Read Online Half-Assed by Jennette Fulda - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jennette Fulda
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be a medium in an average-size world. I wanted to cross my legs and hook one ankle behind the other. I wanted to feel my collarbones. I wanted to live in a country without crash dieting, where people didn’t hate themselves for their size, be it fat, thin, or shifting in between.
When I finally accepted myself, I accepted that I didn’t want to be fat. And that was okay.
I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to buy shirts with the word “extra-large” on the tag. My younger brother, Jim, was waging a war on fat. When he ran on the treadmill the basement door would rattle on its hinges in fear of the oncoming campaign. He’d constructed a barrier on the top of our refrigerator with large plastic powder bottles featuring bodybuilders on the labels. My long-neglected smoothie blender was conscripted to mix creatine shakes.
And he lost weight. He beat back the army of fat cells, carved out a spot in the enemy lines, and held his ground. He wanted to draft me to join the fray too.
It must have been hard for my family to see me get so big, and not just because I took up more space on the couch when we were watching TV. If I were worried about me, they must have been too, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Talking about something made it real. I had now become the fattest person in the family, but I kept the topic off-limits.
One night I was channel surfing when I caught part of the reality show The Biggest Loser , on which people competed to lose weight. It was unusual to see fat people on television. Overweight people get a lot of shit about watching too much TV, but fat people are rarely ever cast on shows. When The Sopranos went off the air, the percentage of fat actors on television must have been cut in half. I especially hated it when a thin actor wore a fat suit. It felt like the fat version of blackface. We got to laugh at all the stupid stereotypes the actor was portraying without having to feel bad about laughing at an actual fat person. I was curious to watch these reality show contestants playing out my fantasies at the fat farm. It seemed as if most of them wanted to lose weight more than they wanted to win the money. Thin was the real prize, not the cash.
When I heard the sound of rubber soles on parquet floor, I clicked the button for the next channel on the remote faster than if I were ringing in on Jeopardy! I didn’t want to be caught watching shows about fat people for the same reason I didn’t wear a T-shirt that said, “Ask me about my obesity problem.”
But they noticed anyway, the caring, concerned bastards. Jim would go on and on about the diet he was on. I’d walk into the kitchen and inhale the strawberry dust cloud of powdered protein milk shake, becoming a victim of second-hand shake. He’d mumble something about insulin levels and the evils of white flour. I’d chomp on garlic and onion bagels with the confused look of a cat being lectured on thermodynamics. He’d talk about the benefits of whole grains and vegetables and I’d wonder if there were such a thing as a half grain.
He was simply excited to share his new knowledge. He never called me fat, and he never pressured me to go on a diet. He just left the diet book lying around and walked around eighty pounds thinner.
It was really annoying.
He was, after all, the same person who introduced me to the dollar menu at McDonald’s. At least I knew he genuinely cared about my health and not just my looks. I’d often heard people say that I should lose weight because it was unhealthy, but coming from strangers it seemed like the politically correct way of saying, “Fat people are disgusting.” The health thing was just a handy coincidence. There are many other unhealthy habits that don’t have the social stigma that obesity does. Stress and lack of sleep are bad for you, but people who work eighty-hour weeks and sleep four hours a night are often applauded for their work ethic, not denounced for weakening
When I finally accepted myself, I accepted that I didn’t want to be fat. And that was okay.
I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to buy shirts with the word “extra-large” on the tag. My younger brother, Jim, was waging a war on fat. When he ran on the treadmill the basement door would rattle on its hinges in fear of the oncoming campaign. He’d constructed a barrier on the top of our refrigerator with large plastic powder bottles featuring bodybuilders on the labels. My long-neglected smoothie blender was conscripted to mix creatine shakes.
And he lost weight. He beat back the army of fat cells, carved out a spot in the enemy lines, and held his ground. He wanted to draft me to join the fray too.
It must have been hard for my family to see me get so big, and not just because I took up more space on the couch when we were watching TV. If I were worried about me, they must have been too, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Talking about something made it real. I had now become the fattest person in the family, but I kept the topic off-limits.
One night I was channel surfing when I caught part of the reality show The Biggest Loser , on which people competed to lose weight. It was unusual to see fat people on television. Overweight people get a lot of shit about watching too much TV, but fat people are rarely ever cast on shows. When The Sopranos went off the air, the percentage of fat actors on television must have been cut in half. I especially hated it when a thin actor wore a fat suit. It felt like the fat version of blackface. We got to laugh at all the stupid stereotypes the actor was portraying without having to feel bad about laughing at an actual fat person. I was curious to watch these reality show contestants playing out my fantasies at the fat farm. It seemed as if most of them wanted to lose weight more than they wanted to win the money. Thin was the real prize, not the cash.
When I heard the sound of rubber soles on parquet floor, I clicked the button for the next channel on the remote faster than if I were ringing in on Jeopardy! I didn’t want to be caught watching shows about fat people for the same reason I didn’t wear a T-shirt that said, “Ask me about my obesity problem.”
But they noticed anyway, the caring, concerned bastards. Jim would go on and on about the diet he was on. I’d walk into the kitchen and inhale the strawberry dust cloud of powdered protein milk shake, becoming a victim of second-hand shake. He’d mumble something about insulin levels and the evils of white flour. I’d chomp on garlic and onion bagels with the confused look of a cat being lectured on thermodynamics. He’d talk about the benefits of whole grains and vegetables and I’d wonder if there were such a thing as a half grain.
He was simply excited to share his new knowledge. He never called me fat, and he never pressured me to go on a diet. He just left the diet book lying around and walked around eighty pounds thinner.
It was really annoying.
He was, after all, the same person who introduced me to the dollar menu at McDonald’s. At least I knew he genuinely cared about my health and not just my looks. I’d often heard people say that I should lose weight because it was unhealthy, but coming from strangers it seemed like the politically correct way of saying, “Fat people are disgusting.” The health thing was just a handy coincidence. There are many other unhealthy habits that don’t have the social stigma that obesity does. Stress and lack of sleep are bad for you, but people who work eighty-hour weeks and sleep four hours a night are often applauded for their work ethic, not denounced for weakening
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