WARNING: Long, grouchy, confessional over-sharing ahead.
For those of you who haven't gathered as much yet, I am a Fat Chick. Quite the Mooing Heifer, indeed. I am 5'7 and I weigh approximately 260 pounds.
Furthermore, I have always been fat, ever since I was a little tiny kid. I didn't look too terribly different from anyone else until about fourth grade, but my mother knew from the time I was about three that I was going to grow up to be fat.
That being said, it's never particularly bothered me. Sure, I'd like to be thin, but I've never wanted to be thin enough to bother doing anything about it. I am perfectly happy to live fat and die well-fed, preferably somewhere that's adequately air-conditioned. My favorite pastimes are sedentary and intellectual, and always have been.
Once I did try to do something about my weight, though. Although it wasn't precisely my idea.
When I was in seventh grade, I weighed about 170 pounds. My mother, who taught at a different junior high school, had a student who had a serious weight problem indeed, weighing in at over 400 pounds. My mother worried about this girl, so she got together with the girl's parents and talked them into trying 'fat camp'. Well, okay, so by this point they were calling it 'weight loss camp'. Fuck that, it was FAT CAMP.
So this girl and her parents were sitting in our den, and I was sitting in the adjoining kitchen doing my homework, because my mother had wanted me to sit in and listen. And at the end of her presentation, my mother turned to me and asked me if I wanted to go to 'fat camp' too. I seem to remember making some sort of noncommittal noise and agreeing, mostly to get my mother to stop dragging me into the conversation, because, I am ashamed to admit, the immense girl and her equally immense loud parents scared the hell out of me.
Big mistake.
I won't say which fat camp, because I'm a bit leery of, let's say, huge angry lawsuits that threaten to suck out my eyeballs. But it was run by a company whose name rhymed with 'Hate Botchers', and since it was in Texas, they named it something that rhymed with 'Camp Bone Spar'. I was there for five weeks.
There are a lot of stories I can tell you here. I can tell you about the completely incompetent and untrained management and counselors, who broke every single promise they ever made to us. They promised us that food would never be used as a punishment or a reward, and then told us that we couldn't have our precious low-cal popsicles if we didn't finish our liver. (Liver and onions once a WEEK. It must have been the cheapest meat they could find.) They promised us that we would never be forced to compete athletically against one another, and then declared the last week of camp to be a huge camp-wide Color War, pitting us against each other in a desperate flabby battle to prove ourselves, somehow, less enormous than each other. I seem to remember they promised us that we would have fun, too. They broke that promise first.
I can tell you about how none of the 'adults' ever bothered to take us seriously, because we were just a bunch of whining fat spoiled children. I can tell you how no one was ever allowed to speak on the phone to their parents without the head counselor sitting right there staring at you.
I can tell you about how girls who claimed to be menstruating were forced to strip and prove it before they were excused from the daily swimming exercises. I can tell you how badly trained the counselors were, and how few of them there were, and how useless they were.
I can also tell you about the time that the Health Department shut down the kitchen for three days. Once we got served cauliflower with vibrant blue mold all over it; once our weekly liver was a shiny iridescent green, although our portions were carefully turned brown side up to hide it.
But, for all that we suffered at the hands of the adults, it's the kids I want to talk about here.
Very Incredibly Obvious Statement here. America loves beauty, and is thoroughly socialized to appreciate and reward it, and to subtly punish the unbeautiful and the fat. Especially children, who are evil little tribal savages without a single redeeming quality. Fat children are stigmatized and bullied. That's a fact. It's very seldom that a fat child is popular with his peers; usually s/he is an outcast. S/he learns to bear a number of vicious slights, and, in essence, becomes the fat, embodying 'fat' in the eyes and minds of thinner children and, eventually, in his or her own mind. Yes, I'm speaking from personal experience.
But what happens when you take sixty or so fat hormone-maddened socially-squashed pre-teens and teenagers and put them together in a loosely supervised environment set on the immense grounds of a lush private school, away from their parents, where everyone is fat and there isn't a single thin person there to remind you that you're fat?
You get a seven-week-long orgy, that's what you get. Every single bit of that socialized "I'm fat so I must be ugly" falls away, because everybody's fat! So who gives a damn? It's a damn heady feeling, realizing that, for the first time in your miserable little teenaged life, you are just as desirable as every other person within range. And when morals and your parents' teaching collide with raging hormones and a very, very real chance to indulge those hormones? Guess who wins. Every time.
