for people who don't apologize for their size
Fat Kills
by Betty Rose Dudley
I don't like doctors. I don't know many fat women who do. My sister had cervical cancer. She
didn't go back for her post-op check-up for over 10 years.
I asked her, "Why? Don't you know this is dangerous stuff?"
"They're just going to tell me I'm too fat. I don't want to hear it. If I die, I die," she
said. My sister works in a hospital.
I belong to an HMO. After a series of referrals, I ended up with this very young, very
thin female doctor, obviously a jogger by the way she dressed.
At first it seemed as this might be okay. She didn't hesitate to touch my body, and her touch
was gentle. When the exam was finished, she said to me, with a smile, "Well, what are we
going to do about you losing weight?"
"We're not going to do anything," I said. "I'm here because I can't get rid of this cough."
She smiled, shook her head, and ordered x-rays and tests. I thought, "Okay, fair enough."
The next time I saw her she gave me a handful of weight-loss pamphlets, everything from
Weight Watchers and Nutri-System to plain old calorie counting.
She said to me, "You should pick one. They're all pretty good."
"I told you, I don't intend to lose weight," I said. "I'm here because of a cough."
"Don't you know that fat kills?" she said.
"I don't believe that," I said. "And I don't care anyway because I don't believe these diets
work. These diets kill. Fat or thin, we are all going to die eventually, anyway."
"If you're depressed I can refer you to psychiatry," she said.
"No thank you. Just tell me about the x-rays," I said.
"Oh, the x-rays!" she said. "We have found an abnormality on your lung. It could be one of
many things, including cancer."
By then I knew I needed a new doctor, but I couldn't change in the middle of this. It had
taken me months to find this one.
I went back for the results of the further testing. The woman walked into the room with even
more weight-loss pamphlets. Now I was really pissed off. "Forget it," I said. "I have told you many times now that I am
not interested in dieting."
She threw the pamphlets down on the desk, turned and put her hands on her hips and looked at
me with disgusted disbelief.
"Well, I just don't even know why you bother to come here if you're not going to listen to
what I say," she said.
"I came to find out if I have lung cancer," I said through clenched teeth.
"Oh," she said. You could tell she had forgotten. I did not have lung cancer.
I fantasize that I am a depressed fat woman, dying from unnoticed, untreated cancer, but
intending to kill myself first. I will jump from the top floor of a high-rise apartment
building near this HMO. I will do it early in the morning, waiting until this woman doctor
jogs by underneath my balcony. I will time my jump so that I land right on top of her. The
headlines will scream, FAT KILLS!
Betty Rose Dudley is a fat, working class lesbian from Missouri who now lives, works, writes,
and plays in the Bay Area.
Reunion
by Kristine Durden
You all called me fatso, and hungry hungry hippo and referred to me as a planet and made me
feel like the last person anyone would find attractive. And I loved you all. You were some of
my best friends. I still dream about you. I still laugh with you. I still scold you for
smoking behind the school, my indignant 13-year-old voice being very serious. I still listen
to the broken-hearted stories, the beyond kisses stories, the I-can't-stand-her confessions.
I still missed you after all those years. Our small classroom in my mind, 12 desks filled
with my family.
After all those years, I remembered the many names that came tumbling across the room to me
with giggles. I moved them with me this last decade, forgetting them for a while, and then
finding them hidden in a shoebox in the closet, behind the yearbooks. I knew that's who I was
and who you all were, and mostly that that was a part of being that age.
So, 15 years later we all reunite. So much love and curiosity and awkwardness. Such
strangeness to be face to face again. I am the same height and twice as big. We all talk and
I find myself bringing it up to you. I tell you all, without an ulterior motive, without even
realizing it, "Yeah, you used to call me fatso."
You don't remember, genuinely. "I would never do that," you say.
You completely have no memory of it. It wasn't important enough to remember. I tell you you
did say it, and you apologize, saying, "I can't believe I did." I think of those days, five
days a week, six classes a day all wrapped up in brown butcher paper with hungry hungry hippo
scrawled on it. I think of how that one boy I longed for so bad tells me at the reunion that
he had a crush on me too. I think of how different my life would have been if I had known
that, if we had dated, if I'd been one of those dating-kind-of-girls. And yet he was one of
the worst offenders. It seems strange to me after all these years to think that maybe all you
grew up seeing me as was me, and not some class punchline. I think about the people who
didn't come to the reunion, and how I wish they had come. I think of what I might have said
to someone back then that I have no memory of.
Kristine Durden lives in Mountain View, California with Madison, her Big & Tall cat.
Generic Football Jock
by Kelly Otto
I was raised in a very small town (about 2,000 people). As fas back as I can remember, I was
always the second-fattest kid in school. The fattest kid was my best friend. You can bet we
stuck together. We met each other in kindergarten. And all these years later, we're still
friends. But that's getting off the track. The point I'm trying to get across is that we were
often the victims of discrimination and persecution because of our weight. We learned to deal
with it in our own ways, and most of it I've been able to put behind me.
