As a fat woman myself, I’m still struggling with how I feel about it.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
Ironically enough, I met my boyfriend during the thinnest month of my life.
I was at a friend's birthday party at a bar when I saw my future boyfriend Brian from across the room, talking to the birthday boy. Brian was the type of guy I spent most of high school and college and my entire adult life pining after and never getting: slim, with dark hair and glasses, his jeans torn in all the best places. He had a beautiful mouth that was excitedly saying things I couldn't hear, but was making everyone around him laugh.
If I had still been at my heaviest weight, I never would have approached Brian. As a fat woman, I have been taught that there is an order of operations for love: First, you get thin; then, you can date who you want. Until you do the first thing, the second thing is impossible. So for many women who struggle with their weight, it becomes a fight not just for their health or well-being, but a struggle to just be worthy of the love so many people take for granted.
Most of my life, my weight has felt like a search light from above that continually hounds me, putting the spotlight on my body even when I just want to hide. My third-grade class unofficially voted me "class pig" — a title I embraced with great gusto, because the alternative meant no friends. When I was 10, my dad ripped a box of Apple Jacks out of my hand while I was pouring myself a second bowl of cereal, and told me that I was "going to turn into a goddamn pumpkin." The summer I turned 14, I was sweating my life out every day for an hour during swim team practice. Still, when I put on a bikini one day, my mother wouldn't stop talking about my belly fat until I just wanted to throw the bikini away and never wear one again. I have always hated my body, and in retrospect, I'm not sure I was ever given the chance to love it.
But on the day I met Brian, I had just spent the previous year slowly winnowing off 50 pounds, almost entirely due to unemployment. I wasn't buying a lot of food, and was spending much of my free time developing a nervous running habit that led me to spend hours every day trotting in circles around my neighborhood, trying to go somewhere even as my career was jogging in place.
So I was feeling brave, the stupid kind of courage that comes from unexpectedly having a body you never thought you'd inhabit, and wondering what kinds of things it might let you get away with. And I walked that crazy all the way over to the other side of the bar, and introduced myself to him.
There was a three-hour period — between the moment Brian first kissed me, and the moment when I learned that Brian was predominantly attracted to bigger women — when I felt like I could do anything. In my mind, I had done the impossible. Seducing a thin and attractive person was like taking bronze, silver, and gold in the Former Fat Girl Olympics.
At some point that night, I remember lying next to him, still feeling unbelievably cocky from my victory, when Brian mentioned that I wasn't normally his type.
My inner Douchebag Alert went off. Oh god, I thought. Is this the part where he lets me know how nice he is for throwing my chubby ass a bone?
"What's normally your type?" I asked him, bracing myself for the part where he not-so-subtly intimated that he can usually do better than me.
I did not get the response I expected.
"I like bigger ladies," Brian replied. "Very big ladies, actually." He sounded as calm and as normal as if he were telling me the weather. He was not ashamed. I suddenly realized that this was not an attempt to put me down, but rather just a thing (a completely normal thing, to him) that he was disclosing about himself. In other words: It was conversation.
But the little part of me inside that had been cheering for hours suddenly got very quiet. But I am your type, I thought sadly. In that moment, I know that Brian had been saying that he didn't consider me to be big, but I know as well as anyone that people can't fundamentally change who they are attracted to. Brian was still attracted to fat girls, and I was one of them.
This, of course, did not take away from how into Brian I was. We started dating almost immediately, and became inseparable. When I described him to people, I would tend to use celebrities who was currently in love with as a frame of reference:
"He's exactly like a dark-haired Ben Folds, but younger, and with better skin."
"He looks just like an American version of John Oliver, but with better teeth, and a more attractive nose."
"Brian looks like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters," I said once during a Halloween party, apropos of absolutely nothing. "But, like, even better looking."
It was during this time that I started slowly putting the weight back on. Not because Brian was doing anything to sabotage me — he was and is supportive of my wanting to eat well and exercise. It was just a result of being in a happy relationship, suddenly having a full-time job, and life getting in the way. Normal things.
Six months into our relationship, I found myself in a very desperate laundry situation. I put on a sundress that I thought might be a little too backless for my current weight.
"I figure if worst comes to worst, I can just find a wall to stand against, or walk backward a lot," I said to Brian as I put it on, trying to preemptively apologize for an outfit that I was pretty sure was riding the line between flattering and gross.
Brian, however, loved the dress. Maybe even a little too much — I spent a lot of time while wearing it swatting his hands away from the open back. I felt happy wearing it, beautiful. Soon, I was wearing it all the time.
Then, I wore it to a party. Late in the evening, Brian turned to a mutual friend of ours, and eagerly, drunkenly opined: "Doesn't Kristin look amazing in that dress?"
The silence that followed felt like the moment before someone hits the button on a dunk tank, and you know that you are about to tumble, helpless, into a frosty tub of punishment. I realized, belatedly, obviously, that to Brian, I did look amazing in that dress. Because I looked fat.
