The Size Of My Heart, Not My Waist
Or, the fat girl who dared to love herself
I remember a girl who never knew she was fat until the third grade. A boy told her and, not long after, her brother and male cousins let her know every day as well. But she still didn’t know then that fat was a heavy word itself and that she’d be carrying it with her for years to come.
Fifth grade hit and she learned that in addition to being fat she was also ugly. And she knew she was ugly because another boy let her in on it. Still, she wanted to be a supermodel like Cindy Crawford, but her brother told her she could maybe be a super-sized model and everyone thought that was hilarious. Even she laughed because it was easier than letting the shame bleed through.
In sixth grade, her mom let her wear makeup to school and yet another boy said she looked like a clown. That same year, while visiting her grandma, she had the audacity to eat a snack. Her grandma shouted across the room, “That’s why you’re so fat.” Grandma’s eccentric reputation included blunt insults, so no one said anything.
When she decided that she’d like to play sports in high school, her favorite teacher laughed right in her face.
Over those years, adults and peers alike were so focused on her physical appearance that they didn’t notice she was lonely and depressed, how she withdrew from activities and even basic human touch, how she retreated to her room to eat, read, and sleep.
They didn’t see her binge eat but they noticed her weight gain. And because the greatest tragedy to her mother was having a fat daughter, her mom took her to see a doctor. The doctor stated the obvious — that she’d gained a lot of weight — and prescribed weight loss. That doctor didn’t ask her how she could have gained so much weight in such a short time or ask about her home life or even tell her how to lose the weight — she was only told that her cure was weight loss. It is, of course, easier and more lucrative to treat symptoms than causes.
Not long after, she was in high school and contested a grade she’d received on a project. When her mom came to school to advocate for her, the argument she posed to the teacher was, “I know she’s not a Barbie doll but she still deserves a fair grade.”
She began having panic attacks, though she didn’t know that’s what they were at the time. She laid on her floor and cried inconsolably, missed a lot of school, and continued to binge eat. Food and books were her friends. On days when she would go to school, she envied how normal everyone else seemed, how easily they fit in, how happy they were, how thin.
A lot of things happened after she finally graduated high school. She went to college, married early, divorced early, lost a parent, thought she’d be sad forever, binge ate, and learned to binge drink too.
After years of abusing her body and her spirits, somewhere along the way, she took control of her life, took up healthier habits, and lost weight. What changed in her is a story for another time. What matters here is that after losing a small-human-sized amount of weight, her mom called her beautiful for the first time in her life. Men held doors for her. When out to eat, no one looked at her and then her plate anymore.
She’d finally shrunk enough to fit into a place in the world. She was finally deserving of normality.
Sometimes the girl who believed that looks back at me in the mirror, her eyes a sad blue. Sometimes she begs me not to wear a certain top because of my arms or not to wear a certain pair of pants because I’ve gained weight since having a daughter. She tells me I can wear them again after I lose the weight.
I’m not mad at that girl. It’s not her fault.
Because I love her, I tell her that she’s worthy of good things and worthy of love. I’m strong for her. I protect her. The woman I am embraces the girl I was, cradles her when she cries, tells her she’s beautiful.
At work, I see women deprive themselves of entire food groups to stay skinny. I hear bathroom chatter about unlocking a new level of happiness after finally being able to order a shirt in a small. I listen to self-deprecating humor about their bodies when someone pays them a compliment. I see them attaching morality to food, telling each other they’re good for eating the right foods and bad for indulging. This enrages me.
But my rage is a rebellion. It’s an armor for the part of me that still cries inside sometimes. It’s a shield for my daughters.
It’s wearing makeup when and if I want to. It’s putting on bright colors and bold prints that aren’t supposed to be on my big body. It’s not shaving if I don’t want to do so. It is reading and learning about everything I can while I still get to breath air.
It’s also being active and eating healthy, not because I hate myself but because I love myself and want to keep breathing that air. It’s honoring my own big and beautiful body so that my daughters will know how to love themselves, whatever shape they may have. It’s wearing joy and self-acceptance like they’re the latest fashion. It’s joining a kickboxing class to sweat, have fun, and make friends, not to punish myself.
It is gazing at my nakedness in the mirror without shame, admiring the big breasts that fed my children, the belly that grew them, and the lines of my clavicles that still pop. It’s standing naked before my partner and feeling confident.
My first year of college, I wrote a poem with a line that read, “I really need the size of my heart to matter more than the size of my waist.”
I take up more space in this world not because my body is big but because my heart and my mind are. I’ve earned every inch of that space.
Savannah Ober lives in Houston.
