Fat was in the family. Mom was fat, and grandma was fat. Dad was only a little fat, so he was considered the thin one. Brother was fat, but more like medium fat. Allison was all the way fat, though that begs the question, all the way to where? All the way to fat, since there seemed to be a continuum.
Luckily, Allison’s fat family accepted Allison as fat. She felt supported. Get over it people who think that the family support was why she was fat to begin with! She wasn’t encouraged to be fat, she was accepted the way she was. In fact, she always felt bad for people she met who were the only fat one in the family and ostracized for what must have been a personal flaw—since no one else had that glitch. Having a fat family meant that when she would go to the doctor for a cough, and the doctor would say: “It’s because you’re fat,” she had a fat family to remind the doctor that coughing is not generally a symptom of fat. And you know, growing up fat is not all it’s cracked up to be, so it’s nice to have a fat family for backup when the teasing and mocking and general torture begin.
It’s not that her family never mentioned her weight, but no one forced her into some family united slimming regime, or made her feel alienated, like many lone fatties in a family. She clearly has good memories about her childhood, because although she acknowledges there was some “concern” around her weight, she was never made to feel unloved or unaccepted.
This was not the kind of “bad” fat family you see paraded all over Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil and whoever else parades fat families— who are presumably fat because they are gluttonous, ignorant, codependent, and egging each other on with, well, eggs, smothered in bacon and sausage and pancakes, topped with a triple Whopper with cheese and double thick milkshake, with whip. They were “good” fat people. They dieted. This family didn’t like being fat. That they refrained from torturing and shaming their daughter didn’t mean they were a bad fat family, as hard as that may be for some to believe.
As a matter of fact, they were such good fat people that Mother engaged in a seemingly endless exercise of yo-yo dieting, losing weight, and then gaining more back. Aunt was such a good fat person she had gastric bypass surgery. To this day, some 30 years later, she can’t eat any normal food. Cousin was an even better fat person and took Phen-fen, until she died from associated heart problems. It successfully ended her fat. Well done!
So Allison has indeed seen a lot of good fat people taking extraordinary steps to make themselves thinner. Distorted as this perception may seem to some, to her, dieting seemed like a whole lot of torment for things that didn’t pay off, made your life worse, or even killed you. Allison became jaded about diets. Allison, apparently, is not a good fat person.
But luckily for Allison, she has a free pass: she’s a lesbian. Lesbians are among the few who are allowed to be fat. Lesbians don’t have to “please society,” perhaps because many don’t consider them a part of society. Lucky her.
But again, don’t be misled. Though Allison may have gotten a free pass eventually, it was not given to her until fairly late in life. She didn’t acknowledge being a lesbian to herself, much less act on it, until a fairly ripe old age. Instead, growing up, becoming a teenager, being a female, and being overweight, she was deathly afraid of showing any kind of sexual feelings towards anyone at all. She didn’t want to be the subject of the mocking. “Gross, the fat girl likes you.” So she learned to be, essentially, asexual. She didn’t dare let any feelings for other people out.
Despite the symmetry of her clan and herself, Allison always felt different. She’s not sure though if it was because she was fat or because she was a lesbian. Either way, she didn’t feel like she fit in. She was always conscious of the way she would act, dress, and appear. She thought her hands were overly big and very mannish, and took to holding them in the most delicate and feminine way possible, as if displaying her hands would reveal her secrets. As a child, she would only wear clothing made for girly girls—dresses and skirts—never T-shirts and denim. She felt the need to overemphasize her female characteristics just to be viewed as average. Whether a consequence of her size or repressed sexuality, she experienced a profound sense of difference, and it was a difference she longed to conceal. She spent much of her young life attempting to hide just so she would blend in.
Until adulthood, she had no concrete notion of being a lesbian, or even having an attraction to other females. She did always have one very best girlfriend to whom she was deeply attached. But that was no sign, to her or any of those around her, that she had a latent homosexual preference. She had no awareness from childhood, as some people speak about—she did not “ just know.” Even as a teenager, as others were courting and experimenting, she was disconnected. Asexual, she thought, if she thought about it at all. Not until college and nearly 22 years old did she acknowledge to herself the reality—she was not asexual, she was homosexual. This was not an easy realization, perhaps for surprising reasons. The discomfort was less about being gay than about being sexual at all. Her lack of sexuality meant no rejection. And despite the acceptance she felt from her family about her size, she was deeply influenced by the outside world. The outside world told her fat meant certain sexual rejection—which was too much to bear.
