I’ve never liked being called fat. Never.
And yet, I’ve been teased by peers, both children and adults, for my
entire life about being, well, fat. I
repeat, I have never liked being called fat.
It has always hurt, stung, sometimes more than others, but it has always,
always hurt. I’ve been bigger than I’m
supposed to be (according to all of my doctors) for my whole life. I was put on my first diet in the first
grade. Weighing an outrageous 103lbs.
clearly merited an intervention. At this stage in my life I actually took pride
in being taller and bigger than everyone, though. My little mind felt that my gargantuan status
made me unique, different, special. These
boastful feelings would die a few years later.
By the time I was a tweenager I was self-conscious
of my size for negative reasons. I felt
fat. The kind that’s socially
uncomfortable. I had no problems with
the weigh I felt in my own body, but I didn’t like the weigh others perceived
me. I started to hear giggles and
snickers. I couldn’t keep up gym
class. To this day, I have never made it
across monkey bars and I was usually one of the last kids chosen when it was
time pick teammates for kickball. Others
noticed, so I did too. Even more painful,
adults, family members included, would openly tease me. “Natalie Ann, what size you wearin’
now?”…Upon checking the size of my dress hanging in the doorway,
“Uh…uh…uh…” “You gotta get some of that
weight off you, girl.”
LIKE
I WAS FEEDING MYSELF!
Children have no control over the foods or portion
sizes to which they are exposed. Coupled
with what I believe to be a genetic predisposition to obesity, the types and
amounts of food I was given as a child cemented my arrival in the plus size
section of my local Deb clothing store in the 3rd grade. To clarify, I am not blaming my parents. My mother is an amazing cook, specializing in
traditional Southern and African American cuisine. Throughout my life people have told her,
almost begged her, to open a restaurant so that they could more frequently
enjoy her cooking. She’s good, and she
did everything she knew to do to take care of her family. My brother and I were well-dressed, well-groomed,
and well-fed. I became accustomed to
eating a lot of really good food, too much good food…at all times of day and
night. And so, I developed a habit of
overeating without really knowing it.
By the time I was in 7th grade, I was
just average height, but weighed a ridiculous 219lbs. By then, I accepted that I was a “big girl”
and fit into a kind of miscellaneous, misfit pile in the dysfunctional social
strata of middle school. I became keenly
aware that I didn’t look like most of the girls with boyfriends, but I wanted
one. I felt that it was fine for me not
to have a boyfriend currently, but I knew that I wanted a boyfriend in high
school and definitely had to have a prom date.
High school happened and I neither gained a boyfriend nor a prom
date. I did, however, suffer open
ridicule, some quieter, some louder, for my size. My favorite memories include being referred
to as Missy Elliot (sized much larger than my peers and I deemed attractive),
having my (slow, “big girl”) walk imitated by a football player in my homeroom
(he poked his butt out for emphasis and discussed his act with a neighboring
football player before execution), and being patted on the butt as a joke by a
fellow marching band member. He and his
friends must have had a discussion about this unwelcomed touch before it
happened because they all laughed as soon as he removed his hand. We were supposed to be standing silently
still in a circle as a part of an attention drill for performances, but he
moved…his hand onto my right glute and laughed.
My sexuality was a joke. I felt
it. I was too fat to date.
Heading into college, I believed that I would
quickly find my husband, the God-sent man who would make up for all of the
years of rejection I faced as a teenager.
He would love me. We would date,
graduate engaged, marry and live happily ever after. Never happened. Instead, I was once again boyfriendless and
dateless. On a conscious level, I tried
to be as attractive as I could. I
flirted with new styles, kept myself up, and added accent pieces here and
there. I’ve always enjoyed looking
good. I’ve always loved frills. But on a subconscious level, I felt
unattractive. I felt too fat to
date. This must have been this
case. Why else was I perpetually
single? I cannot say that any one man
gave me this impression, just that because I wasn’t being pursued, I assumed
that men didn’t find me attractive because I was fat. I had varying levels of consciousness about
this. Although I harbored insecurity
about my physical appearance, I maintained consistent hope and expectation that
someone would find me attractive enough to date. I enjoyed flirting, but never moved passed
these casual interactions to anything that would lead to an actual date,
further and further and further confirming my self-loathing. I felt too fat to date.
