PeaceBang

Fat and Domestic Abuse

SweetieBang and I have developed a little Saturday morning tradition. I wake up early, walk the dog for a few minutes, then come inside and read for class or church while Greg sleeps in. Then he wakes up, walks the dog for a second time (Max prefers to do his serious business with Doggie Daddy, which is fine with me!), then we go to Weight Watchers where I get weighed in, then we noodle around the mall or somewhere else, and have lunch together. I drive Greg to work and then I go home and work on church stuff or whatever else I need to do.

Lately I’ve been very happy with my Weight Watchers weigh-in, so I tend to do a little “Rocky” arm pumping victory jump when I share my news with him across the room from the scales. He, being a shy guy, gives me a little grin and saves all the “Heeeey, Skinny” comments for when we’re alone (really corny stuff like, “Where’d ya go? Oh, you turned sideways, I didn’t see you!”). He’s very supportive, but it means a lot to me that when we met I was as heavy as I’ve ever been and he was still attracted to me. Hetero men who manage not to have their libidos totally colonized by Madison Avenue and the fashion industry have a special place in my heart. This isn’t to say that all men are necessarily naturally attracted to heavy women, but plenty who are wouldn’t dare act on that attraction for fear of being thought less a man by their peers. As I’ve complained many times in the past, a simple cruise through the personal ads of any American newspaper or on-line dating site will inform even the most casual observer that American men are intensely fat phobic, equating extra pounds with sloth and fair game for ridicule and even demonization. It’s ugly out there for big girls. And no, it seems to matter not one bit if the fat-hating gent in question is himself in possession of a beer gut, flabby or distinctly unhandsome physique, ear hair, foul breath, rampant dandruff or is a self-absorbed, ignorant, unemployed marijuana addict who lives at home at the age of 47. “No fatties need apply!” There is no greater moral crime in America today than to be obese.

With this in mind, it suddenly and with some real horror occurred to Greg and me last weekend that some people probably think he goes with me to Weight Watchers to make sure I’m losing weight, like some abusive control freak boyfriend would do. And Lord forgive us — we laughed our heads off about it. As soon as we leave the Weight Watchers storefront now, we do this whole skit where I say, “Honey, I lost two pounds this week” and he makes a *slap* sound effect and growls, “I thought we said FIVE.” Or he’ll put his arm around my waist, softly grab a handful of flesh and sneer in my ear, “Two pounds? What about this?” And I pretend to cry and say, “I only got to the gym seven times this week! I’m sorry! I’ll do better!” And we laugh like hyenas and get iced coffees.

And yet there are couples who live this way. And I’m sure we all know some of them without knowing that this is going on behind closed doors.

Today we were in breathless hysterics because I lost over 3 lbs. this week (don’t congratulate me for my discipline, I’ve had some sort of flu since Tuesday night) and we decided that, in our skit, before the woman even got the word “three” out of her mouth to announce her great success for the week (”Sweetie, guess what? I lost thr…”), the guy would interrupt by saying, “STILL. FAT.” and totally shut her off.

Of course this is all the funnier to us because Greg is considerably overweight himself and first feared that if he entered the WW building with me, he’d be dragged into a meeting and would be counting points from that moment on. (”C’mon, big guy,” he imagined them saying. “Get on the scale!”).

It really isn’t funny. I know it and so does he. I remember being in my early twenties and starting to get seriously overweight (”seriously” back then being 20 lbs. or so, but in my own eyes I was an enormous blob and desperately insecure about it, although on my good days I felt sexy and curvy and angry that the rest of the world –including women — tended to be so stupid and hateful about women’s bodies). I read Fat Is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach and it really opened my eyes to the ways that the diet industry conspires with society’s misogynist impulses to keep women focused on shrinking down to an acceptable size so that they won’t get their teeny tiny brains on other things, like, say, running for president.

When I see slim, fit women at the gym doing their thing, I cheer them on. “Go, sister!” However, when I see them striding into a Weight Watchers meeting and they’re in their early 20’s or maybe not even that old, and they’re thin and beautiful and they’ve joined WW for $9 a week because they’re miserable about the six pounds they’re frantic to lose, I can’t cheer. I want to pull them over and say, “Lovely young woman, take a 45 minute walk three times a week, cut out the sugary beverages, eat three healthy meals a day and nothing in between and you’ll drop that six pounds in no time. Meanwhile, there are so many better things you could be doing with your time than weighing and measuring your food and attending Weight Watchers meetings on a Saturday morning. Whoever told you you should be here, or whatever put it into your head that you need to be a size 2 or 4, let’s do an exorcism for that and you can get out of here and go live large in mind and spirit, ’cause your body is nowhere near it.”

As Auntie Mame said, “Life is a banquet, and most sons-of-bitches are starving to death.” With starvation a reality for so many of the world’s men, women and children, it seems especially important to remind women that there is more important work for us to be doing than achieving conventionally sexy, impossible model proportions that occur naturally in something like 2% of the female population. Health is one thing. My heart and joints are thanking me today for having released 10% of my body fat. Anxiously capitulating to a fat-phobic society that has, at best, a very ambivalent relationship to women’s largeness of being on all levels, is another phenomenon entirely, and not a good one.

If I haven’t made this perfectly clear, let me say to the women reading this that if you are involved in a relationship with a man who viciously shames you about your weight, ridicules your body if you gain a few pounds, objectifies body parts with cruel nicknames, threatens to leave or cheat on you if you don’t lose weight or habitually tears you down, telling you that you’re lucky to have him and that you’re so fat no one else would want you, you are in an abusive relationship. You don’t need to go to Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or LA Weight Loss Centers or Overeaters Anonymous. You need to call a domestic abuse resource center where you live, your best friend or family member, your minister or priest or other supportive and loving advocate for your health and safety, and make a plan to get out of the relationship. Okay? If you decide to lose weight at some point, that’s up to you.

And I promise that my chubby baboo and I will stop laughing about this issue from now on. We were only laughing because it’s such an atrocious scenario and all too common. Lord have mercy.

(Highly Recommended Natural Weight Loss Method: Beagle Puppy = four or five ten minutes walk per day = hundreds of extra calories expended per month and you won’t even notice it!)