But there is one person I will not be able to forgive for a very long time to come. This
person, whom I shall henceforth refer to as GFBJ (Generic Football Jock), decided in the
fourteenth year of my life to single me out as his personal scapegoat. I guess he did it
because I represented a non-threatening place to unload some of his personal baggage. I'll
never know for certain what was going on in his head (and God knows I've wasted plenty of
time trying to figure him out).
Anyway, he began with simple (minded?) name-calling. I won't bother to get too specific. He
wasn't very original, so it was just the standard kind of stuff that's been aimed at fat kids
since forever. No problem, just ignore him, right? It didn't work. Asking him to stop didn't
work. Asking the principal to ask him to stop didn't work. Asking the principal to ask his
parents to ask him to stop didn't work. So I did the only thing I thought I could do: I gave
up and tried to get on with my life. It (kind of) worked. But his campaign of steadily
escalating persecution made me miserable for three of the longest years of my life.
The verbal abuse was never taken seriously by any of the school faculty. Boys will be boys,
you know. After a while, I didn't bother to report it any more. I couldn't turn to my parents
for help. They were going through a divorce. They had enough problems.
When GFBJ got bored with the solo name-calling he invited his friends to join in. Ever have a
pack of jersey-clad jocks all hurling not-too-witty verbal barbs at you in unison? Well, try
to picture it. Maybe you'll laugh. I still can't. You see, I became their own personal
Pavlov's bell.
Soon, the very sight of me was enough to initiate a heavy round of verbal diarrhea among
them. All this came about through the diligent leadership and training efforts of GFBJ.
Are you getting the picture of how much I started to hate myself? Are you getting the idea
that maybe I desperately wanted to escape? Not die. Brian Head [a fat high school sophomore
who shot himself after being taunted by classmates once too often] didn't want to die,
either. He just got tired.
Did you ever read Ray Bradbury's "I Sing the Body Electric?" It's about an android who can
choose to shut down and recharge whenever she starts to run out of energy. That's what Brian
Head needed, and that's what I needed. But that wasn't even an option. If you're human, you
just get tired.
I got tired all right, but I didn't make Brian's choice. I did turn the hate inward, though.
I starved, I dieted, I lost weight. I used to weigh 200 pounds, but I lost 70 pounds between
ages 14 and 17. But nothing was good enough for GFBJ. He never let up.
In fact, even some of the younger kids in school started to follow the example set by him and
his friends. Not that they even knew me, but monkey see, monkey do. I didn't care any more.
GFBJ was one grade ahead of me, so I figured that with his graduation, I would finally get
some peace.
I held fast to this delusion until the spring of his senior year. And then one day my friends
and I (all outcasts for one reason or another) entered the school cafeteria. We picked up our
trays and claimed a place in line. I wasn't paying too much attention to what was going on
around me. Why would I? I had other things on my mind.
On the menu that day was turkey chow mein. I will remember this for a long time because it
used to be one of my favorite dishes, and I was looking forward to it.
But before I could get my food, I heard someone behind me start up with the name-calling. I
was prepared to just ignore it, as usual. But when I turned around, I saw that this time my
attacker was none other than the younger brother of GFBJ. At that moment, I realized the
persecution would never end. Not even with GFBJ's graduation, would it ever end. And at that
instant, something inside of me snapped. I picked up my heavy duty brown plastic tray, and I
slammed it down on Baby Brother's head. I did it again and again, and again. I just didn't
care any more. I was tired.
Was I wrong to act in such a violent manner? Hell yes, people have no business going berserk
on other people for any reason. Am I sorry? With enough time and perspective behind me, I am
starting to feel sorry for what I did. But more than that, I feel sorry for GFBJ. I feel
sorry because he needed to tear me down in order to build himself up.
So how did it all end, you ask? Well, Baby Brother raised his arms over his head in time to
avoid serious injury. I probably should have gotten suspended. But when the shop
teacher/cafeteria monitor came to see what the problem was, I walked up to him and looked him
in the eyes. I told him, "I'm not going to take it any more." I meant it.
I did get relief from the name-calling after that incident. Baby Brother never did it again.
Even GFBJ eased up on me. And soon enough, he was out of school and off my back.
Lest you're tempted to think this is some sort of revenge fantasy that I'm just making up, my
best friend was in the cafeteria when it happened.
Unfortunately, so was the lady who used to live next door to me. She was one of the cafeteria
servers. I didn't even want to know what she thought of me after that day. I always avoided
her after that until I left for college. It was just easier.
The next time I talk to my friend, I'm going to ask her to recount her side of the story.
See, we haven't really talked about it since it happened. It was too close and too hurtful
for both of us.
By this time, though, I think we might both be ready to put it behind us.
Kelly Otto lives in Shakopee and is a resource counselor at a women's center in Minneapolis,
Minnesota.