"I'm A Fat Woman Trapped In A Normal Body"
I’m loving the reader questions and the BFDivas’ and BFDudes’ answers—keep ’em coming! Today’s question comes from Loren, who writes:
In the last year I went from 235lbs to 185. I just took up running and moved to a country where I hate the food, the weight loss was not really intentional. I liked myself the way I was. I had all the usual anxieties but by in large pretty good self esteem. I’ve always done what I wanted and not had a wait-till I’m thin attitude. But now at 5’11 with my still substantial T and A at 185 I look ‘normal’ and frankly it weirds me out. Suddenly, I am ‘hot’ and I don’t know how to handle it. It sounds like a stupid thing to complain about I guess but when I look in the mirror I wonder where the person I am went. People seem to have different expectations of me and say things like “how come a pretty girl like you doesn’t have a boyfriend?” When I was fat no one asked me that. I didn’t really have to worry about being a tease but now I feel like I am ill-equipped to live in this new body with new expectations. I don’t really want to gain the weight back because I just ran a marathon and am happy with the capabilities of my new body if not the look. But I can’t get rid of this weird dysmorphy. I’m a fat woman stuck in a ‘normal’ body. Help?
This is such a profound question, and I think Loren articulates this problem very well. What are the “different expectations” that society has of normal-sized women, and how do people whose sizes are shifting navigate these expectations? I know you’ll have some great advice for Loren.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Question
This really isn’t about different expectations, but one thing that you really should do is work on accepting that body just as you worked at accepting the one you had before. If you are more comfortable in your body, you will have a better sense of how to handle what other people are throwing at you, both bad and good.
Ugh. I can really understand this. When I was younger, and thin, I hated all the attention I’d get from random men. Then I gained 100 lbs., and although I didn’t like having trouble walking and finding clothes that fit I felt safe in the knowledge that men wouldn’t hit on me. More than once I’ve lost weight, found myself uncomfortable with the increased attention from men, and regained it, whether on purpose or not, with much relief at not having to make sexual choices.
People do treat you differently, but it doesn’t mean you have to accept that. Just because you are a “pretty girl” doesn’t mean you need a boyfriend to validate that. What makes them think you need a boyfriend? that you want a boyfriend? Tell them it comes off like a put down…like something else must be wrong with you, since pretty=heterosexual relationship. You don’t even owe it to anyone to be pretty. You don’t have to accept people’s expectations, you have every right to reject them or redirect them…though how you handle that is your choice.
As far as getting comfortable with your new body, I would give you the same advice as I’d give anyone else. It sounds like you are doing great things with the body you have. I know a lot of fat people have found taking pictures of themselves–seeing themselves–helps them feel embodied…more connected to their body and how it looks. You are the same person, you just look differently. If there are other people out there like yourself who are experiencing the same challenges, I hope they speak up and connect with you…but I would say stay away from formerly fat people who are anti-fat because they will most likely have a completely different perspective and not the one you’re looking for.
I can relate to this — I’ve spent most of my post-adolescent life ranging between fat and just chubby enough that I wasn’t considered “hot”. Over the years I noticed a pattern of losing enough weight to dip down into the “normal” category only when I was happily married and could guiltlessly deflect male attention with an apologetic smile and a flash of my wedding ring.
I think it’s really weird and creepy what that says about my (in)ability to say no and my desire to people-please, not to mention the notion that I somehow have an obligation to oblige anyone (man) who wants something from me. But that’s probably a story for a therapist!
As for advice, one of the things that helps me to accept my body is to single out specific things, such as my hands or breasts or my skin, and think about how well they’ve done their job, how well they’ve served me, and how grateful I am for what they do/have done, irrespective of how they look or match society’s ideal.
And (if you can stomach the dishonesty) consider wearing a wedding ring. :-)
I had this problem big time in college. I have always been fairly active, and in college, I was very active. I was slimmer, then. (I am gay and have never worked to get a guy’s attention, if that counts for anything.)
