There is a price to be paid for visibility and there is even more of a price to be paid when you are hypervisible. I am opinionated, and as a cultural critic I share my opinions regularly. I am confident in my opinions and believe I have a right to share my point of view without apology. This confidence tends to upset people who disagree with me. Rarely are my actual ideas engaged. Instead, my weight is discussed. “You are fat,” they say. Or, because, for example, I share that I love tiny baby elephants in my Twitter bio, they make an elephant joke where I, of course, am the elephant.
While on a publicity tour in Sweden, I mentioned on Twitter that the Swedes had their own version of The Biggest Loser. A random stranger suggested I was the American export for the show. The harassment is a constant, whether I am talking about something serious or trivial. I am never allowed to forget the realities of my body, how my body offends the sensibilities of others, how my body dares to take up too much space, and how I dare to be confident, how I dare to use my voice, how I dare to believe in the value of my voice both in spite of and because of my body.
The more successful I get, the more I am reminded that in the minds of a great many people I will never be anything more than my body. No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.