Up until that insight, Allison had never made any attempt to date boys, or for that matter, girls. And no one made any attempts with her. She not only never dated, she avoided any show of romantic emotion at all. It terrified her. After acknowledging her sexual orientation to herself at nearly 22, it would be years until she dated anyone. She had a sexual identity in theory, but continued to live a life of repression, and certainly she was in the closet to the world. When she finally came out to herself, it was during a time when she was engaging in much self-examination and forcing herself to be uncomfortably honest. There was no specific catalyst, it just sort of happened. It was a slow self-discovery at first, and then all of a sudden she couldn’t turn back, or deny who she was. That didn’t mean she was ready to act on it, though.
So why all this repression? Allison believes she had it much easier as a fat girl than many people do. Her family didn’t shame her. Despite dieting themselves, they didn’t even push her to diet. Acknowledging she was a lesbian, however, was difficult; there was a great deal of confusion and quite a bit of crying, but there was no one in her life spewing anti-gay rhetoric and moral outrage. As best as Allison can figure, she had issues with feeling accepted, and between being fat and gay, the potential for rejection just felt exponentially higher—too high. She always knew she was fat, but she didn’t always know she was gay. Well, on some level maybe, but not consciously. It took time to get used to the idea.
It took her parents time to get used to it as well. They were not as supportive of her sexual orientation as they were of her weight. They understood fat. Gay, not so much. They have grudgingly gotten used to it.
Allison’s feelings about her size are nuanced. While she says she was always comfortable with herself, she didn’t feel like the rest of the world was comfortable with her. To some extent “becoming” a lesbian was freeing as a fat woman. She was relieved that she didn’t have to be a certain size to please a man. In her estimation, men expect women to look a particular way—thin—and she was always of the mind that she would never lose weight to please someone else. Perhaps this was a preemptive psychological strike from her non-dating youth, though acknowledging her lesbianism didn’t make her any more comfortable with the idea of dates. It is not altogether unusual for fat women to be late romantic bloomers; making oneself vulnerable in that way while feeling unvalued by society takes a certain amount of in-your-face courage.
Allison, it appears, had a societal double whammy—fat and gay —or maybe a triple whammy—fat, gay, and a woman. Truthfully, though, Allison did not feel that way. She says she didn’t feel any more burdened than anyone else. “We all have crosses to carry.” To her, weight was her cross, and it was her job to carry it. If anything, she feels that as a fat woman, she is lucky to also be a lesbian; pleasing male society is a cross that is too heavy for her. “Many of my fat friends have not found men, and if they have, it has been fleeting. It also seems they have to act pretty whorish in the process. So if anything, I’ve felt lucky that I didn’t have to deal with that part of society.”
Being fat in the lesbian world is more accepted. “In many ways lesbian culture is more about comfort and not having to do things to please others. It’s more accepting of being who you are, more relaxed,” although, she recognizes that lesbian society is changing. “There are a lot more lesbian women who are ‘thin and beautiful’ now. The meat market mentality has made its way to us from straight culture. It makes me happy that I am not single; I would dread it out there.”
Allison is going on 42 years old. Over the last 20 years, things have changed. There are a lot more fat people, for one. That makes some things in the lesbian world easier, like buying clothes. The clothing market follows the trends of the straight culture, and as far as availability and choices go, that’s good for lesbians. When Allison was a teenager she had to buy maternity wear. Though that’s not about lesbians per se, it does seem to impact lesbian tastes. Not too many years ago the lesbian stereotype was a women wearing men’s clothing—the “look” was to look like you didn’t care. Now, Allison says, lesbians are just as concerned about their appearance as straight women. “The culture has gotten more hypersensitive about appearance. When I go to a lesbian bar these days it’s full of Barbie girls.”
Paradoxically, Allison believes this is a direct result of the new widespread acceptance of gay people. More people are coming out and at younger ages. That, combined with a pervasive drive to be “healthy” and the hysteria over obesity, makes gay women more inclined to mimic the mainstream ideals of womanly beauty.
The butch look—being heavy and masculine—has always been a concrete way to be out of the mainstream. It’s also a way to identify a member of the clan. A uniform, if you will. To be “here” and “queer,” people had to recognize it to “get used to it.” So being butch served a dual purpose—it publically identified a woman as a lesbian, and said screw-you society, or, get used to it. Allison surmises that as homosexuality is more pervasively accepted, there is less of a need to make a statement about it. People are accustomed to it. A lot more accustomed to it than they used to be, anyhow. With less of a need to fight, people fight less. Without the pressure to be butch to exemplify being out, and simultaneously give society the middle finger, well, now, girls can be girls. It’s a theory. It’s also a double-edged sword, isn’t it? Acceptance is good, but conforming to straight ideals? Maybe not so good.