What I found most unsettling was the raging sense of entitlement my so-called male “friends” had with my body. One night, a guy friend was over studying. We sacked out in the living room, and I woke up to find him putting his hands (and one other body part) on my body.
I was raised to never say no or not to defer to my Dad. Suddenly, I had a hard time saying no to another adult male. Even with all the coaching to do the “no means no” stuff, it was indescribably hard for me to tell this guy to knock it the hell off. The same issue came up with other guys, too. What was especially baffling to me was that most of them never demonstrated any perceptible sexual attraction to me.
When I got heavier, I didn’t have this issue. I found it very comforting.
The comments above have done a nice job of talking about how to come to love the body you have now. I can’t improve on that. But I think there’s another point to be made.
Once you have come to feel comfortable with the body you have now (and I think you will!) you will be in an enviable position to advocate for fat acceptance and HAES. People who wouldn’t believe one of us who is fatter will believe you when you talk about how none of us chooses the body we get (you know that firsthand) and how weight loss does not equate with deliberate action or moral superiority.
Stay strong. Give yourself time. You will feel better.
Just this weekend I had a guy “Demanding” to talk to me on the train. He kept trying to start conversations with random comments and questions, and I kept ignoring him. Until finally he started nearly shouting “Lady! Lady” Until I turned and gave him the “you did not just call me Lady look.” He then continued to try to chat me up “oh you’re pretty” to which I replied “I don’t really want to start conversations with strange men while I’m alone on the train. I do not want to talk to you.”
What I’m saying is, sometimes you’re just going to have to be clear about what you are willing to accept from the people around you. Sometimes this is difficult if you feel threatened (I towered over this guy and the train was crowded) but if you can you should stand up for yourself in any situation. I always feel concerned about rejecting other people or being rude because I so rarely have to do it, and I know I hate getting rejected. But if you practice it, it gets easier.
I have a good friend who is gorgeous, she reminds me of Reese Witherspoon, tiny, blonde perfect, always perfectly dressed, totally disgustion, and awesome. She takes absolutely 0 crap from men though. I have seen literally lines of guys come up to talk to her while she is standing WITH HER FIANCE, and then CONTINUE TO HIT ON HER after she has introduced her FIANCE and looked as angry as possible. She then actually progresses to telling them to “Go away, Not interested.” You can see that she does not care about rejecting these guys because these guys do not care about putting her in a weird position.
People who ask rude questions, or harass you in public are not worthy of your consideration. So stand up for yourself!
I can so relate to this, because I too do not know how to act when my weight dips down into the normal range. In the past, I would cut my hair short, so as not to have two “come hither” signals happening at once (that is long, blonde hair and a flattish stomach with big breasts). Now that I’m older, I do get hit on even though I’m overweight and married (go figure). But Shinobi’s message is right on, IMHO. You have to learn to set boundaries, and I have actually said to people: “I am not interested in talking to you. Goodbye. I said, Goodbye.” You don’t owe everyone you meet a conversation.
Also, about the tease thing…you are allowed to be flirty when you want to, and undecided when you want. And then you are allowed to MAKE an actual decision. Even if that decision is: “I *no longer* want to talk to you. Goodbye.”
You seem really smart and I know you’ll get there, but in the meantime, it’s okay to still be learning.
:)
A few years ago I told my (much thinner, more athletic and infinitely more hit on) friend, who is now my roommate that “I felt like my body didn’t fit me as a person. My outside didn’t fit my inside”. I has taken me almost 5 years but I finally told her the other day “i feel like my inside and outside match now and although losing my gut would be better for my health, I feel really good in this body” and she was so proud of me and you know what? i was proud of me too. i would tell Loren to do the same things she did when she was larger to accept who she is. She has not changed, her packaging has. The inside is just the same goodness it always was.
When Megan Northrup wrote an editorial on CNN about how now as a thin person, she feels guilty at not speaking up for fat people, many in the FA movement jumped on her. I completely understood her position and she even emailed me to thank me for it.