Many long talks with God unraveled my erroneous web
of thinking. Yes, I consulted God. What was He going to do about my lack of a
dating life? Very odd to me, He informed
me that He wanted all of my attention and that my perpetual singleness was a
result of His protection from the harm that cycling through relationships can
bring. (I’ll write much more about this later.
In fact, I’ll cover it in a book.)
This helped tremendously! The
heaviness of rejection was lifted and I felt more confident in who I was than I
ever had. God was my Father. He created me in His image and this made me
beautiful. He let me know that there was
nothing wrong with my desire to be attractive to the opposite sex, but that I
could never situate or evaluate my identity based on how men approached or
didn’t approach me. I would finish
college with salvific confidence in God’s protection, but I still wanted to
date. I still wanted to marry. The devil
still sometimes haunted me with the fear of being rejected by men for a myriad
of reasons, but primarily because of my size.
I fought very hard against this lie in my early
adulthood. I decided to address my
dissatisfaction with my size through weight loss plans in college and after
graduation. Men took notice of the
change in my appearance, but more accurately, the change in my confidence, and
started to approach me more. It had been
very difficult for me to reason how other “big girls,” several larger than me,
had men and I didn’t. I failed, at
times, to maintain the understanding that God gave me that I was single and not
dating because He wanted me to focus fully on Him and serving in the Church. (1 Corinthians 7:34 provides this
instruction.) I wasn’t supposed to be
dating. On my worst days, I felt like
something was inherently wrong with me. On
my best days, I walked in full assurance of God’s care for me. On my best days, I did not care about not
dating. And, on my best days, I got hit
on, a lot. I am grateful for this
correlation: when I felt best about myself, men did too. After losing almost 80lbs. and going from a
size 24 to a size 12, I felt different about me. I felt good about me and men
did too. Although I was still
categorized as overweight at 180lbs. and 5’6”, I felt amazing. My energy changed and I started to attract
men everywhere I went. My encounters at
gas stations were the funniest. Seems a
lady like myself shouldn’t have to pump her own gas.
In the 7 years since my last attempt at taking off
the weight (yep, I gained most of it back), I have still fought, almost daily
to maintain a healthy view of myself. I
am far more confident than I was when I was teenager, but I still sometimes
struggle with my weight and satisfaction with my body image. I am no longer in the very dark, dense
depression that I was in high school about my body. (Thank You, Jesus! Depression is real and it feels so good to be
free!) But…I still want to be a better
steward of my body. I still want to feel
better in my own skin.
When I hit 30, I started to feel really good about
my potential for attracting a potential husband. I don’t know why, but when I hit the big 3-0,
a lot of mental weight started falling off of me. Additionally, I enjoyed being
hit on by men I found attractive, were gainfully employed and not
criminal. Still no dates, though. Then one day I was fussing at God about how long He was
taking with delivering my promised Boo, and I got an inbox asking me if I was
interested in being introduced to a potential husband. (Pause. If you’re reading this and you are not a
Christian who believes that we should only date toward marriage, meaning that
we don’t date recreationally, but with the sole purpose of acquiring a spouse,
I know this sounds very weird. I
promise, I’ll write an explanation later.)
I was floored and thankful that a past ministry partnership, could lead
to marriage. A former colleague introduced
me to the first man that I would ever date at 31 years of age. Yep, I didn’t go on my first date until I was
31 years old. I had been serving the
Lord as instructed, spending (not enough) quality time with Him, all the while maintaining
my faith that He would ensure that my husband and I would someday meet. And, just like that, I was introduced to an
amazing, godly man.
He fulfilled all of my prayerful requests for
spiritual leadership and a few aesthetic things like height, being musical, and
very good in his field. I fully believed
God had ordained our relationship and eventual marriage. One problem: I didn’t find him attractive. In fact, I was extremely unattracted to
him. So much so, that I cried. Why did God do this? I was finally in a dating relationship, but I
didn’t want to have sex with the man I was dating. To clarify, I was and I am still fully
committed to saving sex for marriage, but I am fully persuaded that sexual
desire should come before wedding vows are stated. This was not the answer to my prayers. I cried and cried. He was amazing in every other way. He scored 100% in the “Things that Count”
category. But, I knew that I wouldn’t
want to have sex with him, a fairly important part of marriage. After a few too many tears, I made the
decision to end the relationship. We met
at a coffee shop…and he already knew before I started talking.
