I know you have all been on pins and needles waiting to hear the recap of my trip across the pond, and you will have to wait just a bit longer. Before I can get to the fun details and my love for London, I have to talk about something that happened there that has been haunting my thoughts. The only way I am going to be able to get past it is to write about it. So here it goes - the incident that has me questioning everything about myself.
You avid readers know that Chloe and my London adventure was prompted by Teddy moving there for a year. On our next to last night Teddy said something to me at the pub that has really fucked with my head ever since. The conversation went something like this:
*Insignificant Small Talk
Harper: *says something about not being able to pull off this very attractive younger guy.
Teddy: You know you could be really beautiful if you lost weight.
Harper: I’m sorry what did you say?
Teddy: I mean I think you could be a knockout if you lose a lot of weight.
Harper: Oh that’s what I thought you said.
Teddy: I mean your eyes alone. You could be such a bombshell if you lost the weight.
Harper: (said something along the lines of) Well the reason you are alone is that you are a shallow douchebag.
*Chloe comes back from the bathroom.
Harper: Chloe let me fill you in on the conversation. Teddy was just saying how I need to lose weight, and if you will excuse me I need to going to the bathroom.
I barely made it up the stairs before the tears were falling. It was as if someone punched me in the chest, knocking all the air out of me. Everything I question about myself, every insecurity, was justified in that moment. I was living my worst fears, the reality that I am undesirable the way that I am. I am not a small girl, I never have been, but I am the biggest I have ever been, meaning my insecurities are at an all time high. I am a size 16, and I teeter between straight and plus sizes. I am 5’6’”, 195 pounds. To quote Mindy Kaling “I fluctuate between curvy and chubby.” My weight and size has been a constant thing of stress since I hit puberty, always seeking approval, like every good Southern girl does.
By the time I reached junior high, being called fat was something I was used to. It was the insult of choice for the pubescent bullies. When I got to high school, I made an effort to skip meals when I could. I would tell my mom I ate at youth group and go to bed without dinner. The truth is I didn’t have the discipline to be full fledged anorexic. That, and I had a mother who paid attention. She would support the diets like Atkins or what ever else I wanted to do to try to slim down, as long as I was eating. I want to preface what I am about to say with the fact that I love my mother, and she loves me no matter what, but it hasn’t always come off in the best way. My mother, someone who has struggled with weight herself, can be quite harsh when it comes to my body. Telling me in high school, when I was size 12, that girls like us aren’t meant to wear bikinis.
In college, fat was a word I continued to hear quite often when describing me, often times to my face, being called “Bee’s fat friend”. Boys would not want their friends to know that we were an item, because I wasn’t the kind of girl people expected them to be with. Even my own sorority sisters got in on the body shaming from time to time. I was once told by a girl I thought to be one of my best friends that “girls like you don't land guys like the vice president of a fraternity.”
My weight continued to yoyo throughout college as I went on and off Weight Watchers, but my self-esteem was consistently pretty low. I looked for validation from the guys I made out with, or the many clubs and organizations I was apart of. I never believed that I was enough. Why would I? Everything really came to a head when I was selected to be queen of my hometown the summer between Sophomore and Junior year. This is an Old South tradition dating back to the 1920s with hoop skirts, cocktail parties, china patterns, and a lot of judgement spanning over a year. I tried on the dresses of every “bigger” queen there had ever been, and none of them came close to fitting. I remember standing in the seamstresses shop when she told me there was no way to make my favorite dress fit me. The tears rolling down my face in silence, knowing I was the fattest queen there ever was. That is the day that I decided I would do whatever it took to lose weight. That is the day that triggered my eating disorder.
I had 6 months to lose weight, and then had to stay exactly the same size for the next 4. I started taking stool softeners and laxatives everyday. No one knew I was taking those pills everyday; I seemed to have normal eating habits; I was working out. Everyone just thought all the things that I had tried for years without results were finally working for me. No one knew I was doing irreversible damage to my stomach in the name of beauty and conformity. It was the thinnest I have ever been. The pictures from the Spring of 2009 are my favorite pictures of me ever. It was probably the only time in my life that I believed people when they told me I looked beautiful.