After I lost a drastic amount of weight, my whole personality seemed to also change. I was still very much the fat girl I had always been on the inside, however now I had been admitted to Club Thin and wasn’t sure how to react to the newfound acceptance. On one hand, I felt like an imposter and a sell-out, and on the other hand, I overwhelmingly felt the need to finally be accepted.
For me, it took time and learning, both about food and weight, as well as about myself, before I finally became comfortable in the skin I am in.
I’m going through something similar, except that my weight loss is due to a bout with depression, medication, and then a little flirtation with ED-NOS. I went from a size 18 to a size 8. Part of the ED-NOS is not being able to see myself as I am. My therapist had me write down facts about my body to help me see it as it is. It works after a while, to some extent. Sometimes I’ll catch my reflection unexpectedly and it takes a second to realize that it’s me. People have called me things like thin, tiny, and skinny lately. I don’t identify with any of those words.
I am getting attention now. I had someone whistle at me in a parking lot over the weekend, which is the first time it has happened in years. It used to really bother me when I had a conventionally attractive girlfriend and a guy would hit on her when we were together. I got to experience it on the other side this weekend. I just ignored it and got into her car. She was angry though, that someone would whistle at us. (She’s very butch and I’m femme, and I had my hand on her. You’d have to be a complete idiot to not realize that we’re lesbians in our liberal metro area.) I don’t know if the whistler was mocking her or supposedly complimenting me or both. Either way, it made me realize what I’m probably in store for at this weight, though maybe less than I did last time I was at a similar weight. Back then I was 20, though. Now I’m 33, except that I look about 25.
I don’t have any answers for you, except that it’s a hard thing to go through, suddenly living in a body that doesn’t quite feel like your own, and one you might be sort of ambivalent about like I am.
it’s hard when it feels like someone’s always got something to say to you about how you look. i was the bookish dork with a cool sister and it was very disorienting when i took up swimming out of sheer frustration with having to listen to everybody’s comments and just wanted to be in the water. it’s an old hurt, but it sticks, and it made me feel like my body was just there to be judged, the old line about women’s bodies being ornamental.
which is probably why it’s hard to take even technically positive comments–it feels like you’re never going to measure up, like you’re always just there for someone else, not for yourself. and then there’s always a hierarchy–for me it was eye-opening, because i still mostly identify as a complete and total dork, but get classified as an athlete, and now significantly smaller than my cool sister, and that comes with a whole new set of expectations.
i guess what i’m saying is, it’s always something. that’s what i like about size acceptance–learning to accept who you are, regardless of what your mom and her lawyer’s pet monkey think about you.
I have a weird relationship with my body size too. I hate that extra attention that people feel justified in doling out when a few pounds come off intentionally or not.
The worst was when I was really depressed a few years back and just plain wasn’t eating. I went from size 24 to 18 and suddenly everyone was in my face and complimenting me. Like I had suddenly appeared at size 18 and deemed worthy of their attention. I got really angry a lot of the time and eventually got out of my funk.
And the weight came back- and my comfort zone was again reached.
I really do feel that I am not meant to physically be below a certain weight since it basically means no eating at all to get there. Which can’t be healthy. Then there’s all the junk that other people dole out about how healthy I look when I am my most unhealthiest. It’s just plain not worth it for me to put that much focus on getting to somewhere I’m not comfortable being anyways.
I weighed between 180 and 200 pounds in middle and high school (at 5′-4″). Something like that happened to me as I got into my late twenties and thirties, got into better shape, and simply stayed at around the same weight. It took me a long time to realize that people weren’t automatically classifying me as fat anymore. As I got older, people started to perceive my size as the large side of normal rather than freakishly huge.
Even my family thought I’d lost a significant amount of weight – my mom was shocked when I told her that I still weighed around 200 pounds. People started to criticize other fat people in front of me. More men hit on me – but not to an annoying extent. I’m not all that approachable. It was weird. On the other hand, it gives you more social options, which is nice. I’m learning how to use being considered at least semi-attractive to my advantage.
