when I developed what I laughingly called “the flesh-eating virus.” During my second pregnancy, with my gestational diabetes raging out of control and my body expanding rapidly to accommodate what would become a twelve-pound newborn, I noticed a nasty rash forming under the folds of my skin, right under my belly. It was itchy and bumpy and awful … and it smelled rancid. It looked like something out of a horror movie, and nothing I did made it go away or helped the odor dissipate. Finally I showed it to my doctor at a prenatal appointment, and she gently gave me the news: It was a yeast infection. Now I’ve heard of women developing yeast infections, but never under their stomachs. No, my doctor informed me, this happened because of all the heat and friction in that area of my body.
Shoot. Me. Now.
I had to get a specially prescribed powder, which I applied three times a day. After a shower I had to lie flat on my bed and use a hair dryer to make sure
the area was dry at all times. I was beyond mortified, especially when the problem kept coming back after I’d given birth. I was so big and my stomach so large that I frequently developed these types of infections. The fact that my diabetes didn’t go away after my pregnancy didn’t help; people with diabetes are more prone to yeast infections. Yet another embarrassing problem I inflicted upon myself because I couldn’t get my eating under control. I felt like a million bucks.
With every humiliation, every embarrassment, I hoped I would get fed up enough to change my life. Sometimes I did manage to change my habits for a bit, getting my eating under control and bringing my bingeing to a halt. But those successes were rare. Instead I used the bad stuff to further convince myself that I wasn’t worthy of looking good, of feeling good about myself. I was stuck in a terrible, vicious cycle. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a way out.
6
Work It Girl, Phase 10,280
I can remember the exact day I uttered the dumbest string of words ever to leave my lips. It was July 1992, and I had just finished my freshman year of college. I was working part-time in the handbags section of a department store, and my coworkers and I were using the lull in the summer shopping season to discuss the important matters of hair, clothes, and makeup. The talk inevitably turned to weight, and the others started lamenting about how bad they looked in their swimsuits that year. My issues were a bit bigger than beachwear: I had recently gained back a little of the weight I’d lost my senior year of high school—a weight increase I chalked up to being in love with a great guy (finally) and not paying enough attention to what went into my mouth. I admitted to these girlfriends that I was back at my old standby weight of 165—a number on the scale I’d spent most of my teen years trying to permanently ditch. “But at least I know one thing,” I proclaimed with certainty. “I eat and eat and eat, and I never go past 165.”
Designated Fat Girl Page 7