Taking Up Space
Learning to exist as a fat woman in a fat phobic world.
September 2020
As we wrote at the beginning of this venture, Abby and I are fat women. We each have different and similar experiences, feelings about our bodies, and embody different intersections of identity related to being a fat woman. I am a fat woman who has trauma about her body, including a history of bullying both at school and from family members. I have trauma about existing in my fat body and it affects how I navigate the deeply fat phobic world we live in.
Abby and I were recently talking about some plans we have for activities we would like to do together. Abby lives in a region with a lot of nature areas and water. We were discussing potential physical activities we could do with one another such as kayaking, hiking, and paddle boarding.
As we were talking about these possible activities, I thought about how it might feel to do these activities in front of another person, and I started feeling anxious. Moving my body in front of other people is really hard for me. Doing any activity that could be construed as physical movement and/or exercise feels really triggering and delicate (except getting off — one of my favorite activities where I move my body!).
When I was growing up, I didn’t do organized sport activities of any kind. We did have a baseball field in our backyard, and I liked to play when I could find someone to throw me the ball. We had a trampoline, and I really loved playing on that. However, organized sports and moving around physically in front of others were a significant source of anxiety. I felt really incompetent and stressed about exercise and playing sports at school in required presidential fitness (elementary school) and PE classes (middle school).
In my family of origin, both thinness and fat phobia are really prominent values that drive behavior and the ways family members respond to others’ bodies. During high school and into college and graduate school, family members made many shaming comments about my body, the food I ate, the clothes I wore, and my health. My sister in particular made a lot of comments about my body size, the food that I ate, and the clothes I wore. As a result, to avoid being shamed, I started cutting out the tags of clothes I wore so she and others wouldn’t know what size I wore. Needing to wear “plus-size” clothes was a source of shame.
During graduate school, I was extremely busy and unable (and not interested in) exercising often. A friend invited me to attend two exercise classes at our local university recreation center. Even though I felt somewhat uncomfortable going, I said yes. On the night of the class, I struggled immediately to keep up and felt ashamed about not being able to keep up. I was glad we were in the very back row so others wouldn’t see me. I just barely got through the class. The second class was even harder than the first. I eventually left the class early and cried.
Just using the word “exercise” feels extremely loaded and triggering to me.
Even now as a thirty-three-year-old woman and after all of the therapy work I’ve done (9+ years), it’s hard to talk about body movement and exercise, even with people I feel safe and comfortable with. For example, this year, I visited one of my best friends in Russia. Before going on the trip, I didn’t realize how much walking I would be doing and the pace I would be moving. I felt so much shame about not being able to keep up with him walking around the two cities I visited, Moscow and St. Petersburg. I felt so ashamed I was sweaty and was so embarrassed to meet his boyfriend looking hot and sweaty. I felt so much shame I couldn’t walk as fast as my friend.
To make matters worse, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t struggling. I love him so much and he loves me so much. We have a relationship that is egalitarian and based on mutual respect, love, and care. Despite this, I felt so much shame about what was going on and didn’t want him to know. I wanted to look like I was “normal” and like everyone else — that I could keep up with the pace, that I wasn’t affected by the limited spaces to accommodate fat bodies, that I wasn’t having a hard time speaking up for myself.
But I couldn’t look like everyone else, hard as I tried.
The first full day I was there, by mid-morning, my body was so tired and my feet were in so much pain we had to stop for a break in downtown Moscow. I cried on a sidewalk bench. Throughout the rest of the trip, it felt clear that I couldn’t hide the way my body was existing in those spaces. Because we had walked so much and I initially wore shoes that weren’t as comfortable as I thought, I developed really painful blisters on both feet and had a really difficult time walking places. My pinkie toenail came off on my left foot on day 5 of the trip. I struggled to keep up the pace with my friend and he often walked ahead of me as he was accustomed to moving in a fast-paced way.
Toward the end of the trip, I got to a place where I could talk more about what was going on, but it was still hard. Bless my friend’s good, kind heart, he checked in often how my “dawgs” were, and we took taxis nearly everywhere. We were able to make jokes about how long a Moscow city block was vs. an American city block. We joked that “where we’re going is just around the corner — you just have to cross two mountains, give your pinkie toenail to the ogre at the drawbridge, walk 20 miles until you get to the treehouse, walk 30 more miles to the entrance of the castle, and then you’re there.”
As I write about this, I realize this is not just about shame about body movement or exercise. It is shame about existing in a fat body in a deeply fat phobic society, and being raised in a family system that perpetuated fat phobia in person. It is about feeling shame about taking up physical and emotional space, about being seen, existing.
These feelings and experiences are so ingrained into everything, I don’t know if I will ever not feel some of this. It helps immensely being with people and in spaces that are supportive and understanding, and that are doing the work themselves to explore with curiosity and kindness the fat phobic and diet-culture related ideas and beliefs they have internalized. It helps being around folk who inhabit fat bodies as well, and to feel supported and validated in existing the way I do in my body.
It also helps to move my body in ways that feel safe and comforting and good to me. In this way, solo sex has been immensely helpful. It allows me to move my body in ways that feel liberating and not restrictive. It allows me to move in a space that is safe and comforting and not observed by anyone else. I can sweat and move and make noise however feels right and safe and good to me, with absolutely no judgment (and it’s regulatory and good for your body/health to boot!).
I use mantras to remind and comfort myself. Mantras like these help:
“The people, systems, and institutions that are oppressive and fat phobic are the problem, not my body.”
“You don’t have to move or not move your body in any certain type of way for your body to be important, good, and worth protecting.”
Though I do not exist to be attractive or look a certain way, I take photos of my fat naked (or nearly naked) body to document my experiences and how I exist, especially when I feel attractive or desirable. This feels important given the messages I have received about the attractiveness of fat bodies generally and my own body specifically.
Abby and I are going to do physical activities when we’re together. We’ll swim, kayak, hike, walk, move. This process is ongoing, delicate, painful, and important. There will be times when I might feel nervous or silly or embarrassed or ashamed.
I’ll also feel safe, empowered, brave, and comforted. I’ll remember times my body has existed (and exists) in all her intricate glory. I’m grateful for the things my sweet body does for me. She works so very hard to protect and nurture me.
I wish all of us (including myself) so much kindness, grace, support, softness, and help in this work.
