And when I did, I spent most of the lessons speaking to Andrea. I spoke about the various diets I was on, how I was going to lose the weight. She saw me perform comedy and heard me tell self-deprecating jokes about my fat body on stage. But Andrea also saw something else in me. She called me a Baby Fat – a potential future self-loving fatty. At first, it felt like a set-up.
‘You’re allowed to like your body,’ she would say. I would blink a few times. It made less sense than Russian. The words would get stuck in my brain on a loop throughout the week. It had never been an option; it had never been presented as an option.
‘If you trace it back,’ Andrea would tell me, ‘every self-hating thought, every fat-hating feeling – it stems from somewhere. An advert, a character on a TV show, a fashion magazine, a weight-loss product. It’s not something you read in The Great Book Full of Facts. It always stems from an individual or a system. And often from an individual with a product to sell. You can see it happen – the worse you feel about yourself, the more money you throw at the problem. The more people doing this, the richer these companies will get. So they keep spreading the idea that you are not allowed to be fat, that fat is the worst thing you can be – so that you will throw even more money at them.’
I had always considered my negative view of fatness as a truth, and suddenly it became subjective. In my head, it had been simple: the Earth is round. The sun is hot. Fat is bad. ✓
Now my world view was shaken. Every single notion that had ever been flung at me – telling me that my fatness made me unattractive, lazy and unworthy – had come from someone’s subjective opinion. Or – from a company with a product to sell. What Andrea explained to me was essentially capitalism. I felt like I had understood what capitalism was – in theory – but never had it applied this strongly to my very own life. Fat does not have to be a negative.
Wow.
Andrea introduced me to the possibility of loving fat. With the gentle sound of our Russian Studies professor in the background, I took in these ideas that seemed much more valuable to me than anything to do with Tolstoy. I was immediately both puzzled and intrigued.
Andrea would be writing the Russian alphabet in her notebook and I would lean in and whisper in her ear, ‘So basically, we have all just been taught to hate our bodies when really … We don’t have to?’
She would nod and continue writing. I would write down an oddly shaped B which I think was meant to be pronounced as an S. I would then lean in again and whisper, ‘So it’s all lies?’
Andrea would whisper, ‘Yes.’
I would draw a little 8 on my paper, drawing circles in the same place repeatedly till the paper evaporated and the pen started drawing 8s on the underlying piece of paper. I leaned in, ‘So I can just … be fat?’
Andrea smiled, ‘Yes.’
I would see Andrea exist, unapologetically, and she would show me fat people that did the same. I remember the first photo I saw of a fat woman being sexy. She was wearing nothing but knickers and a big, oversized, dark-red knitted jumper which was draped over one shoulder and both of her hands and part of her left thigh. She was leaning up against a high stool, her hair brown and thick, her lips slightly parted in a sexy and sultry look. And she was fat. Fat and sexy. That was just the first of many.
The internet turned out to be full of people like her. Fat people photographed from all different angles, no regard given to double chins or floppy upper arms, fat people in crop tops, fat people laughing, fat people eating. Fat people actually loving themselves.
The change wasn’t gradual. It happened overnight. I woke up and looked in the mirror and what I saw was different. On my bike ride to uni, everything was different. The billboards attempting to sell diet plans through before-and-after photos were suddenly not preaching facts, they were preaching a harmful body image. They were using my body to sell a product.
She showed me this door to a whole community where being different – or queerfn8 – was not frowned upon, but celebrated: a door which had always been concealed from me. And through which, a whole new world existed, where the rules are not rules, merely guidelines.
I loved the movie The Truman Show when I was growing up. If you are younger than me, this may be complete news to you, so I will quickly explain. Truman, played by Jim Carrey, has a normal life – so he thinks. He gets up, kisses his wife on the cheek, goes to work, gets the newspaper, goes back home, falls asleep. What he doesn’t know is that when he was born, he became part of a reality TV show. He was placed in a fake world, an enormous bubble, and now everything in his life is filmed twenty-four hours a day and broadcast to the real world. Everyone in his life, including his wife, is an actor. He is given a fear of water, meaning that he can never leave his town – not cross the bridge, not get on a boat. He is stuck in this fake world, without knowing that millions of people watch his every move.
When Truman realises what is going on, he is forced to challenge his fears and get in a boat to try and get away. He doesn’t truly believe that this can be real; that his entire world, his entire life is a lie. Until his boat bumps into a wall. A blue piece of wood painted as the sky. There is a beautiful moment where Truman touches the wall. And realises that it’s true. That everything was fake. The voice of God – the producer – roars through the speakers, at Truman, that he should turn around and go back to his life. For at least he knows what that is. That he can stay happy if he gives in to the dream. If he just accepts this. And Truman is standing in front of a door, which was hidden before – it is painted blue like the fake sky – and he has a choice. He can turn around, get back in the boat, go back to his life which is a lie. Or he can walk out the door, not knowing anything about the outside world. He turns to the camera and smiles and walks through the door.
That is how it felt meeting Andrea. The same stages of denial: surely, this can’t all be fake?
If this is all true, then I have lived a lie. Then every single self-loathing thought I have ever had, every opportunity missed, every failed relationship or friendship, every harsh word said to myself, every bruise, every cut, every moment I have either starved myself or felt numb, it will all have been … due to either an individual, an industry or a system telling me to do it. If this is all true, then that means that I have said the meanest and most cruel things to myself, to my body, for no reason. It means that my body was never the enemy, my fat was never the enemy. Perhaps I was deserving of love all along. Perhaps I was worthy all along.
If it’s all true – that the beauty industry, the diet industry, the weight-loss industry and the fashion industry, all of them have created this ‘perfect body image’ and a world in which that is ‘just the way it is’ – then it is not an objective truth. It is fake. A world in which everyone is an actor and the sky is made of wood. In which case, there must be a door.
You will have to cross an ocean, petrified of water. You will have to give up this belief you had that what you see in the media is true and reflects reality. Then you have to row. And there is a storm and you feel like you might, at any second, drown. But you don’t. You reach the blue wooden wall, you touch it and feel the splinters in your fingertips. Then you see the door. And you can choose to walk out.
The reason why we empathise with Truman’s difficult choice is that in his fake world, at least, he was the star. He had a decent life. It was safe. So if he had got back into his boat and sailed back to his fake life, we would partly have understood his choice.
The fake world in which fat people live is not nice. It is not safe and we are not the stars. Instead we believe that we are not worthy, that we are not attractive, that we are lesser humans. That that is just how it is. The world is not even safe for thinner people, because it always