Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It

by Brittany Gibbons

  I woke up each morning and watched her dance in the sunlight coming through the curtains and thought, Jesus, she is the most magnificent girl I have ever seen. Sometimes my breath would even catch and my eyes tear up at her effortless joy and perfection. And then I walked to my bathroom to get ready for the day and swore under my breath at the haggard and fat reflection staring back at me. Until one day it hit me. In a few years Gigi will stand in front of her own mirror, hating her own thick thighs and giant feet. She’ll call herself fat and disgusting. She might even think, for a moment, that it would just be easier to not exist at all. I don’t know what would destroy me more. The part that she could even for one moment think that she is anything other than beautiful, or the fact that she learned it all from me.

  Of all the hobbies I have picked up and dropped over the years—the fiddle, magic, competitive eating—body hate has been my most dedicated and refined. And now with the birth of just one tiny and beautiful girl, everything I knew about myself had changed.

  Being a mother to boys has been completely different than being a mother to a girl. I love them all the same, that goes without saying. I would murder for them on a completely equal level, as well. There are just some things a little more terrifyingly relatable to raising a girl.

  Some of them are obvious, like when Jude and Wyatt exclaimed during her first diaper change, “Why hasn’t her pee-pee come in yet?” Or “Why does she have two butts?”

  But the rest could only be picked up by a skilled eye. The way she’d linger in the bathroom to watch my nighttime routine, or stand in my closet as I picked out dresses for a night out. Unlike Andy, whose eyes glazed over when I would talk to him about clothes and makeup, Gigi would listen to me, wide-eyed, soaking it all in. It was momentarily lovely to have someone there to talk to. Until I realized that that someone was not my friend, but my very young daughter.

  When they say you’re not supposed to be friends with your kids, this is what they mean. All right, yeah, they also mean don’t buy them beer and condoms and stuff, but more important, treating your little girl like a friend in place of actual friends is a terrible mistake.

  One afternoon I watched her put on a fancy princess dress from her costume chest and walk to the mirror, frown, and touch her stomach in a way that brought me to my knees. She wasn’t twirling or smiling or thinking about how sparkly and pretty she looked; she was mimicking the way I’d touch my stomach standing in front of the mirror, frustrated with my body and what it looked like in clothes, pressing my palm into my gut hoping to eventually just hit a reset button. I was not Gigi’s friend at all. I was the woman ruining her life.

  Looking my daughter in the face and telling her she was just like me, and in the next breath destroying my body in front of her, was a catastrophic mixed message. I was drowning in self-loathing, and the only way I could save her was to save myself. The problem was I had no idea how. I had been involved in a decades-long turf war with my weight, it’s truly all I knew. I was able to completely ignore all the miraculous things I had done despite my size, and instead fixate on the scale. I had fallen in love, gotten married, had three healthy kids, and launched a booming career. I also never lost any friends due to my size, and to my knowledge, Andy has no plans to divorce me because I weigh over 200 pounds. The reality was that my life wasn’t miserable because I was curvy; I was miserable because I thought I’d be happier if I were thinner, and when I sat down to think about it, it didn’t really make sense. I was healthy and successful, all within the confines of this skin; so what if it made jeans shopping harder or airplane seats tighter? And even if for one second I was able to shut off the societal propaganda about how the better, thinner, half lives, how on earth could I ever convince myself that decades of beauty standards could legitimately be wrong?

  Say it out loud

  Changing the narrative I supplied for my body was a very real fake-it-till-you-make-it scenario. I’ve never read The Secret. I am not a huge believer in hypnosis or positive thinking. My enthusiasm toward new-age hippiedom extends to almond milk and Nick Drake albums; that’s it. Getting up each morning and saying three positive things about my body as I stood in front of a mirror felt silly and fake.

  “My hair is pretty.” (But I have two chins and my face is round.)

  “My chest is sexy.” (My stomach pooch hangs over my privates.)

  “The area at the bottom of my ribs makes for a nice waist.” (My legs are full of dimples and veins.)