It sounds a bit counterintuitive as well. If people are ostracized and discriminated against, wouldn’t they want to assimilate and conform? Not if they are making a point. Being out of the closet is an explicit statement of one’s sexuality. If you don’t want people to know, you don’t out yourself. For a long time, when it was assumed only the most deviant were homosexual, and people didn’t realize that anyone might be gay, if you weren’t standing out, you were hiding, whether you meant to be or not. Those who didn’t want to hide were, among other things, butch.
Another cultural theory to ponder is that tastes have changed due to pressure in the mainstream media; this has affected lesbian women just as it has affected heterosexual women. The pressure to be “pretty,” feminine, and thin is so intense that it affects all women, regardless of sexual orientation. Women have always had pressure to be pretty. They haven’t always had a dozen gadgets to view pretty 24 hours a day.
With more acceptance of homosexuality, there are also more lesbians on television and in the movies. They are almost exclusively of the “lipstick” variety, and even those who might not be lipstick in their personal lives, say Ellen DeGeneres or Rosie O’Donnell, are done up fairly girly for the audience. After the first month of Ellen’s talk show, fans demanded she get a makeover. She did.1 Though Ellen has refused to wear dresses, even for fashion magazine shoots, she is a spokesperson for Cover Girl cosmetics. Young women want to look like their favorite Hollywood stars, so if Ellen and Rosie wear lipstick, lipstick it is. Although the people at Grey’s Anatomy publically said the issue was chemistry between the actresses, rumor had it that Dr. Callie Torres’ first lesbian lover, Dr. Erica Hahn, cardiac surgeon, was too butch for primetime, and that is why she was replaced with the uberfemme baby doctor, Arizona.2 Impressionable girls, who now have role models in popular culture, are attracted to what they see, and what they see are lesbians who look conventionally straight.
Allison, however, is attracted to women who have a more butch look. She is not particularly feminine in style herself, though she prefers women slightly less feminine than she is. But Allison is 42 years old. Her tastes were being shaped by the culture 20 years ago. A 42-year-old woman is probably not going to dramatically change her preference because the characters on Grey’s Anatomy are frilly.
Also, Allison is fat. That changes things. The ideal of female beauty is thin. Can one be a fat lipstick lesbian? Sure. But it’s more difficult to be accepted as a flitty, flirty, feminine, female, when fat, no matter what your sexual orientation. Our culture has been more comfortable with fat lesbians in Dockers and work boots. We like our fat dykes butch, don’t we? We have in the past. Stereotypes are very convenient. But fashion is a pretty cynical way to define identity.
Allison says that she is sad to see the strong-woman look fading from lesbian culture. This look is not just about fashion. In fact it’s really not much about fashion at all—it’s about politics. Allison notes that images of lesbians in the 1950s, to the extent there were any, showed one really masculine and one really feminine woman—you know, like a man and a woman. Two butch women together said something—and the statement was strong. On one hand, women have found they aren’t tethered to these roles any more, which is good because not everyone fits into them neatly. On the other hand, there are aspects of the strong lesbian woman that demonstrate independence and capability, and that is something that is sad to lose.
If being gay is widely accepted, and sexuality is much less of an issue, then the overriding pressure is going to be to conform to the cultural norm—thin and done-up. Having to conform to an image dictated by the straight world is hardly ideal, but it seems to be some kind of tradeoff for acceptance. Allison misses the unity of being able to identify her clan at a glance, but she appreciates there are at least some role models for gay women in the mainstream. Still, as a fairly butch, fat lesbian, she is glad not to be single. She doesn’t think she could pull off girly. Not anymore.
The mainstreaming of lesbian culture has changed the attitudes inside the lesbian world as well. Allison believes there is more prejudice now among lesbians—in particular, fat prejudice. A lesbian woman now has to look “as good” as a straight woman. Allison feels gratefully insulated from that. She is intimidated, to say the least, at the idea of being single and having to deal with that new meat-market mentality. In the dating scene there is a lot of pressure, and it only seems to increase with time.
