~Approximately $30 billion are spent on weight loss products~
~Around 50 million people will go on a diet every year in the United States~
~According to clinical study, 43% of adult women and 29% of adult men are attempting to lose weight~

 

   As larger people,
 larger women in particular,
 continue to be
disrespected

                                     in media purely based on their size, 
the demonization of fat

will be perpetuated in our culture. 

By making fat, even in healthy amounts,

a bad thing to have,

we set ourselves up for physical and 
mental disorders.

But then I was wrong. I was so wrong. There was still hostility between me and my fat; I was just pretending there wasn’t. It was causing me to have health issues, and I was blowing them off as unrelated. Fat was still making it so I wouldn’t go out dancing, or hiking, or floating the river with my friends. Fat was still in charge, running my life as if I didn’t have a choice. I was the submissive party to its annoyingly autocratic leadership. I’m not a dumb girl, I knew what was happening in my life, but I wanted to be ignorant to it. I wanted to pretend there wasn’t a problem. I didn’t want to admit I was still depressed. I didn’t want to have to give up my vices. I didn’t want to have to work for it. So I didn’t. I maintained the farce. 

As stated in Eating Disorders and Obesity: A Comprehensive Handbook, “there is considerable correlational, prospective, and experimental evidence that mass media contributes to body image and eating disturbance [...] There is also evidence that the adverse effects of mass media are amplified by preexisting vulnerability factors”

 

According to V. Durand, “because overweight men are two to five times more common as television characters than overweight women, the message from the media to be thin is clearly aimed at women” 

  


    I remember the moment that I first realized that I was actually fat. It was December of 2006 and I was at the mall with my family doing some last minute Christmas shopping while I was home from college. Lyric-less holiday music played on a loop wherever we shopped. Everything smelled like cinnamon and pine, and every visual space that didn’t have a product in it had some sort of garland, ornament, or winter decoration. To this day, I have yet to see a mall so crowded.
      We were in Sears and my mother kept asking me why I wouldn’t try anything on and kept trying to hand me and my sister, who has always been very thin, things to wear. I had gained a lot of weight since I left home in 2005, and she kept guessing too small when handing me clothes. Most girls have self-image issues and being no exception I started to lose my composure. My throat was tight from trying to hold back tears when my frustrated mom handed me yet another thing. “Mom, I can’t shop here,” I snapped “these aren’t going to fit me”.
      My mother, already irritated, raised her voice back in reply, saying, “Don’t snap at me, I’m not the one who got fat”. 

Those

three

letters

slashed

straight

through

me,

yanked my
heart

out of place

and left only

a heavy weight

in the pit

of

my

stomach.

 

I have lost forty six pounds and nearly ten inches off of my stomach alone. I have at least thirty five pounds to go and I am undaunted by the distance.  

The fat that I have has stopped emotionally weighing me down, 

and it has transformed into an accolade. It’s a medal of honor from the battle I have been and continue to fight. 

Fat is no longer my four-letter word.