  My original goal here was to prove to a preschooler that I loved my body and that she should, too. But, as months passed and I stood grudgingly in front of the mirror, the positive affirmations were no longer followed by faults. In fact, I began to see less and less of them. I would catch my reflection in the car window or a security camera at the store, and instead of zeroing in on everything wrong with me, I began to only pay attention to the good. I did have great hair, my breasts were amazing and I had a really great waist and hourglass figure. I had talked myself into loving myself purely out of persistence and repetition. I still knew there were things about my body that I didn’t love, but eventually, the good began to outnumber the bad.

  Buy actual pants

  Listen, I love stretchy pants as much as the next person. And I make it a point to never judge other people based on what they are wearing, as long as it’s not a Klan robe or a suit made of human skin. But for me, showing up at the store in leggings so thin you can see your cervix does not spell confidence, it spells resignation. I was in leggings because all my jeans were more comfortable in a ball on the floor than they were buttoned and on my body. I could buy bigger ones, sure, but if I did that, I’d be admitting to everyone that I’d gained even more weight, so instead I went through my late twenties riding a carousel of black stretchy pants; their level of formality determined by how faded they were.

  “Does this look okay to wear to the funeral?” I asked Andy as he looked for a tie in the closet.

  “Well, they’re leggings, so . . .” He trailed off, unsure how seriously he wanted to debate the issue with me an hour before burying his grandmother.

  “Right, but they are black,” I said out loud, assuring both him and myself that it was a logical choice.

  It wasn’t a logical choice and I needed to go shopping, at the very least to get nonathletic wear to have on hand for funerals and church. What better way to show my daughter and myself that I was comfortable in my skin than to spend money dressing it in clothing that actually fit, just as I was, right in that very moment. Not after losing twenty pounds, not in the size I wished I was, but my actual real size. This was terrifying because I’d bought size 22 jeans once after having Wyatt, and I was so embarrassed by the size, I’d asked the girl at the register for a gift receipt so she wouldn’t think they were mine.

  I had to let go of the sizing issue, not only because there was no consistent standard, but because it wasn’t an accurate representation of my body. I may have fooled myself into feeling proud I could button size 16 jeans, but I felt comfortable and beautiful in size 18, and I didn’t have to unzip them once I got into my car.

  Here is a secret: people can’t tell what size you wear by looking at you, but they can tell what size you don’t when your clothes are too tight. Let go of the number. In some stores I wear a size 14, in others a size 20. That insanity is on them, not my body; all I care about is having clothes that flatter me and don’t leave indentations across my flesh. Once I learned that, for the first time in my life fashion became fun. I no longer left the dressing room defeated. I spent the time learning my proportions and shape, so that I was trying on clothing more likely to fit, as opposed to grabbing items based on what models who in no way shared my body type were wearing.

  Fashion seems like a very superficial component of self-esteem, but for me it was the foundation. As a plus-size girl, trendy clothes and styles were often not on the table for me, so putting together pretty outfits was a whole new experience. Plus-size clothes were alway
s less about style and more about comfort and utility. Stretchy jeans with elastic waists are really amazing, but just because we’re chubby, it doesn’t mean we don’t have the hand-eye coordination to button pants. Making my way through the brands and racks, searching for pieces that fit well and were affordable, was tedious and laced with disappointment.

  And that is where the confidence came in. I was taking the time to wear clothes I felt beautiful and empowered in, even though it was hard and time-consuming and I’m not the target demographic for many fashion designers. I was being fashionable and gorgeous in my body, not in spite of it.

  Shut up

  A few months ago I was naked in the closet looking for clothes and Gigi came up to me, put her arms around my waist, and told me my stomach was big. Immediately I recoiled in horror and covered myself with the towel from my hair.

  “Gigi, you can’t tell people their stomach is big,” I scolded her.

  “Why not?” she asked, confused.

  “Because it’s mean.”

  “Why is that mean? I think being big is good.”

