My entire life I’ve been known as the fat girl.
Which was funny at first because when you’re in elementary school
you can make a joke about it and blame it on girl scout cookies
and childhood chub.
But the more you grow up the more you get sick of hearing the word fat.
Fat this Fat that. Fatty Fatty two by four. Couldn’t get through the kitchen door
And all you can do to survive is laugh.
And sometimes You’ll make jokes about your own fat
Trying to make people stop talking about it
but really you’re kind of dying inside.
In high school your HAHA moments fail
and being called fat just makes you hate yourself.
One day after PE some boys were calling me fat and I couldn’t laugh.
So my body’s immediate response was to cry.
And I ran into my teacher’s office to cry
and she looked me in the face and said- You are beautiful.
But then she called friend Lauren in who was like,
90 lbs and had her hold out her wrist.
Then she put mine next to it.
Mine was probably twice the size of Lauren’s
which really just hurt my feelings
and I was wondering what the hell she was doing.
But then she took my hand, looked me in the eye and said
“you were not built to be a stick. You were built, to be you.
And that does not make you any less beautiful”
She kind of saved my life.
At school I have a wall of shame.
What I did was flip through Cosmopolitan
and I cut out pictures of all the girls in Bikinis
of skinny girls with their midriffs showing and words like
Sexy and Hot, , and Lose Weight
And I taped them all over the wall in my dorm Room.
Pretty Self-destructive... huh?
One of the organizations on campus
put sticky notes all over the school with inspirational sayings on them
Like, you are Beautiful. And You are Strong.
and Love your body for what it does, not what it can’t do.
So I took them off the walls and put them up in my room.
I put one sticky note over the face and stomach of every girl on my wall of shame.
So now it’s a wall of acceptance.
Baby steps.
Looking back on all the times I was called fat
I just want to turn around and say
Yeah?
Well Fuck you!
Just because I’m not a scarecrow-
and just because I have love handles
Does not make me any less loveable.
And I wish that I could make every bigger person all over the world feel special
Just because you aren’t 100lbs-
And just because one day some jerk decided to call you fat-
That does not make him better than you!
I wasn’t built to be a stick.
Maybe you were. Or, Maybe you weren’t either.
But whenever you’re feeling bad about yourself
and your weight
and your body just remember these words.
You were built, to be you. And it doesn’t make you any less Beautiful.
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