I’ll never forget the day I found out my girlfriend weighed more than I did.
She was out on a bike ride, and I was home when I found her Weight Watchers folder — a palm-sized folio with notations for what she’d eaten, and when, and what she planned to eat next, and whether she’d been drinking her eight glasses of water a day. There was her name. And her weight, Suffice it to say that the number shocked me.
I knew that C was a big girl. Certainly bigger than any of the women I’d seen on TV, bouncing in bathing suits. I never thought of myself as a chubby chaser. But when I met C I fell for her wit, her laugh, her sparkling eyes. Her body, I decided, was something I could learn to live with. Her shoulders were as broad as mine, her hands were almost as big, and from her breasts to her belly, from her hips down the slope of her thighs, she was all sweet curves and warm welcome. But being out with her didn’t feel nearly as comfortable. Maybe it was the way I’d absorbed society’s expectations, its dictates of what men are supposed to want and how women are supposed to appear. More likely, it was the way she had C was a dedicated foot soldier in the body wars. At five foot ten inches, with a linebacker’s build and a weight that would have put her right at home on a pro football team’s roster, C couldn’t make herself invisible. She took no pleasure from the very things I loved, from her size, her amplitude, her luscious, zaftig heft. As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn’t matter, I knew that to her it did. I was just one voice, and the world’s voice was louder. I could feel her shame like a palpable thing, walking beside us on the street, crouched down between us in a movie theater, coiled up and waiting for someone to say what to her was the dirtiest word in the world: fat. And I knew it wasn’t paranoia. You hear, over and over, how fat is the last acceptable prejudice, that fat people are the only safe targets in our politically correct world. Date a queen-sized woman and you’ll find out how true it is. You’ll see the way people look at her, and look at you for being with her. And what she’ll let herself say. I remember when the Monica Lewinsky story broke and C., a newspaper reporter, wrote a passionate defense of the White House intern. After her article was printed, C got lots of hate mail, including one letter from a guy who began: “I can tell by what you wrote that you are overweight and that nobody loves you.” And it was that letter that word that bothered her more than anything else anyone said. It seemed that if it were true the “overweight” part then the “nobody loves you” part would have to be true as well. As if being fat were somehow a crime. Loving a larger woman is an act of courage in this world, and maybe it’s even an act of futility. Because, in loving C, I knew I was loving someone who didn’t believe that she herself was worthy of anyone’s love.
She was out on a bike ride, and I was home when I found her Weight Watchers folder — a palm-sized folio with notations for what she’d eaten, and when, and what she planned to eat next, and whether she’d been drinking her eight glasses of water a day. There was her name. And her weight, Suffice it to say that the number shocked me.
I knew that C was a big girl. Certainly bigger than any of the women I’d seen on TV, bouncing in bathing suits. I never thought of myself as a chubby chaser. But when I met C I fell for her wit, her laugh, her sparkling eyes. Her body, I decided, was something I could learn to live with. Her shoulders were as broad as mine, her hands were almost as big, and from her breasts to her belly, from her hips down the slope of her thighs, she was all sweet curves and warm welcome. But being out with her didn’t feel nearly as comfortable. Maybe it was the way I’d absorbed society’s expectations, its dictates of what men are supposed to want and how women are supposed to appear. More likely, it was the way she had C was a dedicated foot soldier in the body wars. At five foot ten inches, with a linebacker’s build and a weight that would have put her right at home on a pro football team’s roster, C couldn’t make herself invisible. She took no pleasure from the very things I loved, from her size, her amplitude, her luscious, zaftig heft. As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn’t matter, I knew that to her it did. I was just one voice, and the world’s voice was louder. I could feel her shame like a palpable thing, walking beside us on the street, crouched down between us in a movie theater, coiled up and waiting for someone to say what to her was the dirtiest word in the world: fat. And I knew it wasn’t paranoia. You hear, over and over, how fat is the last acceptable prejudice, that fat people are the only safe targets in our politically correct world. Date a queen-sized woman and you’ll find out how true it is. You’ll see the way people look at her, and look at you for being with her. And what she’ll let herself say. I remember when the Monica Lewinsky story broke and C., a newspaper reporter, wrote a passionate defense of the White House intern. After her article was printed, C got lots of hate mail, including one letter from a guy who began: “I can tell by what you wrote that you are overweight and that nobody loves you.” And it was that letter that word that bothered her more than anything else anyone said. It seemed that if it were true the “overweight” part then the “nobody loves you” part would have to be true as well. As if being fat were somehow a crime. Loving a larger woman is an act of courage in this world, and maybe it’s even an act of futility. Because, in loving C, I knew I was loving someone who didn’t believe that she herself was worthy of anyone’s love.
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