Warning!! Contains Offensive Words!!

This is a word I have been thinking about for a very long time and I think we need to use it more. We use many other words to avoid saying this one, but I have come to the conclusion that they are all cowardly. I started to read Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie’s new book ‘Americanah’ yesterday and in the first few pages she had articulated, much better than I ever will, the same issue and the same avoidance of this word. The word is ‘FAT’ and today I would like to come out, officially as a fat person.

I am not doing this because I want a string of comments flattering me that I am not. Similarly I don’t want to hear the following words that people use as platitudes to avoid saying what is blatantly obvious: curvy, voluptuous, big-boned, and womanly. Yes, I do have curves, yes I am voluptuous but my bones are no bigger than other people’s (I’ve seen them on x-ray) and I know I am a woman, but for me being a ‘real’ woman has nothing to do with fatness. At the GP, they use the word obese and I am statistically in that bracket; I will never be morbidly obese because I’m a very cheery person! Obese is one of the red flags on the top of the screen when the GP pulls up my medical records (my other red flag was for lack of contraception but as I pointed out to her, as I was already obese I was my own contraception). I am reclaiming the word fat because I think for too long we’ve become hung up on it. It is seen as an offensive and insulting word, when those are simply meanings we have attached to it as a society. When I say I am fat I do not see it as an insult anymore, because it is just a word, a word that describes the state of being overweight. I am not being offensive or self-effacing when I use the word about myself I am simply stating a fact. I am fat. See, Susie Orbach was right, if you say it enough it loses its power. In her book ‘How to be a Woman’ Caitlin Moran suggests standing on a chair in the middle of a room and shouting it at the top of your voice until it loses all meaning. If I wasn’t so fat I would climb on a chair, but I’ll just say it from where I’m sitting. I am fat.

Several years ago I went to a medical review with a practice nurse. It was one of the conditions of moving to a new GP surgery and she went through my lengthy repeat prescription list, and then took my blood pressure. She then weighed me, checked my height, and calculated my BMI. She looked at me, in her sympathetic, head on one side way, and in her quietist voice whispered ‘you do know you are significantly overweight?’ She frowned in a worried way as if she imagined she was imparting information I’d never had. ‘Yes’ I replied ‘I do own a mirror’. She seemed surprised, firstly because I was not whispering (apparently if you say it loudly the fat might leap out and get you) and secondly because I refused to be horrified or ashamed.

When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis almost twenty years ago now, I was a slim size 10-12. Not the perfect size that seems to be the expectation now but well within height and weight range. That first year I had intravenous steroids three times in hospital and by the end of the year I was a 14-16. Steroids give you a strange metallic taste in your mouth and a terrible feeling of emptiness low down in your stomach. I cannot vouch for other people on steroids, they may have stayed the same, but for me I was always ravenous, I was also immobile in hospital, pissed off and depressed to find that I had a life limiting disease at 21, and constantly receiving gifts of chocolates to cheer me up. Then the strange added symptoms of joint swelling began and my knees turned into red hot and angry footballs overnight so painful and tight that I could not put normal jeans on and had to go up another size to get the leg room. I couldn’t walk far, did long distances in a wheelchair and sat around a lot. My husband and I were young and inexperienced in life, he struggled with my illness and inertia, and we went through three miscarriages before an added mixed connective disease was diagnosed along with Hughes Syndrome (a blood thickening disease that creates a problem moving blood supply through the narrow link from mother to baby). In the aftermath of the miscarriages, and the money struggles caused by only one of us being able to work, we often treated ourselves with cheap takeaway food and more chocolate. By the time the marriage broke down I was a size 20.

Since then the degree of my fatness has fluctuated, but according to the NHS guidelines I am now at least 5 stone overweight. In the remission periods of my illness I eat as well as I can, and walk the dog more and move more in general. When that happens I can drop a stone, but then relapse happens and again I eat more and become sedentary. It is a pattern I have never managed to master or overcome; I don’t need to eat more so it is clearly an emotional response to my losses and illness. The stress during my second husband’s terminal stages of MS and pneumonia was so great I did lose some weight, and then after his death even more came off. Then during my third marriage the fat got worse, because at this point it became a stick to beat me with, and eating cake or chocolate became a form of defiance and rebellion. He would make comments about me laying off the biscuits, or comment on something I was wearing ‘doing me no favours’ or finally resorting to saying I ‘looked like a pig’ and that my weight and illness made me unattractive and undesirable. His emotional abuse dented my confidence and I am still repairing myself and will hopefully achieve healing from this experience as time goes on.

Despite all of these experiences and the emotional baggage I clearly carry with me I don’t mind saying I am fat. To say it is almost a relief, but other people seem horrified by the word. I don’t say it to insult myself, and just as I often reclaim the word ‘cripple’ to describe my disability, I am taking away the word’s power to hurt me. Fat is a fact. Yet when I say fat I don’t mean any of the following things: lazy, ugly, unattractive, undesirable, useless, idle, and unlovable. I am far from lazy when my illness permits me energy, I am not completely unattractive because despite my last marriage I have had good, healthy relationships where I never felt ugly or unwanted, I know I am lovable because I have had those relationships, but also enjoy the love of my family and a large circle of friends who don’t give a damn that I am fat.

There are things I feel I can’t do of course. A lot of this hinges on the limitations of my disability, but other limitations are directly because I am fat. I suffer horribly in the heat and can’t wear flimsy clothing. I can’t get a bikini out and go on a beach holiday because there I would feel more conscious of my weight; it is hard to be completely free and flout society’s expectations and narrow concept of feminine beauty. Yes, I see women in magazines that look bloody gorgeous and I do wish I had the legs of a supermodel sometimes or could wear whatever clothes I like. However, I have developed my own style and I like it and I would much rather visit a museum or art gallery on holiday than lie all day on the beach. I am slowly accepting that my life and my appearance are different from the rigid norms displayed in women’s magazines. I also stopped buying the sorts of magazines that are obsessed with weight issues, and even other women’s magazines that like to put on a show of appreciating a wider concept of womanhood and then print four pages of extreme diet advice.

I am also aware of the health implications of my weight; extra weight does put extra pressure on my joints and make it harder to mobilise, but the extra weight did not cause the disease in the first place. I do not mind being told to lose a few pounds by a doctor who acknowledges the effect of my illness and the drug treatments prescribed to alleviate the symptoms. I had been on pre-gablin six months before my doctor told me that in the first year one of the side effects is a weight gain of around one and a half stone. It’s hard to fight against these drugs and the illness, as well the effects such an unpredictable disease makes on your mental health. I have seen people crack under the strain and develop drinking problems, agoraphobia, clinical depression, drug addiction or even commit suicide. Thankfully I am still here, but I am still fat.

Maybe there will come a change in society where human beings, particularly women, will not be judged on their weight and appearance before anything else. I hate to see people constantly striving and waiting to do things when they’ve ‘lost a few pounds’ as if happiness will magically become theirs once they are a size 10. It won’t, because happiness comes from within. In Adichie’s book, her character Ifemelu sees a school teacher who is wearing a mini skirt, despite being significantly overweight and she recognises a ‘rightness’ within the woman, a sense of confidence that says ‘I am aware I am fat, but fat is not the only thing about me’. It is about saying I’m here, I’m fat, get used to it and then getting on with life without giving it too much thought or letting it take over. For me it is reminding myself that fat is just one of my characteristics like my green eyes, my blond hair, and my dimples. It is about getting on with everything I can in life while knowing and accepting that I will always be a little bit fat.