  And then it occurred to me that she had no idea that big meant fat, and that fat was a bad thing. As far as she is concerned, I’m just mom-shaped and perfect for hugs. I put a moratorium on the supply of negative body words I was thoughtlessly supplying. I banned the use of fat as a slur hurled toward myself and strangers. I’m not saying I don’t see fat; saying that is akin to the people who make grand statements about “not seeing color.” Seeing color doesn’t mean you’re a racist. It means your eyes work, but that you are hopefully able to see color not for a discrepancy in normal, but as a beautiful component of diversity. That’s how I see bodies. They are diverse; some are skinny and some are fat. We can’t all be Gisele Bundchen, but good heavens, can you imagine if more of you were? Think of all the XXLs that would be left behind for me at Target!

  I stopped glorifying women as beautiful only if they were also thin. In fact, beautiful was the very last thing I decided I would tell Gigi she was each day, after brilliant, hilarious, curious, creative, and daring. There are so many important things to be in this world, it’s unfair to devote so much of what describes us to our body size.

  Get a sponsor

  My knowledge of sponsors and AA does not extend outside of Nurse Jackie, but I assume the basic premise is that when you think about drinking or you already have broken your sobriety, you call your sponsor for backup. I needed that exact scenario applied to my body image journey. Someone I could call when it was way easier to mentally beat the shit out of myself than to like what I was seeing in the mirror. I’m not talking about telling me I look pretty when I post a selfie on Instagram; I’m talking about the person I call at 3 A.M. when I’ve eaten everything there is to eat and everything inside me still feels empty and ugly, or when I don’t feel like I’m even worth being seen with.

  I’m here today because of my best friend, Shauna Glenn. I met Shauna while on a media tour in Boston and New York in 2009. Shauna was short and blond and looked like Britney Spears. I was tall, six months postpartum, and nursing a horrible bobbed haircut and an infant in a carrier across my chest. Our crude humor and sarcasm made us fast friends, and we stayed up late each night laughing as she bounced baby Gigi on her knee while I pumped cross-legged on the floor of her room. Later that trip she would also use a plastic knife to cut me out of a pair of Spanx in the hotel ballroom’s bathroom after I couldn’t get them off in time and peed my pants. Only real friends do that.

  So, it was Shauna I called from my knees on the bathroom floor two years ago, the taste of blood still lining the inside of my mouth. She had always been the person I could text a fitting room photo to ask “Should I buy this?” or “Be honest, is this trashy sexy or trashy noooo?”

  But she was also the person I called when throwing up every meal didn’t take away all the horrible things people said about my looks and personality online or the way their words would seep from the screen into my head.

  “Come to Texas,” she insisted. “Let me take care of you.”

  She stood outside her white Jeep at the arrival gate of Dallas–Fort Worth airport with her arms open waiting to hug me. We spent the week under piles of duvets on her bed, watching funny movies and eating Mexican food. When we left the house it was to drive to Dallas to see indie films in empty theaters. There is healing in feeling wanted and liked, and Shauna makes me feel both. She welcomes me into her home, lets me feel all my feelings, and then wakes me up the next morning with a tray of breakfast burritos and Bloody Marys and tells me I look strong. I never fancied myself a Texas girl, what with my glaring liberalism and distaste for guns and secession, but Fort Worth has become my sanctuary, and Shauna my body sponsor.

  Take off your clothes

  There are many things in life you cannot do naked. Like cook bacon or renew your driver’s license. But when you are home, taking off your clothes and remembering what your skin looks like isn’t an unreasonable request. I remember getting out of the shower shortly after having our first son, catching my reflection in the mirror, and then screaming, convinced my mother was standing in the bathroom. It was me. I just had no idea what I looked like naked anymore.

  I understand that if you have kids in the house, this can get creepy really quick, and it’s hard to not want to cover your body around them before you’re stuck answering questions about pubic hair and giant areolas. But if you can stand it, realize that it’s important that your kids see your body the way it really is because it’s helping build the normality of the way they see their own. Destroying the image that women are genetically born with well-groomed landing strips and airbrushed skin makes it that much easier for us all to stop seeing ourselves as failures. All of us shave our toes and have that weird hair in our asses, and if you say you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lying.