I spent the next few months pressing God about why
all this had occurred, and then one day He told me that the way I felt about my
suitor was the way I felt that men felt about me. Whoa.
I promise I really believed I was over feeling unattractive, too fat to
date, but I was not. I was still
convinced of my unattractiveness on a subconscious level, so much so that I
attracted someone who reflected my belief that men only saw value in my character. I was a good girl, smart, kind, I would
probably make a good mother someday, but I wasn’t sexy. I was too fat to date. Ouch.
This stung. My ex was a mirror image of my beliefs about my unattractiveness to
men.
I was immediately convicted about ever feeling that
our failed relationship had anything to do with what was wrong with him. (He
obviously lacked self-confidence, even once warning me not to fall for his best
friend because of his green eye color.
So weird. I could feel that he
didn’t feel that he was good enough for me which was a major turn-off. Note to self.) I began praying that whatever lessons he
needed to learn from the situation were learned quickly and that his heart
would be healed so that he could move on and enjoy a healthy relationship (I
believe this prayer was answered.) I
also began praying about what I determined to be a persistent plague. Somewhere deep in my cerebrum, I still felt
that I was too fat to date, that I was unattractive, unsexy.
I’ve since devoted that last 4 years to addressing
my insecurities head on, boldly asking God for help and being intentional about
dismissing negative self-talk and the temptation to compare my body to
others. Of late, and I mean within the
last 6 months, perhaps because God has given me 2 prophetic dreams (dreams that
indicate future events) and prophetic words through 2 prophets (people that
relay God’s messages about the future) that God was preparing me for marriage
and that marriage was on the horizon, I’ve felt very comfortable with my
image. Like, I’ve let so much of the
worrying about not being attractive to a potential mate go. And it feels so good. Perhaps it’s because
I’ll be turning 35 on the 29th of this month or a combination of
these 2 that I just feel relieved, that I can, should, must drop all of my
insecurities about my body. I’ve even
lent myself to the mind that husbae would be really fond of my ability to keep him extra warm. I’ll leave it at that. I’ve been working to live in the persuasion
that without losing another pound or inch, my man, the husband God has for me,
would desire me. And it feels so good, being
okay with me feels so good.
And then this happened. I overheard some friends talking about
potential mates, trying to figure out who would pair well with whom and then
someone suggested me. Without a single
breath, the intended beau retorted, “Natalie is fat.” He felt that I was too fat to date. The other 2 loud talkers chuckled. I remembered.
I remembered years of ridicule and laughter, but also rejoiced that I
didn’t feel paralyzed by this rejection.
I was discomforted by this statement, angry that the people in the
kitchen hadn’t figured out that the people in the living room could hear their
conversation, and annoyed that my size meant that I was unattractive to
someone.
For the record, I am not attracted to the individual
who apparently doesn’t care for plus size women. There is no crush to speak of. Our relationship is completely professional
and I am more than okay with this, but it just didn’t feel good to be rejected
by someone of the opposite sex because of my size. It stung and reminded me of how I used to
feel, of what I used to believe. And so,
I’ve spent a decent part of the last 2 days perusing plus size dating videos on
Youtube and skimming BBW dating Instagram posts (Warning: Even if your inquiry
is an innocent search for sisterhood, you’ll run across a plethora of risqué
images) all in search of community, of other women who shared my experiences
and victoriously claimed their confidence and a couple of cute husbands. I found this and also felt a burden to write
this expression of my evolution.
I’ve decided to love me and love being me, no matter
my size. I am me and I am fine with
that. At my last doctor’s visit I
weighed a surprising 260lbs. I’d weighed
244lbs., within my typical range of 225-245lbs., at my visit in December of the
previous year and didn’t expect the ten month gap to introduce the15lbs. that
I’ve decided to drop in addition to another 60 or so. But I’ve decided to love myself every step of
the weigh down (or up.) I’ve never enjoyed
feeling bad about myself, so I’ve just decided to feel good. I don’t know what changed in my head, but
I’ve just decided to feel good about me, to enjoy my body and shape regardless
of its fluctuations. I must be more
responsible with regards to maintaining a healthy weight, but I simply refuse
to engage in anymore self-loathing. I’ve
already lost too many years to that. And yes, I believe that I am desirable,
that I can be loved by the man of my dreams, and that I am not too fat to date.
