When I was in high school, I wasn't really aware of a lot of things when it came to dating. I was an in-the-closet gay kid in a small, conservative, rural town, so really being invisible seemed like the surest way to not have to confront that about myself. I already had enough threats from bullies and homophobes that I passed each day in the hall; trying to make myself look cuter to impress this guy named Scott whom I had a massive crush on was probably not going to help me in any way, shape, or form.
But at the time, one thing that I never remotely struggled with was my weight. I was short, annoyingly so, but not to the point where it was something that people frequently commented on (I came in at about 5'6", and would grow another inch my freshman year of college), but I was rail thin thanks to a psychotically good metabolism, working an after-school job where I was on my feet for five hours, and regularly lap swimming at our local pool. It was to the point, quite frankly, where I was probably under-weight, and when I gained the freshman 20 pounds, it was a blessing. I realized as I began dating boys that I was, in fact, quite fetching. I wasn't an adonis (the swimming soon stopped when academics, partying, and four on-campus jobs left little room for exercise), but I was what gay parlance would call a "twink," at least in a stereotypical physical way, and I never really struggled to get guys' attentions.
As I grew up, my weight became something of a problem. While it would fluctuate, most notably when I worked in New York City, I was never thin again after about senior year of college, or really anything resembling that word, straddling the line between average and overweight until I just jumped over the fence. I was probably 26 or 27 when I hit 200 pounds for the first time, breaking down in tears but still eating a pizza for dinner that night, as food was my refuge, the only thing that really made sense in my world. I used it as a blanket to comfort me when I was lonely, when I was uncertain, when I was upset. I knew that I should eat better for me, I knew I should diet without constant pitstops. I knew the health consequences of it and what it would take to lose weight, but I also knew that overeating made me happy in the moment. I also didn't have to pay a particularly heavy price for it. It didn't feel like my dating life was hurt too much by my overeating, and I was still cute. I was chubby, but still adorable with the face and wry wit that youth provides as a concealer.
I was actually quite thin the first time that a guy called me fat. It was my second date ever with a man, and he pointed out "you don't work out much, do you," at the end of the date. I didn't, so he wasn't lying, but it felt unusually harsh to hear. and weird as I had a BMI of something like 24 at the time, not something you'd really sneeze at (plus, he'd asked me out in person so he knew what he was getting into...but that's not really the point). It didn't happen often in those early years of dating. I remember one guy doing it in a particularly cruel way when I was 23, enough so that I gave up dating for a while, but by-and-large most guys were gentlemanly, and it didn't seem to phase them. My first true boyfriend, the longest relationship of my life, didn't mention my weight once in the entire time we were dating, despite him being considerably skinnier and in better shape than I was.
But after I turned thirty, something happened that made guys feel like it was okay to point this out without any provocation. Despite taking very recent photos, I'd have guys without warning tell me that they were disappointed when I showed up for dates. I'd never experienced that before. I started getting more and more down on myself, trying to lose weight, but finding in the process that losing the weight didn't seem to insulate me from these comments. I didn't look like the guys you would fantasize about on Instagram, the perfect bodies that seem to come despite them also posting beautiful mountains of noodles and french toast next to those photos. Even when I put down the weight, it felt like I couldn't compete, as I was never skinny enough to stop being called fat.
This all came to a head earlier this year when I had three guys pull the "you're fat" card on me in succession. All three had fawned over me to an almost ludicrous degree before meeting. They loved chatting, wanting to move to the phone and quickly setting up dates. All three asked me out first. They had seen very recent photos of me-I had made a point at this juncture to start sending a photo of me from that day in hopes that they wouldn't hurt my feelings. And yet all three, at some point, decided it was okay to point out my weight, or make fun of it. The third one, the one that broke the camel's back, I went on three dates with, really liking the guy. He seemed totally enamored with me, we talked for hours for about two weeks, totally smitten, and then he dropped the "let's just be friends" gauntlet. When he did, I said, "if you want to be my friend, I want to know why you don't want to date me since you seemed to really like me," and he said, kindly at first but then a bit too forcefully, "you're too heavy for me to date," promptly discarding me for a guy forty pounds lighter and thirteen years my junior.
I didn't go on a date for months after that moment. I honestly struggled to look in the mirror for a while. People say that you're not supposed to let others dictate how you feel about yourself, that you aren't supposed to care what other people think, but it's impossible not to, particularly when they hit a nerve. The thing I have always hated most about myself, the thing that truly bothers me the most when I have to wake up each day, is my total failure when it comes to successfully navigating romantic love. Now, after hearing it so many times, I had an explanation for that failure, and it was the bathroom scale in front of me.
Instead of taking this as an opportunity to improve myself, perhaps lose the weight to teach these guys a lesson, ending up with someone even nicer or trying to find a man who isn't so shallow, arrogant, and self-centered as to solely rule someone out because of the size of their stomach, I took this as an opportunity to treat myself like garbage. I started to talk about myself the way that other guys talked about me. While I had always been fairly honest about my weight, admitting that it bothered me and that I needed to lose more of it and insisting that people be real with me rather than dismiss my concerns about my weight, I instead turned myself into a joke, an object of derision. I called myself fat, ugly, undatable, something no man would want. Sometimes I did it to see the shock of people around me, touching on a taboo you aren't supposed to cross, other times because it was anger that I now thought these things about myself, after fighting so hard to not succumb to what these cruel men felt they needed to share. But it wasn't cathartic, and it wasn't healthy. It just fed a bad self-image of myself, and perhaps most damning of all, it wasn't helping me lose any of the weight. I would go to training, working harder and harder without success as I continually self-sabotaged myself. One time I went to a friend's workout class, kicking my butt heartily, and rewarded myself promptly with an entire pizza and a hazelnut panini. I wasn't helping solve the problem, but I sure was making it worse by talking about myself the same way that all of those guys did.
I don't have a happy ending yet for this story. I didn't meet a guy that taught me that I have value no matter what my waist size is and I still look at the cute gay guys on Twitter, and ponder how it's possible anyone could want to date me when there are such options. I can't pretend that I won't see what those guys taught me to see in the mirror when I go and brush my teeth in a few minutes, focusing on how my stomach isn't flat enough or how my face is too round. We learn to see ourselves through the eyes of others, whether or not that's the right thing to do, and there is no easy switch to turn that off.
But I'm going to take the fact that I wanted to write this article, that finally having the nerve to admit this to myself and to whomever may be reading, as an indication that I don't like talking about myself like I'm garbage, that I don't really think that way about myself. I have worked too hard, and tried too long, to let some jackasses dictate how my life gets to play out. I may never be as beautiful as the gays on Twitter, but I can teach myself to smile when I look in the mirror. I can get myself to a healthy weight because I want to, and not just because it's what some guy demanded I do, and I can realize that no matter what my outer shell is, there is more value to what I bring from inside. It's not easy to believe that when the world judges just the exterior, but I'm writing this because it's not how I want to view myself anymore, no matter what anyone says, including sometimes even me. That may be a tiny step, but it's been one I've been waiting months, perhaps years, to finally take.
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