Loren, a similar thing happened to me in my late-teenage/early-university years, for a number of decidedly unhealthy reasons. I was also overwhelmed with the amount of male attention I was receiving, and made the (in retrospect) not-great decision to go with it, and found myself in the horrifying position of depending on my sexual attractiveness for my self-worth. This is not to say that this will happen to you.
Shinobi is dead right about essentially drawing a line in the sand that other people cannot cross, re: your body and your (perceived) availability, as evidenced by your hotness.
Maybe it’s a bit like moving, from a house you loved, and were really comfortable with, and had lived in for a long time, to a new place, and now you have to think about things like drapes, and cupboard arrangements – but pretty soon that new house will feel like home, too.
I relate to this a lot, not as someone who has lost a lot of weight, but as someone who has struggled to feel good about my body at a weight that is fairly normal. At 5foot10 I weight about the same as Loren, and while I am a little overweight by BMI or magazine standards, I think my body is absolutely average. However, I still grew up with family members suggesting I lose weight, never feeling attractive, not really dating much, etc etc etc. Bad self esteem all around. So now, when I’m told I’m pretty or thin or attractive, no matter how much a part of me believes (and wants to believe) it, there is still a big part of me that feels like it’s a lie, that is suspicious, and that just doesn’t want that kind of attention.
But I think that this is a feminist issue just as much, if not more than, a fat one. I know that part of the reason I’m so bothered by positive attention my body or appearance may get me is that I resent living in a world where people think that I will judge my worth by looks and thus they need to compliment me (how many times has an aunt said “You look great, did you lose weight?” and think she is being so kind?). I resent living in a world where men I don’t know think that’s acceptable to comment on my looks as I walk down the street, reducing my body to an object that is there for their viewing pleasure. I resent the expectation that I need the attraction of a man, I need to have a boyfriend, in order to have a fulfilling life, and without that I must be inherently lonely….these are all things that all women experience by virtue of the fact that they are women. Certainly the issue of body weight, lost and gained, adds some complicated layers, but mostly I am furious that no matter what my size, there is consistent assumption and judgment and objectification.
My advice to Loren would simply be to work on setting your own goals–what do you want to do with your life? Do you want a boyfriend? How important to you is it to look a certain way when you get dressed in the morning? Laying out the honest answers to these questions will maybe help you ignore everyone else…
I really don’t have much advice to give, other than what the others have mentioned, but wanted to offer my “support.” I’d also noticed that it wasn’t solely just men treating me differently, but also women. Some who were my friends, in fact. I’d still felt like the same fat person inside, with the same body image/eating issues, but for various reasons me losing weight became a real point of contention with me and those friends. It was palatable.
While I don’t assume this is the case with anyone but me, I use to numb every feeling – good and bad – with food. As a result, I never really gave much considered thought to what was important to me, what I considered to be “my truth.” I never cared enough about who and what I was, and not because I was fat, but simply because I wasn’t particularly emotionally evolved. But, having been socialized into thinking that fat = worthless, didn’t help matters, and it was a vicious cycle, and one that obviously never produced any real self-worth until I stopped listening to outside voices.
It’s taken a long time, but I’ve started to have faith in myself, and trust that I know what’s best for me and who I am. I guess if I CAN offer anything, it’s to be patient and kind to yourself. You’ll get more adjusted to your “new” body and all of the hassles that come with it.
I feel for you. I too have that feeling of my outside not matching my inside. I’m still the same person as I was, but once that person had different concerns and did different things…
I’m very lucky in that I’m married (so I don’t have to put up with unwanted flirters) and I had the same boyfriend/husband when I was fatter and can’t see that it ever made any difference to him. But I do appreciate that luck.
It still sort of stuns me that people don’t particularly see me as fat – I’m still overweight, I’ve just… somehow slipped below that line where people make assumptions. I didn’t notice it happening, and sometimes I wonder if the average-ish body that I see in the mirror is an illusion. Maybe I’m still fat and just kidding myself? (But my clothes disagree.)
What K said.
