Perfect Fits without Safety Pins
My grandma was never one to bite her tongue, but I somehow didn’t see this comment coming. We had just landed in her beautiful hometown of Cebu, and the rest of family was too preoccupied with excitement to think of anything other than sand and sunshine. Out of nowhere, from the next aisle of the disembarking plane, Grandma calls me. She laughs before she lets out a stern whisper. “Magpapayat ka na.”
I smile and look away, knowing better than to indulge her. She means well, I tell myself. I shrug off any initial sentiments of annoyance. I’ve been here before and I’ve learned how to cope, even if deep down, I was frustrated. What sparked that thought in her so randomly? Was she embarrassed to have a fat granddaughter at the beach? Did she see me in contrast to my size 2, long legged cousins and think I didn’t quite fit in with them? Did she really mean well?
At this point, remarks about my weight no longer fazed me. When you’ve been fat all your life, you eventually grow emotional armor that ricochets the variety of nasty comments and unfair experiences thrown your way. The very ability to call yourself fat, to me, is this unspoken rite of passage indicating you’ve grown secure in your own skin, no longer dancing around words like “curvy” or “plus-sized”. But sometimes, when you least expect it, it just gets to you. You remember why it took you some time to feel secure. And you remember that you’re different.
The first time I realized that I was different was when I was about seven. I’d been singing and prancing around the house so much that my mom deemed it best for me to take my playful energy to the big screen. While my boldness was impressive, my lack of Filipino skills wasn’t. As a compromise, I was cast as a mere cameo in the film Inang Yaya as the classmate of the two main characters.
There were about six other girls on set, four of them playing the same role as me. We all became fast friends and bonded so easily about things like our favorite Barbies and how we preferred being on set versus staying all day in school. It was pure laughing and chatter until we had to get in our costumes, the same pink plaid school uniform, which only came in one size.
The rest of the girls quickly dressed up, perfectly fitting into the little skirts and blouses. When it was time for the production manager to dress me, she looked at me with panic. “This is the only size we have.” I was clueless, not understanding that there was a problem. My mom interjected, saying, “Maybe you can try?”
They stuffed me into the small skirt which could hardly rise up my hips, more so shut by the button. I could not fit in it. The only solution was for them to force me into the skirt, have me suck in my tummy and close as much as they could with a whole bunch of safety pins. With an annoyed face, the director told me that I was to never show my back full of safety pins to the camera. Meanwhile, the rest of the girls were just there, sitting pretty and ready for their scenes. Nobody else had the problem of not showing their backs to the camera. I felt a tinge of sadness, like I was now excluded from them. I was different. Because I was bigger.
The feeling of exclusion would become louder in the next few years. In middle school, I was friends with some of the most beautiful and skinny girls in my class. While they never pointed out my weight or discriminated me for it, just being around them forced me to acknowledge how differently I looked. It was the small, unintentional things, really. I’d panic before every swimming date, worried about exposing both the fat all over my body and the hyperpigmentation it left on my underarms and neck. I’d feel helpless every time they’d comment on another girl’s weight gain, insecure about how that reflected on me, weight gain personified. I would giggle at every friend’s new love interest from the boys school next door, forcing myself to feel excited for them even though I was quietly bitter that I could never snag a love interest of my own. My weight had built a gap between me and my friends. The easy way for me to bridge this gap was to look for reasons I belonged, and to own those with pride. Like the rest of my friends, I was smart and consistently in the honor roll. I devoted my time to some cool extra-curriculars, like acting in musical theater and serving in the Student Council. I wanted to believe these things were enough. These mattered more than being skinny, right? But a tiny part of me felt that there was still more to prove.
My resolve was to commit myself to blossoming with overflowing confidence. I was no longer afraid to wear revealing clothes nor speak my mind every time they’d chastise another girl’s weight gain. If I was going to be different, I thought, I wanted to be a good, redeeming kind of different. I channeled this into being absolutely unapologetic in everything I did, which translated to me being the firecracker, no-nonsense girl in our barkada and eventually in my school.
I carried this with me all throughout high school, understanding that my weight was only going to be a detriment if I allowed it. My passionate personality, I’d rationalize, was a way to compensate for any insecurities. But it would never feel fully enough. After all, society hadn’t built confidence to be the end goal of the feelings of exclusion: weight loss was. The skinny norm existed to be strictly adhered to. And as much as I strove to reject this notion, I learned other people couldn’t.
Social media was supposed to be fun. I created an ask.fm account because I’d considered myself in a place of considerable influence, as a student leader and a compelling voice in my high school. I figured I had a story to tell. Not to mention, I was curious by the idea of an anonymous question and answer website. I didn’t foresee the possibility of getting attacked in such a disparaging way.