Allison has been with her partner as long as she has been partnering. They have just hit their 16th anniversary, which is a lot of years for any partnership, gay or straight. Allison was 26 when they met, and a virgin. That was a lot of pressure in itself. It was difficult being that old and never really having had a sexual experience. And to be clear, the reason was not that she was a lesbian, or in the closest, but that she was fat, and afraid because she was fat. She came out, at least to herself, six years before she finally found someone with whom she was comfortable, a woman in a very similar situation. Allison was her partner’s first as well. They were both virgins and both fat. Being fat was a requirement for Allison’s first partner. They had to have that in common for it even to be a possibility. “I never would have even been able to think of approaching someone who was ‘normal’ size.” Their mutual insecurity and self-consciousness helped to draw them together. That it’s lasted so long is a testament to the strength they have built since then.
As life has many twists and turns, Allison’s partner has recently been diagnosed with diabetes, and along the way lost a lot of weight she didn’t realize she was losing. She then began a lowcarb diet to control the diabetes—and lost more weight. It is now at the point where they are digging out old clothes that were put aside for Goodwill. In all of 16 years Allison has never seen her partner wear these clothes—because they didn’t fit. Allison looks at recent pictures of the two of them and finds it disconcerting that all of a sudden she is so much larger than her partner. This was not planned or expected. Allison had not intended to be with a much thinner woman; frankly, that’s not part of the deal. Had her partner been this size in the beginning, they never would have dated—Allison would have been far too uncomfortable about the size difference. Though intellectually she knows better, this incredible shrinking woman does make her uneasy. “No matter how skinny she gets, she is still going to love me. But it’s weird.” Though her partner is still overweight, she is losing, and Allison is not. To say it worries Allison is an overstatement, but it’s on her mind.
This new turn of events has led Allison to consider doing something she has never considered before: dieting. While she feels good about herself as a “strong fat woman,” she now thinks maybe she would feel better thinner. A contradiction certainly: “I like myself just the way I am, but would like myself even more if I were small?” That is probably not an altogether uncommon perception. In fact, it may be very common. And it presents a real problem. Aside from the emotional and self-image conflict, losing weight and keeping that weight off is very difficult. If it weren’t, there would be a lot fewer fat people. And Allison knows full well the odds of maintaining weight loss and the associated health risks with yo-yo dieting, not to mention the psychological implications of “failure” in the long term. This goes for her partner as well— just because she had a health scare and lost weight, it doesn’t mean it will stick. It might. But statistically, that’s far from the norm.
An adamant non-dieter, for the first time Allison is considering “seriously committing to losing weight.” And the peanut gallery speaks! Bravo. Good for her. You go, girl! But what about the 95 percent? That would be all the people who lose weight, and gain it back, plus more. Where are the cheerleaders then?
Allison is a “fat acceptance” or “size acceptance” advocate. She believes in accepting yourself at the size you are. She believes that fat is not a moral issue. She believes that fat and health are not necessarily correlated and that it is possible to be fat and healthy, yet it is nearly impossible to be healthy when you are weight cycling (lose, gain, repeat). She believes this because there is good research, and because she has watched the evidence in her fat family.
Fat (or size) acceptance is often greatly misunderstood. People who adopt this ideology do not do so because they love being fat. Fat acceptance advocates are not “pro-fat” in the sense that they want people to be fat. From a size acceptance perspective, fat is not good, but it is also not bad. It is a fact of life for a large number of large people. Many miss the critical genesis: most in the fat acceptance movement have spent the majority of their lives with conventional attitudes toward weight, and only came to fat acceptance when they realized conventional ideas and practices were doing more physical and emotional harm than good. It is often misconstrued that fat acceptance advocates promote the stereotypes of fat people—laziness and gluttony—or worse, “giving up.” That is simply not the case.
We all want to be healthy, but also happy in our own skin. Everyone is concerned with their diet and fitness, i.e. their health. Eating and moving in such a way as to maintain or regain health is a priority for nearly every person, and we all have periods of more and less success. Weight and fat are really beside the point. Every body is different. The assumption that fat people are unhealthy only serves to perpetuate prejudice and leads to poor health choices that may overlook the actual cause of health problems.
Yes, some fat people are unhealthy, as are some thin people. Health is complicated; weight may or may not be a factor in good health. For instance, Allison’s partner has diabetes. Allison does not. Why does Allison’s partner have diabetes? We don’t know exactly. Weight may be an issue, but probably not the only one. It is worth noting that many people who have weight-loss surgery do see a decrease in diabetes, but it is thought to be a result of the stomach alterations, not the weight loss itself, and many weight loss surgery patients ultimately have life-threatening low blood sugar.3 That has got to say something about fat, no?
