The Fat Girl Manifesto

Be Happy With You
The key to being happy with yourself, isn’t found in a size, a bank balance, an address, or the right bag. But a good bag, even a knockoff, can certainly brighten your day. I used to dream of waking up thin. As a little girl, the fairy godmother of my dreams would wave her wand make me skinny and rich, and life would be perfect. I never dreamed that she would make me pretty, because even fat, I already knew that I was pretty.
Maybe it was all the backhanded compliments, like “But you have such a pretty face!”. Now this was always followed with the ubiquitous, “If only you’d lose weight.”
For all those people, all I have to say to you now that we are getting older, is. “You’d have such a pretty face, without all those wrinkles! Why don’t you gain a few pounds and see if they fill in?” I know that sounds bitchy, mean, vindictive, and all those things that us fat girls who have to get by on personality shouldn’t be, but to hell with that. I am bitter, mean, bitchy, vindictive and I don’t care. Fat people, and fat women especially, are discriminated against. You can’t make fun of people for their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, their height, their political leanings, etcetera, etcetera. However, there are two groups of people that it is still perfectly acceptable to make fun of, throw slurs at, or otherwise deride. I happen to fall into both of those categories---Fat and Southern.
Fat, in the minds of many people, is equivalent to slovenly, lazy, gluttonous and any number of other highly derogatory terms. Southern, in the minds of many, is equivalent to stupid, illiterate, inbred, racist, and so forth, and so on, ad nauseum. Bigotry is not an issue of race. We are all bigots in some fashion or other. I am a bigot. I look at skinny women, and think “I hate her”. And other people, I am sure, look at me and think, “Oh, my god! Just go on a diet!”. There is not a person in this world who is satisfied with the way they look. Whether it’s your boobs, your nose, your butt, your gut, your hair, your eyes, your skin, your wrinkles, or anything else, we would all like to change something about ourselves. But instead of thinking about what we want to change, think about what you would not change.
I have incredible bone structure. That might sound conceited, but so be it. I have high cheekbones, a good jaw line, and an undeniably cute nose, in spite of a minor accident (we’ll get to that later). I’ve also received numerous compliments on my lips, my eyes and my hair. I’m very smart, I’m reasonably well read, and my friends, at least, think I am witty. Now the question I have to ask myself is, would I give up or in anyway, alter that rather long list of things about myself that I like, to change the one thing that I don’t—namely my weight? I would think that the answer to that would be an obvious no. But that isn’t necessarily the case. There are any number women out there, women who have just as many desirable and wonderful attributes as those I have claimed for myself, who are also of a size that society would frown upon, and would give it all up to be skinny.
I don’t know when it happened exactly. At some point or other, in my very early twenties, I just looked in the mirror and said “I look good”. And it was true. To look at it objectively, just tally it. Make a list of the good and the bad, and see which is longer. Being fat is no different than having thin hair or a big nose. It isn’t just about what you eat, or about the fact that you don’t get your big ass off the couch often enough, though those things don’t help. Genetics, environment, culture, all those things are a factor. I grew up in a region where pork is a spice. You save your bacon grease to flavor your vegetables. Fat is in inevitable. It gets us all. Genetics just determines when.
Me, I’ve been fat pretty much my entire life. Those skinny bitches from high school who used to look down their noses at me because of it—well a few kids and a decade and half of southern cooking means now they are looking down their noses and over their double chins. Now, when I say skinny bitches, I am in no way implying that every thin woman is an evil, villainous, bigot who harbors an undying hatred for us fat girls. That would be narrowminded, and I prefer to think that I am not. But there are women, usually the women who are so obsessed with their own weight that they will starve themselves if the scale varies by more than two pounds, who do hate fat women, because in us, they see what they fear they will become. And if you dare not to be bound by the narrow confines of what they consider beautiful, then you might as well paint a target on your back, because they will try to make you pay for it.
Beauty, if you are willing to open yourself to the concept, comes in every, shape size and color. But the only opinion that matters in the end, is your own. If someone calls you fat, it isn’t an insult unless you allow it to be. If you are fat, and someone says so, then it is no different that someone saying “your eyes are brown”. It is only insulting if you allow yourself to fall into the trap of believing that fat is ugly, or bad, or wrong, or sinful. It might not be healthy, but neither is smoking, drinking, doing drugs or starving yourself. Those things, trends aside, seem to actually make people more attractive. And for one brief shining moment about five hundred years ago, I would have been not only a goddess, but a muse.
Look at the paintings of the Renaissance. Women had curves and lots of them. They had breasts and hips and stomachs that today would have caused their doctor’s to label them morbidly obese. And they were the beauties of the age. Okay, so many of them were also prostitutes. But they were considered beautiful by icons of the artistic world that have helped to define our very civilization.
And contrary to what fashion magazines, television and movies would have us believe, not every man out there is looking for a size two. Go on the internet, type in the term plus size, or BBW. I don’t suggest going to these sites, as most of them are undoubtedly pornographic, but take a look at the number of hits you get. If there are enough men out there who enjoy looking at larger women naked to support that number of websites, obviously, not all of them are looking for Barbie.
Be proud of yourself, your accomplishments and your life. Accept who you are, what you are, and accept that not everybody is going to like you. Appreciate the ones who do, and always be sure to list yourself among them.