when the fat girl becomes the scapegoat for her own death

it’s my party, I’ll cry if i want to

Portrait of Picasso (Salvador Dalí, 1947)

I was as thin as a board as a kid, and I didn’t even pay attention to it. It wasn’t on my radar at all. All I knew was that I didn’t think I was pretty, and I hated that everyone else seemed to hate me, which in turn made me loathe myself even more. They’d kick me when I wasn’t looking. They would tell me I couldn’t join in with their games, and I would run to the corner of the playground and sob.

As I got older, and when the hormones had kicked in, I discovered what it meant to be uncomfortable in your own skin. I wasn’t a skinny girl feeding into heroin chic, I was a growing girl who had no interest in the things other girls were. Boys felt like bugs, and I just wanted a man who could entertain my interests in Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath without asking stupid questions like: “What are you? A nerd?”

I remember all the fashion magazines that would highlight (in red) areas on a celebrity’s body where they had gained weight. Yet, when said celebrity would see the headline, they would lose all the weight, and the magazine would feel vindicated in the process. They would even go so far as to ask them for diet tips.

When I was in high school from 2008 onwards, gossip and fashion magazines were still in their prime. My mother used to buy Closer and OK, and inside of those glossy pages were hoards of damaging statements.

In 2023, we think we have moved on, but I see the same mentality over and over again. Whenever a newspaper reports on the supposed obesity ‘crisis’, every person who struggles with their weight rolls their eyes. This kind of language reinforces the idea that being larger makes you a problem.

I recently went to the Doctor about a heart problem, and despite me explicitly stating that this had come on after a chest infection, he began talking about my body unprompted. He spoke of how “a greater body mass puts strain on the heart,” and would absolutely not listen to my concerns. In his mind, the only reason for the problem that developed after an infection is that I’m too fat. After my appointment, I saw a nurse from the surgery smoking outside.

This is a common experience. Before this, I visited a different Doctor for an issue with my periods that has been happening for fifteen years. She told me that all my symptoms were because I am fat, and all that I needed to do was lose weight and I would be fine.

Online isn’t far from this same reality as every celebrity who is criticised for being overweight seems to succumb to the pressure and returns to debut their new ‘look’. Most recently, Billie Eilish talked about her weight in a way that places her previous body in a glass cage.

Adele was fairly hostile about how people reacted to her weight loss, failing to understand what that does for representation. Formerly large celebrities seem to treat their former selves with disdain, thus feeding into the toxic skinny mentality of the world.

I can’t escape it. When I step out my door, I am faced with gyms, people talking about the gym, diet tips, adverts for Weight Watchers, runners, walkers, cyclists, and more. The world is obsessed. No conversation can be had without someone mentioning working out or starting a diet.

It might not have been so bad if I wasn’t dismissed by Doctors because I am larger. I could be dying, but all they see is the body they have been trained to hate. When a fat person comes to their office, their glasses steam up and all they see is a scapegoat.

I am tired of waking up every day and feeling like a stranger in my own body. A ‘beautiful’ home can hide many faults. We don’t fit into eras. We are not coquettes in the pockets of men. We are not Didion-esque girls who find ourselves at a bus stop with nowhere to go, only to be offered a nice place to stay.

We are told to stop eating. We are told to “make healthier choices” such as having sugar-free frosting on your birthday cake that ends up giving you diarrhoea. Instead of celebrating, you end up staring at the cake like it’s a loaded gun.

TikTokers post videos of “gut healthy” cookies with probiotic-enriched ice cream sandwiched between them. Everything good in our world has been tainted by our obsession with frailty because Sam Levinson’s ‘The Idol’ wouldn’t work if Lily-Rose Depp was a size 20, right?

…No. Her breakdown on the stage in her blood-stained heels would be seen as piggish because it’s obviously her weight stopping her from performing, and look at the snot running down her fat face. Her mother hitting her with a hairbrush is accepted because she shouldn’t have let herself get so fat.

When my mother reads the eulogy at my funeral, they will only remember how the pallbearers struggled to lift my coffin. “Couldn’t they have chopped her up?” they’ll say from the pews while my mother talks of what I did outside of what I looked like.

Remember all of this when I am lying on the slab in a morgue and they are marking my death down as justice served.