To Be Fat Like Me

I can only remember one time as a kid that I picked on someone about their weight. We were in the fifth grade and the boy's name was Danny. He was very, very overweight for a child and had also been unfortunately cursed with having to wear glasses (throw in red hair and you have the top three kids will pick on others unmercifully for). We called him "the Marshmallow Man." I was never one to really pick on other kids -- I'm just not a naturally mean person. But, for some reason, Danny seemed like free game. And, besides, everyone else was.

That was almost twenty years ago and I still remember it. I wish I could go back and change things. I hope Danny is leading a good life, regardless of what size he happens to be now, nearing 30 (he moved away from our school after that year).

Yesterday afternoon, I happened to be flipping through channels and found the Lifetime movie, "To Be Fat Like Me." Now, there was a time when I could loaf around on the couch for an entire afternoon absorbing Lifetime movies. These days? Eh. There are better things to do and, besides, most of the movies are extremely corny. But this one caught my attention. I watched the first thirty minutes of it and then set the DVR to record the rest. I watched it last night.

I'm glad I did. It really made me think about things.

For starters, the relationship Ally (the main character) has with her mother reminded me a lot of *my* relationship with *my* mother. Now, my mom and I got along much better than she and hers did. But. My mother was very large for all of my formative years. All of them. In 2002, when I was 22 and she and my dad were going through a divorce, she dropped over 100 pounds. But up until that point, she was . . . not just overweight but obese. Morbidly obese.

And -- I've never admitted this before, not even to myself -- it embarrassed me. I would always wonder if boys I was interested in would look at my mom and think, "That'll be Brandi in 15 years. I'll pass." I can remember making sweatshirts for our moms in grade school. My mom's sweatshirt got mixed up with the sweatshirt of another girl's mom and I had to take my mom home a size 'large' sweatshirt. She never did get to wear it. I would have friends who could at least swap tops with their mothers. I never could do that. I was embarrassed by my mother's weight. Embarrassed for me and, yes, embarrassed for her. And it still makes me cringe to admit this. Now, I realize that my mother was so much more than a number on a scale. But when you're a kid, things are different and every little thing in your life can seem major.

The movie also brings up the point of why are we still prejudice toward big people? Why do we treat them differently? Why is it seen as okay? Because of fear. You won't suddenly change races over night. And your sexual orientation isn't going to just up and be different. You might change religions but that's something that YOU can control and a choice that YOU make. Weight isn't always like that. It can start out as 5 pounds here and 5 pounds there and before you know it, you're looking at yourself 50 pounds overweight and saying, "what the hell?" It's scary. Scary because of the way society looks at and treats overweight people. And scary because, well, all those things the skinny minnie doctors warn us about. Diabetes and heart disease and strokes and high blood pressure.

I know there are people who are severly overweight that can look at my largest (non-pregnancy) weight and think, "Dude, I would die to be there." But, I have to face it. No one starts a weight loss program with the hopes of ending up at 190 pounds and a size 14. Unless maybe they're 6'5. I've heard the 'fat' comments too. When I was a senior in high school, my cousin (who has major, MAJOR issues with women's bodies -- seriously, dude had his wife in the gym two weeks after she gave birth to a nearly 10 pounds baby!) told me that I wouldn't be overweight if I was 6'0 tall. Thanks, dude. When I was 25, I dated a guy whose best friend referred to me as "Tuck's fat girl." Gee, how nice.

It's never fun for someone to make snap judgements about you based on anything physical but when it's about your weight . . . that almost seems just a little bit harsher. Because . . . maybe it's not because I always stuff my face with french fries. And maybe it's not because I'm lazy. And maybe it's not because I don't care. We have all these generalizations that we slap onto "fat" people and they're so unfair.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a mean person and I don't make fun of people. It's just not me. But I have to wonder if I find myself inwardly flinching sometimes or thinking, "is she seriously going to eat another piece of pizza?" Do I do that? I don't know, but it's time to watch myself. If we want to make a difference in the way overweight people are treated, it really starts with each and every one of us.