There’s a book somewhere that talks about the fact that when your body is altered in some major way, like losing a substantial amount of weight, there are parts of your brain that literally can’t catch up to your perception with your senses of what your new body looks and feels like.
So it’s even more confusing when people are reacting differently, when your personality was the same as it always was — more men hitting on you (some thing positive) to the point of physical harrassment (negative); longtime womenfriends complimenting your appearance (positive) but then starting not to invite you out with their husbands or significant others or telling you you look “tired”, “haggard”, or “drawn” now (negative) — or flat out telling you they’re dropping you because now you’re competition. (Lovely!)
I wish I had known about the brain thing. I think it would have made it easier to adjust and sort of mentally divorce myself from the proceedings, in a way — like, that I didn’t have to have a personal opinion about it all, even if everyone around me did; just that I’d changed something about myself, like gotten a degree or won a prize or learned a new skill or something, and it was just another change to integrate.
Hahaha. If I ever get that level-headed …
P.S. I’ll see if I can find the book link for everyone.
Also, ed. “some think positive”. Although it’s dark, she needs more coffee.
Hey littlem, have you found the title of that book yet? Sounds like it’s describing my life.
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better, Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee
http://www.thebodyhasamindofitsown.com
Thank you for reminding me, Colin — I’ve been a little distracted.
Happy Easter weekend, everybody!
This is a feminist issue like the whoa (not to say it is not a size issue). It actually just hurts to see comments like “I guess I need therapy” when describing something so widespread — women feeling like they owe their beings to the people around them, basically. Feeling like you owe a “gracious” response to people who “compliment” you in public (even if the comment was actually quite innocent, really, why should it matter so much to you what anyone else thinks of how you look?) — or even to people you know. It’s a hard line to walk, but the fact that anyone is more likely to comment on a woman’s appearance than a man’s, in public or elsewhere, is telling. So … while it would be helpful, definitely, to talk over these things with someone, and try to work them out (I’ve had to work out crippling anxiety and self-hatred over time into a rumpled moderate self-esteem) it just struck me that something that harmful is something so prevalent. That’s not to say that every woman suffers it, but certainly a great, great many do.
I can relate to Loren’s struggle as I’m currently going through the same thing. At 5’10 and 20, I topped out weighing about 300 pounds, which is when I hit absolute rock bottom. I’ve always had men ‘in’ my life but not to the extent that I was dating or getting very physical with any of them. Recently after losing about 60 pounds (I’m still working on it) I’ve been hit on and even asked out much to my confusion. I can’t get past the fact that someone would actually be interested in dating fat ME. Now, every time I meet someone who seems to like me I want to ask them why. How could you POSSIBLY like me? Why aren’t you interested in that size 6 blonde in the corner? I’m not scared to lose more weight and get to a healthy size for myself but I’m terrified about the male attention that has started to come my way. I am fairly confident in myself and have always had good enough self esteem but I can feel myself slipping into that “I need you to make me feel whole” area which is oh so dangerous. About a month ago I had a man for the first time ever tell me I was beautiful. I’ve been called other things but never beautiful. Since then I’ve become almost obsessed with this guy because he’s the first person to ever really see me in a way I’d like to be seen. He accepts me, which is just insane to me because I don’t even completely accept me, but I really appreciate him for it.
The key thing that I’ve learnt is that I need to recognize when I start to put my self worth into someone else’s hands. You can’t live your life hoping to please someone else Loren. Recognize what you love about yourself and stay true to that. People may expect certain things of you now but you don’t have to adhere to them at all.
I completely understand where you’re coming from when you say people expect you to be a tease. I’ve never really dated before so this whole world is unfamiliar to me but I’m expected to ‘play the game’ which I don’t really want to. My best advice for you and myself is just to be who you are. Don’t worry about being attractive to everyone or having a boyfriend. You’ll find some man who loves you for exactly what you are not what you look like. Embrace your new body, it’s the only one you have. If you’re looking hot, rock it! Just don’t do it to please anyone else.