Current mood:

relieved

Obesity Education - from an obese feminist.
A post about violence, obesity and women...as told by an obese woman.



I was often physically assaulted for being a fat kid.

Boys would attack me on the playground, the bus, the classroom when the teacher had her back turned. They'd punch me as hard as they could in the middle of my back and then run away, laughing. I'd go home after school, my arms and legs covered in bruises from where the boys beat me. I'd get yanked around on the school bus by my hair. I would get told that I was fat, ugly and should just die.

I remember one beating, a particularly brutal one. A kid named Kevin told a boy named Scotty that I had written on the back of a bus seat Kelly + Scotty. He was so embarrassed a fat, ugly, "fucked up nasty piece of shit like me" did that, he attacked me in the school lobby and beat me for several minutes until a teacher was able to pry him off me. He screamed, he cursed, he told me how ugly I was, fat, disgusting, and in the principals office, he told me, "Why don't you just die?"

I didn't write that on the seat. Kevin did as a joke on Scotty. The joke ended up being on me. My face was battered. My hair had been pulled out. I had been humiliated at the age of 8 in front of an entire elementary school, all so Kevin could have a good laugh.

And boy, did he laugh.

I got beaten several times over the years by boys because of my weight, my reddish hair, my freckles. I was ugly to them. I didn't deserve to be alive. I had 1 friend - Cherie Atkins. Everyone else either joined in the taunting, or pretended I didn't exist. Girls did mean things to me, boys hit me, pulled my hair, kicked me, and I was helpless. All I could do was hide behind reddened fat cheeks and wish I could die.

I didn't have a safe place as a child. At home I was abused (sexual, physical, emotional). At school I was abused. I had no friends, no loved ones, nothing. I didn't have friends until we moved to Borger, TX when I was 15. For some reason, those kids didn't think I was fat and ugly. They thought I was cool. They thought I was one of them. For the first time ever, I was popular. People liked me.

I was 15 years old before I had my first best friend.

I was 16 the first time I was ever told I was pretty.

A few times over the years, as I got heavier and heavier from various illnesses, I actually feared I would be singled out and beaten. Young men, our version of neds, sometimes followed me around the Ponca City Wal*mart, leering and making as if they were going to attack me. I was almost 400 lbs then. I was terrified.

Sometimes, I'm still terrified. Even though I'm on hormone therapy for endometriosis and Fluoxetine for PTSD, the weight is slowly coming off, yet I'm still afraid. I'm no longer a coward, so I fear of what harm I would do to the next person who felt the need to beat it into my head that I need to lose weight.

I'm angry. I'm angry people feel it's their inalienable right to judge my body. I'm angry for the years of torment and abuse. I'm angry because everyday I open my friends list on Live Journal and see someone wanking about fat people. I want to rage. I want to scream. I want to punch them in the face so they know it's not my health they should mockingly worry about, but my wrath. I'm not stupid. I know strangers on the Internet do not care about my health. They care that I am obese and somehow offending their sense of entitlement to perfect scenery. And yes, I am angry, and nobody should be surprised when I launch into internet strangers with the same fervor those boys in my youth had when they beat me until I was curled up in a ball in the dirt, crying my heart out over something that wasn't even my fault.


I wrote this poem about one of the incidents in grade school.

The Playground - Phreak E. Love (2005)

I brush gravel from scraped knees, tiny drops
of blood splatter like ink blots on the unforgiving
barren playground where I fell
– where you knocked me down.

My left eye hurts, stinging like an angry wasp, the skin
becoming puffy, irritated, inflamed, promising to
show the world where I hurt myself
– where you hurt me.

A bunch of kids gather around, laughing and pointing
at my hair falling from its ponytail, they call me names
fat, ugly, stupid, spitting where I laugh
– where you laugh at me.

“Why don’t you just die?” you ask, standing over me with your
hands on your hips, an act of defiance, your legs spread apart,
a display of dominance over the blood I spilled
– you spilled on the playground.