“YOU FAT FUCKING WHALE. JUST GO KILL YOURSELF INSTEAD OF TAKING UP SO MUCH FUCKING SPACE ON THIS PLANET.”
I was stunned. Appalled. Tears welled up. I read over the bold, capitalized letters that confronted my fatness in a way that made me painfully question the security I’d built towards it. Before that, insults regarding my weight no longer really got under my skin. The conviction in myself I’d projected prevented any naysayers from putting me down to begin with, and I’d worked so hard to silence the tiny voices constantly making me feel like I had more to prove. But that was the first time I’d ever been told to kill myself. Forget about being called a fat fucking whale. Someone out there, likely from my school, disliked me so much that for whatever reason, she thought it would be best if I ended my life. I couldn’t understand it. Was my weight so offensive to her that she deemed it best for me to die? Or was there some other underlying reason for that message, that my weight was just a convenient way to attack me?
The tiny voice in my head that reminded me to prove myself to be more surfaced louder than it ever has. I had never wanted so badly to dissociate with the fat label. If someone had something against me, I needed out of the convenient insult towards my weight. In that very moment, my carefree, confident demeanor could no longer repel the insults, and my thick skin I’d grown started to let up. I had to do something about it.
Motivated by the desire to have an “in your face” moment with that anon and the need to fit in my graduation ball dress in the upcoming school year, I took to a mission. Every day for three months, I spent an hour and a half toiling on a treadmill and a yoga mat, determined to rid myself of the fat that seemed so inherent to who I was. I was pre-packing my meals and eating fancy, healthy things like quinoa and whole grain toast and avocado. The grind, albeit difficult, turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable. By the start of my senior year, I had dropped forty-five pounds. At last, I had hit “normal” weight, and felt closer than ever to the end goal society had meant for girls who grew up fat.
With that weight loss came many new experiences that I’d learned I was missing out on prior. I had my first kiss, sparking in me the sentiment that I was desirable. I was finally able to walk into a store and try on anything I liked, without the worry of whether I was going to fit in it or not. And just as I had secretly wanted, I won best dressed in my graduation ball.
I was beautiful. Confidence used to be something I intentionally planted into myself to compensate for my difference. This time, it fell into my lap naturally.
In many ways, I knew I was doing myself a huge favor. I was healthier, arguably happier. But I couldn’t shake off the idea that I had betrayed my younger self and swapped my security for the new experiences this choice afforded. This pointed to a difficult truth altogether: the world was just kinder and more exciting to people at normal weight.
The world, and well, my country really. The ideal Filipina has always been petite and very skinny, with the way they described Maria Clara in the books to the way that the only bigger woman on TV is the newscaster Jessica Soho. It’s in how my third grade teacher asked me to play Jessica Soho in a skit as my classmates laughed, as if the resemblance was so damn spot on. It’s in how most of my clothes growing up were pasalubongs from the United States, as I could not fit in any of the clothes in the stores back home. It’s in how my titos and titas would ignore me as a fat girl, but shower my Facebook photos with nice comments as I’ve lost weight. It’s in how it’s become protocol at every family gathering to get picked on for being fat, and then to be told to eat more or else I’m disrespecting the hosts. It’s in the inescapable chismosa culture so characteristic amongst Filipinos that makes talking about other people’s bodies acceptable, and how somehow, the people who pointed out my difference when I was fat were the same people who celebrated my beauty when I had lost weight.
So this difficult truth is one I refused to accept.
Well, I’m forced to now that I’m fat again. My quinoa-less diet and sedentary lifestyle has put all forty-five pounds back on. I can no longer fit into all the cute clothes I used to be able to wear. I haven’t kissed another boy since. My grandma yet again chastises my weight. The difficult truth starts to creep in, but I don’t want it to, because it shouldn’t be this way.
My confidence has since resettled and grown stronger than ever. This time, I’ve realized I hold a responsibility larger than myself. I’ve seen how much kinder the world is to girls at a normal weight, and I know I have to do something to make sure it becomes kinder to fat girls too.
Mundane things introduced me to the feeling of being different when I was younger. In the same way, I know mundane things will allow me to make an impact. It might not have made a ripple in the grand scheme of things just yet, but I respectfully shut down my grandma in the plane that morning.
“Thanks for your concern, Grandma.” I looked back at her and smiled. “I’ll do what I can to stay healthy, no matter my weight.”
And when we’d finally arrived at the beach resort, I immediately slid into my bright red swimsuit in a comfortable XL. The cellulite on my butt cheeks peaked through. The flab on my stomach and waist looked rounder than ever. Still, I snapped a photo of myself in it and posted it online.
There was a sweet victory at every comment telling me how good I looked. But I felt an even sweeter victory at knowing there were no safety pins on my back to keep my outfit together.