Allison is unique in a way because she came to fat acceptance without a lifetime of dieting. Her family did that for her. It might be that she is actually more vulnerable than many fat people her age, since she has not lived a weight-yo-yo-life with all the burdens that come with it. She understands it, but has not personally experienced it. So she is conflicted, and understandably so.
Let’s not overdramatize. Overall Allison is basically comfortable with her partner becoming the “thin one,” but it’s a new dynamic and she spends time thinking about it. The two of them were always around the same size and now it’s different. Her partner hasn’t given Allison any reason for concern. They are the same people. They have been together 16 years. They are otherwise in a good relationship. All of a sudden one person has a smaller body, and there is all this thinking going on. Is her partner going to take her new hot bod and find herself a young little chickie? No, probably not. But, it happens. After all, one of the things that drew them to each other is they each needed another big woman in order to feel attractive. Allison was unable to even talk to a thin woman in a romantic context. She was certain no one like that would be interested in her. “They” say people usually end up with partners who “rate” around the same on the hotness scale (you know, on a scale from 1 to 10). What if they have both been sixes and Allison’s partner becomes an eight? Probably nothing. But “trading up” has been known to happen before.
Allison and her partner used to live in what she considers a gay-friendly area, but had to move for her job. They now live in a small town and it’s not as comfortable, though she is not certain whether it’s the gay or fat that causes the second glances. She thinks that when people see them together, they are more affected by the fat than the gay. “The fat thing hits you first.” But of course, one can pass as a straight person. It’s not so easy to pass as thin. She imagines that when she and her partner walk down the street, people see them as fat and ugly. Fat, ugly, and then dykey. The dykey part comes third. “Although society has a problem with homosexuality, at least that is changing somewhat. There is still a lot of fat bias.” Fat bias, one might argue, is getting worse.
Allison is a schoolteacher—it’s not just a job, it’s a career with tenure, in which she had excellent performance reviews and no complaints. When a new principal and department supervisor came on board, everything changed. Neither of them knew Allison, but for some reason they didn’t like her. To this day Allison doesn’t know if it was because she is fat or a lesbian. Fat prejudice or gay prejudice? Although she may have been persecuted for being a lesbian, in her mind, fat was the larger issue.
In the endless supervisory criticisms, one telling complaint was regarding not erasing the blackboard. As sins go, that can’t be too high on the outrage meter. Presumably being a lesbian does not itself hinder one’s ability to erase a blackboard. But a fat person—lazy as fat people are—might have some trouble. Was it fat or gay? She’ll never know. She did not fight it. She was too afraid. If she fought and lost, her teaching career would be over, and besides, the whole experience was not terribly conducive to good mental health.
An additional sad outcome of the job loss is that Allison and her partner have canceled wedding plans. They would like to exercise this hard-fought right, but it is now more prudent financially to stay single. Maybe someday.
As a couple, they are interestingly old-fashioned. They were both virgins, met, and partnered for life. Both women come from families in which the parents have long-term stable marriages (heterosexual). There is a sense of “family values.” Not the way some politicians define it, obviously.
Allison has always been a proud fat person; she has always been a proud fat lesbian as well. She collects information and writing on fat politics. She also collects books with pictures of fat women. Pride is important to her. She is not in the closet on any of these issues. However, sharing her story here, she did not tell her partner. She is not hiding it exactly, but she’s uneasy. Normally they tell each other everything—no secrets and no shame.
She doesn’t exactly articulate what concerns her, but as the story unfolds it seems likely it’s acknowledging her thoughts about the woman her partner is becoming—the thin woman. There is nothing between them to give her pause. Any fears of abandonment are in her mind only. But the insecurities of the fat run deep. Twenty-six years afraid to make a connection, merely because of girth, is not forgotten. Not ever. No matter how much that person is loved, respected, appreciated, adored, and found attractive. Why? Because we are told by the world fat is bad, and by extension, fat people are bad.
Of course that is grossly untrue. So why does it affect us so much? Because maybe it’s true ….
No, it’s not! But ….
1 Warn, Sarah. “Making over Ellen: Femming up the Sortabutch.” After Ellen. November 7, 2003. http://www.afterellen.com/making-over-ellen-femming-up-the-sorta-butch/11/2003/.
2 Ausiello, Michael. “Exclusive: ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ Discharges Dr. Hahn.” Entertainment Weekly. November 3, 2008. http://insidetv.ew.com/2008/11/03/brooke-smith-le/.
3 Mayo Clinic Staff. “Type 2 Diabetes: Treatments and Drugs.” Mayo Clinic. July 24, 2014. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/basics/treatment/con-20031902.