I have spent the last 5 years of my life trying to become comfortable in my own skin. Loving yourself is hard, at least for me it is. It seems like the first 23 years of my life were spent being told I was not worth loving. As a bigger women you are expected to squeeze into your shapewear and face the world knowing it still isn’t enough. If you thighs touch, or your arm jiggles, you’re not beautiful, you're undeserving. Our society puts numbers on beauty that are unrealistic. After months of therapy and stints on antidepressants, I had found a version of myself I could love, most of the time. A version that didn’t need a man's approval, or physical gratification to know I am worth something.
Why am I telling you these sordid details? I have decided if I am going to talk about body shaming and my body issues, I am going to tell it all. I want to explain that eating disorders come in many forms. I am going to explain in detail why Teddy’s comments have shaken me to my core, cracking the strength that I spent years trying to build.
When I finally stopped crying, mainly due to the wonderful British girls in the bathroom who offered to punch Teddy in the throat, I went to face the physical incarnation of all my inner demons. Teddy hugged me and said he was “coming from a place of love” and that he just wanted me to be “happy and healthy.” I actually think that might have been more insulting than the original comments. I looked at him and said, “What about me says I am not happy? I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life.” Chloe and I left the pub shortly after that. I cried the whole cab ride back to our flat. I cried myself to sleep, and I woke up the next morning crying.
I texted my mom and told her what happened. I know from what you read above you might think my mom wouldn’t be supportive, but you would be wrong. She has come a long way in the last decade. She might pressure me about getting married, but she is more supportive about my body image. I don’t know if seeing me struggle with depression was what flipped the switch, or if it was me finally telling her about all the teasing and the eating disorders I had hid from her, but whatever it was, I am grateful. My parents think I am beautiful no matter my size. My dad would have hit Teddy if he could have gotten his hands on him. A man of few compliments, my dad said to me that skinny doesn’t make you pretty.
I know I should have written off Teddy’s comments and maintained my long fought for sense of confidence, but that isn’t what happened. I have withered. He said out loud what I have worried every man I meet actually thinks of me. It was verbal confirmation that I am indeed undesirable. I flip between anger that anyone could be so shallow and a despair that I am truly less than I think I am. Words are blows that bruise deep beneath the surface, festering and manifesting in the darkest most twisted ways. In the last month, I have found myself evaluating every wrinkle, stretch mark, cellulite and fat pocket on my body. I have been more conscious of how my clothes fit or don’t fit. I have stopped in the drug store twice and look at the bottles of laxatives on the shelves, coming so close to putting them in my basket. I have let those words put cracks in the foundation of confidence I had built up one therapy session at a time.
The thing is, I know I am a pretty girl. I have breathtaking blue eyes, that pretty much give away my every emotion if you care enough to look. I have lips that have just enough pout to make them perfect for lipstick. The idea that those things are not enough to make me beautiful because I am not a size two is beyond crazy. That I COULD be beautiful if I just lost weight is one of the cruelest idea. Could I use to lose a few pounds? Sure, I would like that even. But to think that my beauty is contingent on my dress size is beyond superficial. Beyond the physical, I am a beautiful person because I love with all my heart, I care for people so deeply that I often put their wants and needs before my own. I am smart, thoughtful, and loyal. Those things make me beautiful too.
There are no words to ever express the level of disgust, disappointment, and offense I felt and continue to feel about the situation. I don’t know that I can ever look at Teddy and not feel all of those negative emotions. I think the worst part about it is he thought what he said was coming from a place of love. He thought it was ok to say them, he thought he was being helpful. If he had said I am worried about your health, it still wouldn’t have been ok, but it wouldn’t have been as insulting as saying I am not beautiful because I am bigger.
If this post seems disheveled it is because my thoughts are disheveled. I haven’t been able to get my head on straight since that night. I second guess everything about myself. But that stops now. This is me taking back my life, some might say this is my fight song. I am going to find my confidence again. I am not going to worry that if I lose weight, I am proving Teddy right. I am going to do whatever makes me feel comfortable in my own skin. I am beautiful and no person’s opinion can change that.
