Does This Thick Skin Make Me Look Fat?

Yesterday I was talking with my 8 year old boy.  We had discussed some issues with teasing at school throughout the evening and he had admitted that last year there was a boy that would tease him.  We knew that last winter he decided he didn’t like his coat.  After some prodding about why he eventually told us that someone had told him his jacket was puffy and made him look fat.  Apparently it wasn’t just about the jacket.  This little boy continued to tease our son for being fat over the course of the rest of the school year.  He has only just confessed this to us now.  Apparently our kids are brooders.  

At one point in the summer Alex went downstairs after breakfast and was using the elliptical machine.  He told his sister it was because he was fat.   Our 8 year old boy thinks he needs to start working out to lose weight.  Let’s think about that for a second.  He vehemently denied that reasoning to us afterwards but we were a little concerned and had some conversations about health and exercise.

Teasing and being made fun of for something sucks, but it is a part of every person’s life.  It also, unfortunately doesn’t always stop in adulthood.  Over the summer I had an incident where a boy yelled that I was fat when we were on a family bike ride.  Though we can do our best to try and ignore rude comments they still can manage to slip in between the cracks.  Before we know it there is a huge weed that had taken root and no matter how hard we try to pull it out it just keeps coming back.

I think there are a few factors that affect the way we receive negative comments.  Different conditions for planting if you will.  The soil of our self esteem can be the perfect place for the seed of doubt to grow.  Planted in the soft and loamy ground of someone who feels poorly about themselves already, a grain of insult can take sprout quickly.  The gardener can care for it’s sapling, watering and fertilizing it regularly.  

Incidentally, what’s the best thing to fertilize with?  Yep, that’s right, poop.  Normally what the person tells us is complete bull crap anyway but wow, does it every nourish that little self destructive plant they have grown.  

It matters how much we care about the person that insults us too.  A cutting remark from a stranger on the street isn’t nearly as damaging as the stinging words of a loved one.  These are the insults that we form our labels around.  We don’t just hear these words we internalize them.  They become the labels we identify as our own.

I listened to an interesting podcast last week entitled Call Me Fat.  It was rather long (over an hour) so I didn’t have time to listen to the entire thing but it was an extremely interesting look at just owning who we are in a bigger skin.  I have struggled a lot over the years with insecurity about my size.  Our culture is quite thin obsessed and I related so much to women in the podcast’s experience of being simultaneously invisible yet too visible.  I have noticed that I never receive a compliment on my appearance when I am heavy.  I am only ever told I look nice when I loose weight.  I don’t think it’s a conscious thing that people are doing.  I just think that our culture associates thinness with attractiveness so closely that someone of a larger size is off putting.

There are so many people that veil their fat shaming with concerns over your health.  They tell you about your risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.  Sure, that can happen.  It can also happen to thin people.  Just a little disclaimer here, thin does not equal healthy and fat does not equal unhealthy.  

A few months ago I started having chest pains.  They were severe and unpredictable.  They came on at random times, weren’t preceded by anything and there wasn’t anything but time that would make them pass.  I thought I might be having a heart attack.  I resisted the temptation to google my symptoms and I made an emergency appointment with an on call doctor.  When I went in for my appointment I mentioned to the nurse, as I always do, that I have low blood pressure.  He was only half listening to me apparently and just looking at my size commented that sometimes hypertension can be the cause of chest pain.  He then finished taking my blood pressure and said, “did you say you have high blood pressure?”  He was confused because he had made the assumption that an overweight girl would, of course, have high blood pressure so that was what he had heard me say.   

I was sent for some blood tests and an ECG to determine what could be going on with me.  Nothing turned up.  Apparently I am perfectly healthy, besides having anemia.  After talking with my doctor it was determined that the pains I was experiencing most likely were caused by some muscle issues in my sternum, because I actually do a rather physical job and lift a lot.  This doesn’t matter to the average person I meet though.  They see a large person and feel free to judge me, with my best interest at heart, of course!  They are only doing me a favour in pointing out that I’m fat.  Then I can do something about it and increase my life expectancy right?

Sadly, the methods and extremes that many people will go to to lose weight and make themselves “healthier” are literally killing them.  In the podcast I listened to the one woman confessed to being prescribed something akin to speed to decrease her appetite and help her lose weight.  Yoyo diets are incredibly hard on your system and often make it more difficult to stay slim because your body breaks down your muscle, slowing down your metabolism.  Pills, potions, tricks and surgeries all can have very detrimental effects on the body.  I know, because I’m healthy and I’ve tried them.

There are quite a few people that I have seen posting before and after pictures of their weight loss journey.  Almost all of them talk about how happy they are to have more energy and how much healthier they are.  I’m happy for them, and maybe a little bit jealous but it has absolutely nothing to do with health and energy for me.  My energy is low because I don’t sleep well and I have anemia.  For me it’s all about appearances and I have a sneaking suspicion that it is for them too.  One woman captioned her before picture with something along the lines of I don’t even know that person anymore.  This sort of struck me as sad.  Sure you look different, maybe you’re healthier, maybe you’re not, who knows, but you are still that same person.  That was a part of your life.  You laughed, cried, learned, grew, loved and lost as that person.  Do we really want to erase the overweight times of our lives?  Does that person not deserve existence?  Why is overweight the worst thing we can be?  

I told my son, like I have told both my children many times, what someone says about us doesn't change who we are.  My hope is that it reminds them of the importance of being a good person, of not caring if someone picks on them.  I hope they remember how it feels to be hurt by another's words so they don't inflict that pain themselves and I hope that their generation starts to see the value in a person beyond just their outward appearance.  

I also told my son that sometimes people say mean things because they are sad and they think making someone else sad will help them feel better.  I have come across too many people like this in day.  Fortunately I have been able to sever ties with most of them, pruning them from my life like dead branches, sapping the strength from me.  

Yes, kids can be cruel sometimes but I don't believe they are born that way.  I believe we learn to hate.  Or family builds the foundation of what we find objectionable.  As we grow we test that foundation, see if it will stand up to the winds of truth, the tremors of justice, the rains of character.  Some of the testing comes in the form of lashing out.  They bully to test out the world and their place in it.

Some of these foundations will fall.  Some can't bear the weight of their impropriety.  Some need to be torn down, dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt.  

These small lessons are a part of that foundation building.  We are learning what makes us strong and what ideas are faulty.  I encourage them to repair the foundations of others with kindness and love.

These lessons are teaching both them and me that we are allowed to cultivate the relationships that help us grow and it's okay to weed out the ones that attempt to choke the life from us.

Even thick skins can be cut though and no one makes it through this life unscarred.  More lessons are on the way.  I know that.  I know that they will be hurt many times but I hope that from those hurts they will learn to be better people.  They will care less about what strangers and bullies say and more about their character.  I pray that they will be the kind of friend that they would want to have.  That we can cultivate kindness and grow love.  Doesn’t everyone deserve that, no matter the size?