Wow, what a beautiful experience y'all have given me. Truly, the past week has felt like a gift I am unworthy of receiving. I really wasn't sure what the response would be to last week's story. It can be nerve-wracking to share anything vulnerable, but especially when it's so easy for people to pile on with the sort of vengeful glee for which the internet is so often famous. I mean, maybe someone is out there saying mean and horrible things about the post I made about my physical and mental health journey conspiring to bring me a brand new body, but I stopped looking for negative feedback long ago. The first ever comment posted on my first-ever on-camera interview was this, which was illuminating:
After years of dealing with it in real life, I thought I could handle digital fatphobia and the general hatred of women so many project. I could not! Particularly because the comments never got better. In fact, I'd argue they got significantly worse at a few different moments in time (2016 Twitter being particularly virulent). And they all ruined me: the comments weren't just attacking my weight, either—they attacked my looks, my intelligence, my personality, my sense of humor. Everything about me that was publicly available or hypothetically surmisable was used against me by a bunch of dudes who were Big Mad on Twitter (mostly because of my tweets about Trump, but also some MeToo stuff I shared, too) and a few executives at my old job who said I wasn’t “hot or thin enough to be on camera.” All of which resulted in a prolific haul for the self-hatred sommelier who lives in my brain. 2016-2018 completely demolished my sense of self and self-worth—and it actively took me years of hard work to rebuild myself and recover after I nearly inflicted death upon myself.
But back to the beauty of this moment. Because truly, y'all, the response to last week's post was all love of the highest order, and I have been completely blown away. The pain people shared, the vulnerabilities, the brutal honesty and complicated reality of holding conflicting feelings in your heart at the same time. It's not easy to talk about the nuances here, and yet so many opened up to me with their own shit. I feel so lucky that you felt comfortable enough to share with me, and empowered in my own thoughts and feelings thanks to you all—and though nobody should gather their entire self worth from external validation…it does feel nice from time to time. So thank you.
There's always a worry—especially when talking about weight—that you are enabling and further legitimizing fatphobia if you talk about weight loss and/or physical health. Which is something I absolutely, positively, never, ever, ever want to do. Because the pain I’ve felt and internalized from decades of it is not something I would wish upon my worst enemy. Because I know how much it messes with you to the core of your being, to be judged and maligned and hated for something that has nothing to do with the content of one's character. Which, let's be real, should be the most important factor when it comes to judging anyone (the content, not the packaging).
If we lived in a world where the judgment of others was based on less superficial, more substantial qualities, we'd all be a lot happier. (Except for those who feel joy solely from the pain of others, but I digress.) Humanity doesn't reward kindness and community. We don't reward people bringing their highest selves to the table, or being open and honest about complicated vulnerabilities and imperfections. We don’t give ourselves the space to grow, especially not publicly. It gives other people too much ammunition against us.
I especially feel so thankful for all the love and positive feedback I received on a story I wrote and edited entirely on my own without a major publication behind it. I tried and failed to sell that story, so when push came to shove, I decided to just go it alone and use this erratically updated Substack for it instead. And it has been my most popular post by far (though I admittedly have no idea how well my posts for Marie Claire or Backstage Magazine do). And it helped me crack a few things as I try to finish my memoir pitch in earnest. It’s reminding me to trust my voice and the stories I have to tell. And to always be honest.
Which is why I want to talk about being angry right now.
Because losing weight has made me feel very, very angry about many, many things. Mostly other people. I've wanted to write about this aspect of losing weight for awhile, but didn't want to do it in a complain-y or woe-is-me sort of way. I want you, and myself, to feel radicalized and empowered by the anger in my words—not frustrated or defeated. I want this anger, that I've been feeling based on what I've been seeing and experiencing, to make us all see how much all of this is connected to our larger societal dysfunctions. Our collective existential crisis, if you will. I’ve also spent decades trying to never be or feel angry, so allowing myself to be so has been an overwhelming boon to my senses.
I've been a visible person in a fat body (on-camera interviews my old web series, Fangirling, etc) for a long time. But more often than not, I've been an invisible person in a fat body (sometimes even when I was being visible), because people are uncomfortable around fat people—or at least around having to confront their own feelings about fatness and being fat. And it enrages me to my core that more people out in the world "see" me now that I've lost weight and am more conventionally attractive. Men want to date me, executives want to hear my TV show pitches. Maybe it’s my newfound confidence, or maybe it’s the fact that most people are more comfortable around a “former” fat person than an actual fat person.
But we all knew that, right? Still doesn't take away the rage you feel when you witness it, though, either.
Do you know what it's like to go to the same grocery store, seeing the same employees for years, only have some of those employees start to see or engage with you after you’ve lost weight? How people you've passed on the street, who’ve made you coffee, who’ve pet a dog you’re walking…how all these people in your community have refused to make eye contact with you—instead looking straight through you—for years, only to have them smile at you now that you're a size 12/14? Have you ever experienced the relief a thinner person feels when they feel "safe" to talk to you, a former fat person, about losing weight? How they ache to have their own biases about fatness and being fat confirmed?
It’s fucking enraging.
And, lest anyone get it twisted: I have always been the overly friendly person on the street and at the store. I have been a lover of the seemingly banal and casual conversational moments exchanged between strangers and/or members of my community my WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE. Just ask anyone who has ever been my neighbor. Ask my roommates, ask my friends. I am a notoriously chatty and smiley motherfucker. I love other people and talking to them in whatever capacity that may be. I find other people absolutely fucking delightful to encounter, even if it doesn't always result in a positive experience. But people only really seem tolerant of that when I look more traditionally fuckable.
So, yeah, I’m feeling pretty angry at how differently people treat me in that, and many other regards, now that I'm thinner. My personality hasn’t changed! My smarts, my ideas and general sense of humor? The same! And yet, people are noticeably kinder to me than they have been in decades (men especially). And it honestly makes me want to stand in front of them, screaming bloody murder as I stuff cake down my gullet and tell them to go fuck themselves.
Listen: I'm sensitive, okay?
I spent my whole childhood as a people pleasing emotions-fixer. I have had to drop everything at major moments in my life in order to keep the peace of others and avoid a bigger flame-out (ask me about my college graduation). I am deeply attuned to the emotional states of others, for better or for worse, and it's really not hard to spot someone who is uncomfortable, disgusted, or just flat-out feeling hateful towards the person in front of them.
And if someone were to read this and the original post, and only see fatphobia and an embracing of diet culture and white supremacist, patriarchal beauty standards? Well, yeah, that would also make me pretty fucking pissed off. Because it feels like willful ignorance that only further destroys our need for more nuance and grey area in cultural conversations. Everyone has the right to their opinion though, of course, but it would still make me feel like a failure as a writer/professional communicator if that was all they could take away from this.
I feel comfortable, however, engaging people on this now. I’m allowing myself to feel and be empowered by this anger. Because so much of this has to do with how we view a constantly shifting “physical ideal” as the greatest indicator of moral character and general worthiness. We class humans in our brain based on whether or not we want to fuck them, even if the goal of the interaction is not to fuck them. We’ve all internalized this, for better or for worse, but now I feel it is imperative to push back on it when I encounter it (I’m fun at parties!). Because it always comes back to self-hatred, and I refuse to hate myself or anyone else for the sake of upholding a fallacy of worth based on the purely superficial.
Because we’re all complicated and nuanced and beautifully fucking special gumdrops, okay? And we all deserve to stand in the reality of being such.