  Walking around after a shower naked is still not something I feel comfortable doing, but I do it to help put the standard bar for myself and my kids back at normal. You’re welcome, future girlfriends of my sons with two different-sized boobs.

  When I get on an airplane, I always listen to the safety instructions the flight attendants recite before takeoff, mostly because I’m terrified to fly and I feel like if I listen carefully to the entire speech, whisper the Lord’s Prayer, and stay awake the entire flight, I’ll be able to keep the plane in the air. What I’m saying is, you are alive because of me, fellow passengers. My point is, once they point to all the exits and explain flotation devices, they get to this part about oxygen masks that drop from the ceiling should the cabin change pressure.

  If you are traveling with children, or are seated next to someone who needs assistance, place the mask on yourself first, then offer assistance.

  Even in a life-or-death situation, we are told to first secure ourselves in order to better help others. It makes sense. I mean, I can’t put a mask on a baby if I’m passed out, and I certainly can’t tell anyone to stop hating themselves while I binge and purge my feelings until my knuckles bleed. Remind yourself of all the ways you are beautiful, stop the negative talk, get a body sponsor, and do what it takes to get comfortable in your skin. All of these were essential to help my daughter love the body I created for her. I just had to get my own oxygen mask on first.

  13

  LAST CAKE EVER

  “NOTHING TASTES AS good as skinny feels.”

  Kate Moss has clearly never eaten at a Sonic.

  I haven’t talked a lot about dieting in this book, but I feel like maybe I should address it, because I’m sure you are wondering. A round girl like me . . . surely somewhere along the line it would have occurred to me that losing weight would be the sensible thing to do, so let’s just deal with the literal elephant in the room so you can get back to the rest of the book without wondering why I didn’t just strap on a lap band and get on with it.

  FAT GIRL HERE FOREVERMORE

  As my curvy sisters know, it’s predictably easy for society to
make assumptions about fat girls based on glossy magazines and romantic comedies. The poor Melissa McCarthys and Rebel Wilsons of the world are forced to forgo Oscar-inviting leads simply to dedicate a good portion of their screen time to laying the groundwork for the average life of a fat girl.

  1 Spend one to two hours a day loathing yourself.

  2 Explore binge eating.

  3 Cut out pictures of thin models from couture ads and decoupage them onto your skinny-girl hope chest.

  4 Fill hope chest with bikinis and midriffs.

  5 Google fad diets.

  6 Come up with zany plots to get a man to fall in love with you before actually seeing you in person, for example, online dating or the plot of a Dermot Mulroney movie.

  The reality is that we’re not all miserable unfulfilled losers, and we don’t all have to be skinny. You can stay up until 3 A.M. to watch self-proclaimed doctors and experts preach to close-up camera shots of sad, impressionable fat people about the “metaphorical” sense of fullness eating your feelings provides, but those experts are liars. The fullness is not metaphorical, it’s tangible. I can eat joy or sorrow until my belly button pops out like a turkey timer. I can stand naked in front of a mirror with my hands on my stomach and feel something where before there was nothing, and sometimes feeling full of something is exactly what you need, be it wisdom, shit, dicks, or eggrolls.

  I hit the gym circuit pretty hard my freshman year of college. My roommate and I would set our alarms for 5 A.M. and pull ourselves out of bed to go to the fitness center across the street from our dorm. I’d wander unmotivated from machine to machine, completing the required actions and suggested repetitions. I’d look at myself in the wall mirrors spanning the length of the gym, dripping with sweat, and instead of feeling strong or accomplished, I felt exhausted and fake. I was just going through the motions of fitness alongside people who consumed it like communion at church. I feel more at peace eating a bag of licorice in my car in the parking lot of Target, which only goes to prove that you don’t pick your moments of spiritual clarity and fortitude. You don’t go looking for Jesus’s face in a slice of toast, guys; it just happens to you.