General Board
The View from THIS Side of the Belly
Posted By: grandalto <grandalto@hotmail.com>
(64.24.137.154)
Date: Wednesday, 14 February 2001, at 1:53 a.m.
I have a good friend, Ib-Braty, who is starting a new site....encouraging moderation of the BBW ideal, so to speak. She asked me to write a personal essay. Here it is for those of you with time on your hands. *LOL* Some serious, but if you read the whole thing, you will get some laughs too. I find it hard to ever be completely serious. I do think it may generate some discussion however.
The View from THIS Side of the Belly
It is very hard to believe that anyone who knows me has actually pushed the soapbox in front of me and told me to get on it on purpose, by my wonderful friend, Ms. Braty has been so foolish. I am going to expound, in what may begin to approach stream-of-consciousness banter. Hang on for the ride. If you don’t know me, let me warn you, I have NO problem speaking my mind on any topic.
I didn’t start out fat, 7 pounds, 7 oz is a nice, not too big, not too small baby. However, by the time I was seven, my mother had me to the doctor’s office so he could place me on my first diet. By the time I was 15, and a whopping 180 pounds, she and the Doc had contrived a plan and put me on amphetamines. (Yep, back in the good old day when Speed was handed out by the local doctor when you were plump.) Mind you, at that time I was “lettering” in three varsity sports in school, strong and as healthy as a horse, and as I look back now, was carrying no “fleshy” fat. I think the correct term is “brick shit house”. But I was fat. Had been told it that as long as I could remember. I look back on my early childhood pictures, and I realize now I never approached being fat (and, by the way, I do not consider that a negative word. I will comment on it later.) I whittled down to an acceptable 145 pounds. (I stayed there for 5 minutes. I stabilized at about 150 –155).
My battle with weight continued in college. I was engaged for almost three years to a man I now realize was probably my first FA, and a feeder to boot, although I didn’t know what either one was. I graduated at about 210, after nightly pizza and strombolis…AFTER dinner. Every time I tried to diet, he would say, “Oh Honey, how silly. I love you the way you are.” Six weeks before the wedding, he ran off with a skinny woman and married her two months later.
To get to the meat of the next 20 odd (and yes, sometimes they were very odd) years of my life, I got back down to 160 pounds, married the man of my dreams (no one had ever mentioned that nightmares were also dreams). I gained and lost large amounts of weight, the loss each time due to incredible mental cruelty by the hubby. After playing the massive yo-yoing game until I had reached 310 pounds, I came to my senses, packed his bags, and showed him the door. You see the nightmare was, even though twice during the marriage, I had dieted down to a size 10 (I was a size 14 when we married), I was not “thin enough, firm enough, flat enough”.
1996, free, fat, liberated woman that I was, I discovered the Internet and the world of BBWs. What an amazing concept! Fat women were not horrid, as I had been told daily for years. Truthfully, other than in my personal married life, my weight had never bothered me. For all those years I had been active as a semi-professional soloist, and appeared as character leads in many theatre productions in our town. I had established an excellent professional career where I was respected, (and made sufficient money to tell the hubby to take a hike). Now I even had people telling me I was actually physically attractive too. Wooo Hooo!
I am grateful for that discovery, that there were others out there like me, who had shed more than a few tears due to the cruelty of others, often family. The “BBW” world has the possibility of being an excellent source of support and shoulder lending to those just starting out on the discovery that, FAT is just a word. That is all. It’s just a plain old adjective. I am fat. I find nothing embarrassing about that. It is a fact. It is the negativity with which this word has become associated that makes people cringe when I unabashedly say, “I am fat.” You the reader may be fat, you may be short. Perhaps you are tall, gangly, blonde, blue-eyed, curly haired. No one is shocked if I describe myself as a 47 year old, redheaded, blue eyed divorced woman. But ….just say it out loud among a group of non size acceptance minded people… “I am fat”, and you can feel the vacuum as they suck in air.
What it is all about is acceptance, and it shouldn’t stop at fat. We all need to learn to accept every damn last one of us for what we are. And the world has begun to start singing that tune, whether or not everyone has joined the chorus. Society is self conscious about bringing along racial equality, there are murmurs going around that being gay is not an illness or a depravity, but a natural state. We talk about religious freedom, and it is experienced at different levels all around the world. Praise the Lord, there are still fat people! Who else would the general public have to make fun of in public if it wasn’t for us? Can you imagine any proper, late middle aged woman asking for a different seat on a plane, because she wasn’t going to sit next to an African American or a Jew? But the lady next to me a few months ago had no problem announcing to the stewardess in a very loud voice, “For God’s sakes, I don’t even have a seat of my own!” Oddly enough, my fat little legs were not even touching hers, as is usually the case when I am seated next to someone else on a plane.
Was I embarrassed? I was mortified for her poor husband, who clearly wished he had an eject button on his seat, so he could have been whisked out of the plane immediately. I felt his pain. He kept looking over at me and smiling meekly. But my thoughts kept going back to what would have happened to some non-enlightened BBW (or BHM) who doesn’t have the sense of self that I do. I can imagine that one episode could have prevented some other fat person from ever getting on a plane again.
Now I think you have a fairly clear picture of me, my history of “fatness”, and some of my thoughts on personally being fat. Now I will launch into the controversial stuff.
