When 40 minutes passed, my legs were burning fiercely. She had been on the bike for about two minutes longer. I got on the sixth bike and programmed the machine for 60 minutes, knowing I would stop at 40, but giving some room to push myself if I wasn’t dying by then. I feel like they are mocking me with their perfect, toned bodies. It doesn’t matter that they are most likely thin for this very reason. I became irritated and downright angry as I always do when I see exceedingly thin people at the gym.
I looked around, wondering if a movie was being filmed or if it was Sorority Workout Hour. Many years ago, at the gym, five of the six recumbent bikes, my equipment of choice, were occupied by gorgeous, extraordinarily thin women, predominantly of the blond persuasion. You are your body, nothing more, and your body should damn well become less. This commentary is often couched as concern. People are quick to offer you statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you are not only fat but also delusional about the realities of your body. Regardless of what you do, your body is subject to commentary when you gain weight, lose weight, or maintain your unacceptable weight.
You may learn how to be the life of the party so that people are too busy laughing at or with you to focus on the elephant in the room. You may become very adept at playing the role of wallflower.
Fat, much like skin colour, is something you cannot hide, no matter how dark the clothing you wear, or how diligently you avoid horizontal stripes. When you’re overweight, people project assumed narratives on to your body and are not at all interested in the truth. I am the fattest person at this university.’ Photograph: Jennifer Silverberg/The Guardian ‘I think, I am the fattest person in this apartment building. I have been trying to figure a way out of it for more than 20 years. No matter how small a toilet cubicle is, I avoid the disabled toilet because people like to give me dirty looks when I use that stall merely because I am fat and need more space. I try to hover over the toilet because I don’t want it to break beneath me. In public toilets, I manoeuvre into cubicles. I avoid walking with other people as often as possible because walking and talking at the same time is a challenge.
Sometimes, they pretend not to know, and sometimes, it seems like they are genuinely that oblivious to how different bodies move, as they suggest we do impossible things like go to an amusement park or walk a mile up a hill to a stadium. If I am with friends, I cannot keep up, so I am constantly thinking up excuses to explain why I am walking slower than they are, as if they don’t already know. There are things I want to do with my body but cannot. I feel like people are staring at me sweating and judging me for having an unruly body that dares to reveal the costs of its exertion. When I walk for long periods of time, my thighs and calves ache. It’s about how I feel in my skin and bones. Feeling comfortable in my body isn’t entirely about beauty standards. What I know and what I feel are two very different things. I’m a feminist and I know that it is important to resist unreasonable standards for how my body should look. It would be easy to pretend I am just fine with my body as it is. I don’t hate myself in the way society would have me hate myself, but I hate how the world all too often responds to this body. My memories of the after are scattered, but I remember eating and eating and eating so I could forget, so my body could become so big it would never be broken again. When it was all over, I pushed my bike home and I pretended to be the daughter my parents knew, the straight-A student. I remember that they had nothing but disdain for me. I remember their smells, the squareness of their faces, the weight of their bodies, the tangy smell of their sweat, the surprising strength in their limbs. They were boys who were not yet men but knew, already, how to do the damage of men. You may learn how to be the life of the party so that people are too busy laughing to focus on the elephant in the room I was 12 when I was raped by Christopher and several of his friends in an abandoned cabin in the woods where no one but those boys could hear me scream.