Re-Writing My Fear of a Fat Future
By Tamia Klass
During my teen years I spent endless hours day-dreaming.
I felt alone. It wasn’t really that I didn’t have any friends but that none of them really got me (or so I told myself). I spent my days living in a paradox of wanting invisibility and wanting to be noticed, for the right reasons- never for my fatness. The day-dreams were one way that I divorced myself from the reality of being a small-fat teenager. They also helped me think of my teenage years as an intermediate time– the in-between of a bullied childhood and an obviously fabulous adulthood that would be filled with friends, boyfriends and trendy jobs. My imagined future always came with one other staple; thinness.
I was so scared of remaining fat when I was ‘all-grown-up’ that I banished even the imagining of such from my fantasies. None of my imagined futures ever considered that I would still be fat, and fatter even. Now, I think this fear was developed through off-handed comments made by my sisters, proclaiming that ‘I’d grow out of my baby fat’. Media portrayals of young adulthood as thin, white and rich, didn’t help.
« Fear is a strange thing. It grows into hatred and disgust and internalised loathing. »
For context, I grew up in early 2000s regional Australia where it seemed that thinness (read attractiveness) went hand-in-hand with the Aussie free-spirit, obsessions with athleticism (read thinness), and my families own working class attitudes. I have come to recognise now that much of the body policing that went on was concentrated around this poor working-class identity. If you lived in public housing and were too thin you were addicted to drugs, and if you were too fat you were painted as a lazy, dole bludging, fast-food addicted failure.
But as super-model thinness was more praised than dismissed at the time, fatness as failure won out as the least desirable scenario (as it almost always does).
My father, who is still naturally lean and now far into his 50s, made many comments when I was growing up around my body and my eating. I internalised this as fat hatred. My mum, who claims she was ‘fat’ as a teenager but who was a surfer -barely, if ever, chubby- would shower me with unsolicited comments. If I said I was hungry she would say “have a drink of water.” I almost never ate bread as a kid because mum wouldn’t buy it, she deemed it ‘unhealthy’ and full of carbs. And, although I wasn’t allowed to snack, my thin twin sister was bought chocolate on every shopping trip without fail.
Here is where my fear grew. It grew between the anger that my parents held for each other – my dad was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and my mum an overworked factory worker. My childhood wasn’t devoid of love but it was complicated by circumstance.
Fear is a strange thing. It grows into hatred and disgust and internalised loathing. It leads to people claiming their concerns are “for the benefit of your health” and their comments are “because they care.”
« I don’t blend, I am far too weird and quirky to exist quietly. »
Roxanne Gay wrote that she “had this void, this cavern of loneliness inside”* that she spent her whole life trying to fill. I internalised this outward derision of fat and it created a void I wanted to fill. I binge ate when I could but there was never that much food at home to sustain this practice. And then, when I was barely an adult, I filled that void with men and they only made it bigger.
However, I now remember that I meant to write about how I am re-working, re-making my fear of fat into a positive fat future. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t straightforward. If any body image guru tells you so, they’re lying through their teeth. There are steps forward and leaps back. There are un-doings, re-winds and re-learnings. Trying to change how I imagine my future isn’t easy with the diet and wellness culture pushing thinness and normalcy down my throat.
When I was 18 I wrote in my journal: "I've spent more hours of my life wishing I could be skinny than I can count. Because at least then I wouldn't stand out."
« My fear of a fat future has turned into fear of an anti-fat future. A future devoid of all the amazing things that come from fatness and fleshiness. »
I wanted to blend in, be a part of the crowd. Now I acknowledge that being invisible just isn’t possible – even if I was somehow to miraculously get skinny one day. I don’t blend, I am far too weird and quirky to exist quietly. Re-working my fear of a fat future started somewhere in the realm of self-loathing and resignation. Now, there is some sun-shine and hope mixed in with the complicated relationship I have with my body. Fear can lead to anger which can lead to disgust. However, anger can also be re-wired to become reflection, action.
My fear of a fat future has turned into fear of an anti-fat future. A future devoid of all the amazing things that come from fatness and fleshiness. The fear of a future without all the amazing fat people out there. I’m not sure that the work I am doing of re-writing fear will ever be truly done.
Don’t let your fear turn into anger and hatred. Re-work that fear and paint something brilliant with it.
WORDS: TARMIA KLASS
PHOTO: IZABELLA HAICNAS