It is NOT a sin to be fat. I, nor anyone else is “lazy, stupid, slovenly, ugly……etc” because we are fat. Nor is it the perfect state to be in. And I dare to really sidetrack here, and REALLY be sacrilegious to the BBW ideal. Isn’t Big Beautiful Woman a misnomer? It is applied to every fat woman. Let’s get real! There are Big Ugly Women out there too. There are Big Pleasant-looking Women too. Beauty is not a function of fat. Those ugly women aren’t ugly because they are fat. They would be ugly at any size! Ugliness, like beauty, comes in all sizes. LOL, I have had this discussion with more than one person, and I had to put it in print!
Be wary, those of you new to the BBW scene. The support and self-pride you can develop here is wonderful. But don’t swallow too much of the party line that tells you fat is the only way to be. You will hear this doggerel from several vantage points. First, there is the FA, or Fat Admirer. We all have our own ideals of what we find attractive in a partner. Have said it many times, if you could give me a catalog of men, all of them with the perfect personality for me, just in different sizes and shapes, there is one I would pick for his looks, if I knew his personality was equal to all the others. I am not putting the FA down, and I will accept his admiration, and if my fatness draws him nearer to me to learn more about me as a person, and to decide if he likes the entire package, wonderful! But if all he desires is me because I am fat, he can flirt and move on, because there is a lot more to me than fat.
Second, we have the feedee. This is a person who actively encourages their partner to gain weight, and to be fair, it is exhibited to many various degrees. And I am not condemning the feedee/feeder relationship. If both parties truly find it enjoyable, and have thought through the possible ramifications if it is carried to extremes, then, more power to them. Everyone should have the right to make these personal choices for themselves. My concern is the obvious one, about what happens to the partner who is fed to the point of physically being dependent upon the other. Relationships end. Period. This is an undeniable fact. I am not suggesting it always has something to do with the feeder reaching the “end point” of the game, and then waltzing along (although I am sure this scenario has occurred more than once.) All kind of couples fall out of love, break up, call it quits. I would never encourage ANY person to purposely place themselves in a relationship with another human being in which they are completely dependent for anything, be it physical support due to feeding, financial support, etc. Think through this mental picture…father sits down with young son and says, “Son, don’t worry about an education or learning how to support yourself, or how to be responsible and capable of being independent. You’ll grow up and some nice woman will provide everything in life for you, just in return for you being there for her.” WHY do some people still think this is an acceptable alternative for women?
Third, and sometimes I think more insidious than the other two….other BBWs! Yes, I am not ashamed to be fat. It is what I happen to be. Then again, I am not silly enough to tell you being fat is all some people try to tell you it is cracked up to be! I am not quite 48 years old. I have sleep apnea, a condition mainly brought about by being overweight. I sleep with a funny looking gadget over my face with two little accordions stuffed up my nostrils to blow air down my throat so I can sleep all night without my breathing stopping hundreds of times. I hardily recommend it to anyone else who has apnea, because it beats the living hell out of sleeping in the car as you are driving to work. On the rare occasions I have shared my bed with members of the opposite sex, I call them “Captain Kirk”, tell them to just think of me as a plump alien, and I moan at the correct time, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Beam me UP Scotty!” Now would life be simpler without the machine? YES.
I too, have to sit down to wash my dishes. I have to sit down to do almost anything. Even Frank Lloyd Wright could not have envisioned a cantilever that would have supported my belly jutting out like a permanently pregnant woman carrying 10 pound apiece twins. My back hurts. It hurts when I walk any distance. It absolutely aches when I have to sleep in anything but my own waterbed. I was at a business conference in Chicago at a posh hotel for 10 days a few years ago. By the end of the week, I literally almost could not walk, because my back was in such agony from sleeping in a standard bed that did not support the oddities of my figure. This is just a short litany of the every day negatives of being a fat woman. You skinny FAs reading this, take the largest beach ball you can find, fill it with sand, strap it to your middle, and, forget the walking…try to bend down to tie your shoes.
Now, I am responsible for who I am. Although I do believe my weight is mainly a factor of genetics, the wildly shifting weights I yo yo-ed through in my marriage, and some other medical problems, it is my responsibility to deal with. As of yet, I have not attempted to get rid of some of this. I keep saying I am going to. No, I will never be thin, or anything mildly resembling it. The last 50 pounds have been the real killers.
Back to my statement about other BBWs (or BHMs). It is absolutely incredible to me that anyone, especially other fat people can criticize anyone else for their decision to lose weight. It is about size acceptance, not size enforcement. “You are fat. There is nothing wrong with being fat. You therefore shall stay fat, no matter how society tries to influence you. Dieting is the root of all evil. We will not let our skinny brethren dictate to us how WE shall live!” May I sum up my reaction to this attitude very succinctly? Bullshit! I will not let my skinny brethren or my fat brethren dictate to me what size I will be. It is a matter of personal choice.
My dear friend Ms. Braty, (you knew sooner or later I would get back to her) had weight loss surgery. I am not a big proponent of it. Personally it scares the daylights out of me. But, she is my friend, she had reached the end of her rope with dealing with the effects of being obese, and she made a personal choice of how she wanted to deal with it, and so I supported her 100%. It has worked well for her. I am relieved, and I am delighted that she has had such success in losing the weight she chose to lose.
Oh my, the soapbox police have seen me, and are coming in my direction. I guess I had better get off of this thing, besides, my back is killing me for standing here this long. Be fat, be thin, be plumpish. You are responsible for yourself. Live your life to please yourself, and the rest shall follow.