And, of course, given America's particular beauty biases, there were fifty-five girls and six boys at this camp. Every boy, no matter how gross, had a blubbery harem of teenaged female lust surrounding him at all times, and they casually picked and chose from this harem as they saw fit. There was only one counselor for the boys and only four counselors for the girls, and they were completely unable to control us. After the first week, they gave up trying. There were a million hideyholes where you could meet your current paramour, and sneaking out at any hour was laughably simple.
I sometimes wonder how many girls ended up pregnant afterwards. Then I decide I don't want to know.
Was I able to take advantage of this? No, I wasn't. You see, even fat people need someone to look down on. Teenagers and children seem to have this intense need to stratify and ossify themselves into 'popular' and 'outcast', and they need to constantly prove themselves upon the bodies and souls of their peers. Even the ones who should know better, who suffer at the hands of this need every day, automatically turn around and enforce that need themselves.
Therefore, at fat camp as in every single high school across the nation, there needed to be human targets. I was one.
Not that I wasn't used to this, of course. It did hurt a little more to suffer those indignities at the hands of fellow outcasts, but it was relatively easy to get used to. So I didn't have any friends? So I occasionally had buckets of what I devoutly hope was water thrown on me in the middle of the night? So the other girls would scrawl obscenities in red marker on a maxipad and glue it to my door? So I had all my tapes and most of my clothing stolen? So the only way to keep people from tormenting me physically was to refuse to bathe until I stank? Big deal. I've suffered worse.
No, what hurt is that, for the first time in my life, I had a major communications breakdown with my mother, who in all other respects had always been a truly gifted parent.
But that, in and of itself, is a fairly long story, so I'll just write 'To Be Continued' here.
Replies: add your comment: currently 7 comments
Dear gods. Hearing about how awful that camp was... *shivers* I'm sorry to hear about that, Moon.
Posted by Nathan @ 10/13/2001 11:07 AM EST
I have always been struck by your writing - stumbling across this piece today was an unexpected and wonderful surprise. I'm really very sorry that you had to endure such a horrible experience, though... but damn... seriously, it's inspirational - or should I say, you are inspirational. To go through all that shit with the kind of attitude you've kept really reflects some serious inner strength... kickass.
Posted by Soowhan @ 10/13/2001 03:22 PM EST
I totally commend you. You are not the only one to have those experiences. We're roughly about the same size. (although I didn't go to fat camp. Thank God) And I totally agree with you about dying fat, well fed, and somewhere with air. I got up and told my mom about that and she cracked up. I have one thing to say though. I worked in a clothing store with mostly skinny co-workers. The store sold junior and plus clothes, but that's beside the point. Anyhoo, I was and am one of the best dressed big people I know. I wear things that flatter my figure and I'll be damned if I let some bone rack make me feel bad about my appearance. It's messed up though. If you have cancer, aids, ms, a drug problem or something, everyone's so sorry for you and they're willing to help, but if you're fat. Oh HELL no. That automatically makes you lazy and ugly in the eyes of society. They can kiss my fat ass and like it. Er...sorry about that tirade there. ^^; *hugs da Moon*
Posted by Tiffany @ 10/13/2001 03:53 PM EST
...you know, Soowhan, I read that as 'inner kickass' because I have a headache and am not paying sufficient attention, and I am now inspired. I must cultivate my inner kickass, and tend it well.
And as for Moon... Moon has seen hell, and it makes you eat your liver and onions.
GREEN liver and onions if you're naughty.
Posted by Ed @ 10/13/2001 04:19 PM EST
Dude, that seriously sucks. I too am by no ways thin, but I think I lucked out kinda family wise. My mom would never send me to a place like that TwT. But, I understand completely about how kids and adults treat people that aren't pretty and thin, since like I said, I'm not thin at all. Worst part is, I used to be thin too, and no matter what anyone says, you get treated completely different if you're not fat ._.; Take this from someone that's been at both sides.
Posted by Lea @ 10/13/2001 07:18 PM EST
Tell us the truth, like it is, Moon. You've always done that and I hope you never quit. I am sorry that you suffered through all of this, I really am. It is too bad that people do judge others this way, and treat them unjustly. People are still people, not matter what, but others would prefer not to think of it that way.
I always look inside a person (or try to..) and judege them that way, instead of their looks, and try to recognize the good souls. But not evryone does this....
Posted by Wolf @ 10/13/2001 10:36 PM EST
That is courage. I would not have survived... reading part 2 now.
Posted by StB @ 10/14/2001 07:09 PM EST
