you got fat in the beginning will be the way you get fat all your life.
And please? Don’t be proud of your fat. When you claim to be proud of something unseemly, the whole world knows that you’re lying. You’re acting proud instead of ashamed because some fat woman with a national platform gave a fat-pride pep talk into a microphone. Do not say, “I’m so much happier since I stopped trying to be skinny.” Do not say, “I’m enjoying life!” when you’re really enjoying high-calorie foods in appalling quantities.
Do not say, “America is flawed because women are expected to look like models.” America is absolutely flawed, but only models are expected to look like models. Other women should simply avoid obesity to prevent diabetes, muscular problems, and congested arteries. And yes, women are expected to be attractive to men, but this is not an expectation to scorn. Please. You want to be attractive to men. You are not Camille Paglia. You are not Maya Angelou. You are not the kind of woman who roars.
Okay. There are men who like fat women. Fine. So? There are also men who like women to dress up as teddy bears. There are men who are turned on by balloons, by licking dirty bowling shoes, by the thought of becoming an amputee. There are men who get off on dragons having sex with cars.
Dragons. Having sex with cars.
You cannot blame your fat on your ethnic background. Granted, if you are Asian, you store more fat in your organs, but you also belong to a healthy culture. And don’t blame your fat on your religion. Yes, 30 percent of Southern Baptists are obese, and the Mormons deploy “wellness missionaries,” and sure, I know the Jewish jokes—the jokes with no edge; the soft, plump, low-muscle-tone jokes about Jewish mothers overfeeding their children and Jewish holidays revolving around food. But these are not excuses. Excuses are worthless. Either change your life, stop slinging blame, stop stuffing food into the cracks in your heart, or give yourself over to the shortened, uncomfortable, sweaty life of the obese.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A week into camp, Eden and I had exchanged thirty-six words. On my end:
“Cute sandals.”
“Do you like that?”
“Do you, um, play any sports at your school?” (Why not? I was counting “um.”)
On her end:
“All my friends have the same ones. We got them together.”
“No.”
“I could if I wanted to, but I don’t.”
Now it was Sunday. “Lazy Sunday!” according to Lewis, which was supposed to make everyone feel happy and indebted. Every Sunday would be Lazy Sunday, which meant no official wake-up time and no scheduled activities. The campers’ only responsibility before 11:00 brunch was to wander into the cafeteria at their leisure so Lewis could weigh them. (“ I do the weigh-ins,” I’d heard him say, patting his chest. “Me.”)
“You lost four pounds,” Lewis told Eden.
From a nearby picnic table, where I was pretending to read a magazine, I looked up to see Lewis hand her an apple from a basket. After a week of such drastic diet change (controlled calories; no added salt; low-fat, low-sugar everything), some campers had lightened considerably, as if the pores in their skin were saltshaker holes. After weighing each camper, Lewis had loudly announced his or her progress—“Congratulations! You’ve lost thirteen pounds!”—and then beamed smugly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He clapped each one on the back and asked, “Does my diet work or does my diet work?”
Never mind the thirty-minute speech he’d made during staff training about how the “program” was not a diet, that “diets” were unsustainable, ineffectual, whereas the “program” was a “way of life.” Despite that speech, he often used the word “diet.” Then he would switch back to “program.” Then to “diet.”
What was the program anyway? No one was exactly sure.
We knew the Monday-through-Saturday schedule. First, wake up and head to the
And please? Don’t be proud of your fat. When you claim to be proud of something unseemly, the whole world knows that you’re lying. You’re acting proud instead of ashamed because some fat woman with a national platform gave a fat-pride pep talk into a microphone. Do not say, “I’m so much happier since I stopped trying to be skinny.” Do not say, “I’m enjoying life!” when you’re really enjoying high-calorie foods in appalling quantities.
Do not say, “America is flawed because women are expected to look like models.” America is absolutely flawed, but only models are expected to look like models. Other women should simply avoid obesity to prevent diabetes, muscular problems, and congested arteries. And yes, women are expected to be attractive to men, but this is not an expectation to scorn. Please. You want to be attractive to men. You are not Camille Paglia. You are not Maya Angelou. You are not the kind of woman who roars.
Okay. There are men who like fat women. Fine. So? There are also men who like women to dress up as teddy bears. There are men who are turned on by balloons, by licking dirty bowling shoes, by the thought of becoming an amputee. There are men who get off on dragons having sex with cars.
Dragons. Having sex with cars.
You cannot blame your fat on your ethnic background. Granted, if you are Asian, you store more fat in your organs, but you also belong to a healthy culture. And don’t blame your fat on your religion. Yes, 30 percent of Southern Baptists are obese, and the Mormons deploy “wellness missionaries,” and sure, I know the Jewish jokes—the jokes with no edge; the soft, plump, low-muscle-tone jokes about Jewish mothers overfeeding their children and Jewish holidays revolving around food. But these are not excuses. Excuses are worthless. Either change your life, stop slinging blame, stop stuffing food into the cracks in your heart, or give yourself over to the shortened, uncomfortable, sweaty life of the obese.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A week into camp, Eden and I had exchanged thirty-six words. On my end:
“Cute sandals.”
“Do you like that?”
“Do you, um, play any sports at your school?” (Why not? I was counting “um.”)
On her end:
“All my friends have the same ones. We got them together.”
“No.”
“I could if I wanted to, but I don’t.”
Now it was Sunday. “Lazy Sunday!” according to Lewis, which was supposed to make everyone feel happy and indebted. Every Sunday would be Lazy Sunday, which meant no official wake-up time and no scheduled activities. The campers’ only responsibility before 11:00 brunch was to wander into the cafeteria at their leisure so Lewis could weigh them. (“ I do the weigh-ins,” I’d heard him say, patting his chest. “Me.”)
“You lost four pounds,” Lewis told Eden.
From a nearby picnic table, where I was pretending to read a magazine, I looked up to see Lewis hand her an apple from a basket. After a week of such drastic diet change (controlled calories; no added salt; low-fat, low-sugar everything), some campers had lightened considerably, as if the pores in their skin were saltshaker holes. After weighing each camper, Lewis had loudly announced his or her progress—“Congratulations! You’ve lost thirteen pounds!”—and then beamed smugly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He clapped each one on the back and asked, “Does my diet work or does my diet work?”
Never mind the thirty-minute speech he’d made during staff training about how the “program” was not a diet, that “diets” were unsustainable, ineffectual, whereas the “program” was a “way of life.” Despite that speech, he often used the word “diet.” Then he would switch back to “program.” Then to “diet.”
What was the program anyway? No one was exactly sure.
We knew the Monday-through-Saturday schedule. First, wake up and head to the
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