Fat & 15 by Adeline Spallina-Jones
Sometimes I wonder how the people in my life would describe me. Confident, proud, unapologetic, unbothered, empowered, smart, social, kind and honest. And sometimes I wonder how much of that is truly who I am, and how much of that I have adapted to shield myself from the war against anti-fatness I've experienced my whole life. I've been fat since puberty, and I learned very quickly that society often reacts to plus sized women with either anger or pity. They hate you, or they think they’re better than you.
I slowly learned to adapt a persona of unbothered over-confidence to ward off the pity and to silence the anger.
It was there when I spit on a boy in gym class because he called my friend fat. It was there when my group of friends in middle school laughed because I couldn’t run the mile, and I challenged them to a race. It was there when a boy in high school called me a fat ugly Jew girl, and I got him suspended. It's there when I stand on stage with my guitar, it’s there when I dance.
Although I have mastered the image I portray, all the times that I have encountered anti-fatness in my life - in gym class and the doctor's office and with friends and with family and with strangers - have left a sour imprint on my mind, and have piled into an internalized anti-fatness like a film on my soul. That film leaks into every part of me like a disease, lurking deep down. Underneath my confident act is a dark veil of anger at my body.
It's there when I won’t wear a tank top. It's there when I get excited when I lose a few pounds. It's there when I know I'm a plus sized girl but can only ever picture myself as a skinny woman.
As I learn and grow, I am terrified that my accomplishments will be overshadowed by the fact that I am “the fat girl”. I am terrified that my accomplishments will be secondary to the fact that I will not accomplish weight loss. Yet, I cannot run from myself.
I am a fat girl. But I am also a talented musician, and a loving sister and an honors student and a teen activist and a lover and a dreamer and an artist. And me and every inch of me and the film on my soul can learn to be friends; we can dance and laugh and love together, we have no choice. I am fat and 15. I am fat and 17. I am fat and 25. I am fat and 40. I am fat and 93. And I am proud.
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