Fat Wife Part One

Hi, I am the wife of the man who writes this blog. I’d like to say that I am a stranger to what my husband has gone through. And in many ways, I am. I have never been overweight. I have never struggled with inability to turn down food or put food down. And I am not a strong enough person to completely turn my life upside down for a goal while working harder than I have ever worked while denying myself an obsession.

That being said, I have a two part bone to pick, mostly with society. In the theme of this blog, I will refrain from standing on a soap box and instead, simply state my complaints and explain why they affect me or frustrate me.

Part One: Society’s View of Fat

I have a real problem with how society views body image. It’s not a new topic – people have been complaining about it for the last year or two. I don’t know where it began, whether it was Twiggy and the Supermodels that provided a new type of beauty, or the age of Photoshop and the ability to print pictures of impossible standards. Regardless, society went from worshiping a woman’s figure to critiquing it, from praising curves to hiding them. And really, this applies to men too. In the beginning, a person’s physique was much more than a means of physical attraction; it explained your station in life. A full figure was proof of health, wealth, and happiness. The leaner the person, the more it explained about their lack of food, lack of ability to provide or hunt, and their lack of funds. The Italian Renaissance brought artful paintings of people lazing about, eating, always plump. Women had full (but not ridiculous) breasts and curvy waists, large hips and ample thighs. Men had round bellies. This was attractive. Even as late as the 1950’s ads ran for weight GAIN pills for women. “No man wants a skinny woman” they crowed. The same sad, thin, curveless woman they showed then echoes the most famous, most “beautiful” women of today, who’s sallow faces and bony figures are not only how women of today must judge their beauty but the clothing sizes they wear. Even for men, a typical idealistic man has a broad chest, built arms, rock hard abs, and defined legs, with no body fat to be seen. Not at all. And we are told not only is this attractive, this is healthy.

I can’t believe this is fair. When 95% of America is so much larger, why do we have to conform to those numbers? Why do we have to refer to numbers at all? This is another bone I have to pick. Fat has become much more than a look, it is a number. Your BMI, your weight, your clothing size, these determine whether you are fat or not. If you are 190 pounds but you eat right, work out, wear clothing that looks good, no one cares. You should be in this category with these numbers or you are fat. Overweight. Obese. I hate this. I’m a small person. As I said, I have never been overweight. But I have gained weight. I noticed when I when from size 0 to 2. Or from 2 to 5. But providing I change my clothing accordingly, no one else notices. If my clothing fits well, I don’t even notice. But the little voice that chants “0-5” over and over notices. The scale that goes from 110 to 120 notices. The doctors that measure a 4% increase in BMI and warn me how metabolisms fade notice. And those numbers eat into your brain and tell you what a terrible person you are for allowing this.

I used to dance ballet. It was our job to be thin, to maintain a weight. But there was always someone thinner, someone you compared yourself to. And that’s when I learned that fat can be a mindset. That’s how someone as thin as a rail can starve themselves into nothing – because perception is such a large part of the battle. You worry about how people judge your body, but only because you already have and are unhappy with the person in the mirror. I struggled with anorexia because I saw fat everywhere. And no matter how much I lost, I never saw enough difference. I was never as thin as that next girl. I see that same danger in my husband, who stands in the mirror after losing such an incredible amount of weight and still sees nothing but fat, nothing but dissatisfaction in his reflection. Until you drop the comparisons and the numbers and the mindset and focus on being healthy, being fit, and fitting into clothes the way you want to(in your real mind, not in your society set mind), that haunting of fat can drive you insane.

Part two later on.