 Stevie at 28 years old I want to talk about my skin. It was stretched wide across my form for years – protecting a woman who at her largest weighed in at over 330 pounds. After I lost weight the skin formed colonies on my body that resemble pockets of fat, even though I was young, wore binding materials, rubbed moisturizers on my body, and exercised regularly. Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly frustrated with how my body looks, I pull the skin out into tents and stare in morbid fascination at its limpness. Skin is unlike fat in that you can pull it out far from the body. It takes on a mind of its own during movement, swishing one way while simultaneously swishing another. When you bend over it hangs loose, folding in on itself in certain places and draping down in others. To date I have excess skin on my: **arms **thighs **abdomen **upper back **small of my back. I had two rolls right below my breasts, but they were removed years ago because the rash that resulted was very painful and prone to infections that spread down my stomach – resulting in an angry red battlefield of heated splotches. I tried various medications to alleviate this, but each one did little to nothing to improve the problem – some even made it worse. So those folds were taken from me seven years ago. As a reminder I have a large scar that stretches from armpit to armpit. There’s a V in the center. When this skin was taken from me my breasts were made smaller, but I did not consent to a breast reduction. Also as a reminder there are two tents below my armpits with little bulbs in the center – these are called “dog ears” by surgeons. I can have them removed, but would likely pay upwards of $1,000 or more to do so. Instead I am a dedicated lingerie shopper who can, at sight, size-up a bra to determine if the band is wide enough for me to tuck the “dog ears” into. A large portion of my self-presentation preparation and execution exists of me tucking and determining. Going to the gym is a special little horror. I have to wear particular underwear that, again, binds me. This isn’t vanity. This is so the rashes and infections that would result from movement are somewhat alleviated though not completely avoided. Also, the humiliating smacking noise isn’t quite as loud, allowing me to focus more on form and less on who might be snickering beside me. When I go shopping I am careful to purchase particular materials – often man made despite the kindness cotton and linen show to skin. I own a small fortunes worth of binders and shapers to disguise the two back flaps on my upper back as well as the roll on my abdomen. These garments are what I imagine hell to feel like. If I buy the wrong cut they roll. If I buy a size too small my ribs scream each time I sit and stand. If I buy a size too large they roll. Sometimes I feel like one deep breath will cause them to bust at the seams. I have even daydreamed it would be so. Often times I refuse them and buy clothes a size larger than needed. Because some of my breasts were removed I often have to pin at the armpits or layer with tanks because I have to shop to fit the roll at my abdomen, which is a full size larger than my upper body. Of course all of my dresses and skirts must be worn with bloomers. While thigh rub is a serious reality for most people, the skin does aggravate the issue. That is because skin moves differently, and in different directions. It clucks with each step. Tights aren’t enough, because holes are soon wear through them. My arm flaps (called bat wings…charming) cause me no physical irritation. They are the only loose skin that does not. Instead they challenge me every time I wish to go out the door in a sleeveless top or dress. One time, while working in the kitchen of a pizza place, the owner asked if I lost a lot of weight. Yeah, I told him. He pointed at my arms and said he’s seen those reality shows where people lose a lot of weight and they always have “flabby” arms after. I gave him a half smile and generous grunt and turned away from the fryers. He continued to go on about how I should wear these skin tents like “badges of honor.” I’ve heard and still do hear that a lot. In an ideal situation I would say, yeah, sure. That sounds great. I am damn proud and I worked damn hard. Yet here I am just frying up some chicken wings and there you are commenting on my body. It might be a different kind of comment than “fat ass” but it is bred from the same fascination to consume and comment upon someone else’s form when it strays from the tight skin we are accompanied to expecting. Additionally, I was, at the time, dedicated to an arm routine that did little to tighten the skin despite various promises from trainers and online advice forums (I spent what is probably at least a year of my life researching how I could re-shape myself without surgery). My boss’s comments, though I thought him a kind and often considerate human, were a reminder that I’ll never pass as someone who, at one time, didn’t weigh nearly twice what I do now. I will always have marks that indicate the years I spent shamed in public spaces. I will never, despite effort, be free of skin flaps or – if I were to ever invest the thousands to restructure my body – generous scars. Sometimes I research the costs of each procedure I would need were I to make my body resemble how it would look had I always weighed what I do now. It’s more than I have ever made in a year. Then I pretend I can look at them like “badges of honor,” but each time someone stares at my arms I fold into myself and blush a little. Granted, they are often looking at my tattoos, but the chance that it could be those delightful bat wings sends me into automatic tuck and cover mode. I realize that what partially prevents me from viewing my body as something to be revered for its power and transformation is an insidious ideal of beauty that locks one image as the trifecta. I haven’t met a single person who meets this ideal, but everyone I’ve discussed it with (I am including men) is impacted by it or has been. Yet I am not going to talk about this poisonous ideal, because really – I talk about it a lot and I will gladly talk with you about it too – just send an email my way. Instead I want to talk about repetition. My skin complicates self-love not only because of the ideal, but also because the efforts I have put into my transformation, the resources I have dedicated, and the daily struggle to maintain it doesn’t show through – least of all to myself. It isn’t solely about meeting or even coming close to an ideal. It is also about living inside of a large body your entire life, being shamed for that body, hating that body … only to occupy a smaller body that still resembles the larger body. I still have to consider fabrics. Skin hangs over jeans in a manner similar to the way my fat used to, because skin is so pliable it even creeps and hangs over jeans that are too large. This is further complicated by the fact that my two back flaps fall right above my waist, giving me what I begrudgingly refer to as “flapjacks” even when I am wearing over-sized garments. Also, shirts cling to my back flaps (which would cost $5500 out of pocket to remove because insurance won’t cover that procedure) in the same way it clung to the fat roll that used to be there. I can’t partake in vigorous exercise without binding my body because it smacks the same way it used to when it was fat instead of skin. When I lift bare arms in public the skin swishes from side to side. When I am in intimate situations I cover myself with my arms, stretch my back long, and apologize profusely for the way that I look. I believe women are programmed to apologize – especially when we can’t make ourselves smaller as we are so often encouraged to do, but I really did think the apologies would cease when I lost the weight. They haven’t. Sometimes, because of my strange sense of humor, I contemplate writing a disclaimer card that I would give to lovers before the lights get low. When I get into relationships my partners have to have “the talk,” where I tell them that sometimes I rage in front of the mirror when, binders and shapers aside, I can’t find a way to hide the “badges of honor” that fall over me. When getting ready for I night out I encourage them to avoid the dressing area until I reappear. I don’t want them to see the overwhelming frustration that is marked by throwing garments, cussing, and sometimes crying. Even in situations where I am engaged in conversation with folks (such as seminars, meetings, etc…) I have noticed that I have a tendency to cross my arms. A professor once shamed me for this -- saying I should uncross my arms and “stop being so defensive.” I covered by saying I was cold (this was partially true, it was quite frigid in that house), but we were critiquing my paper and when multiple eyes are on me I have a tendency to cross my arms in the hope that they won’t look down to where they might see the multiple folds of skin whispering through fabric. The crossed arms are a barrier when there is no desk to hide behind. I avoid this in the classroom through layering kimonos, blazers, and cardigans. I avoid sitting down so the lumps don’t bunch. I find that, even after losing 140 pounds and keeping it off for 8 years, I am still working to bind myself. This is why the skin matters. This is why wearing the marks of weight loss as “badges of honor” isn’t possible – because to do so it would mean always illustrating a willingness to share my story and discuss my body. I spent decades either discussing my body or hiding when folks were rabidly critiquing my body. Going out in public with my skin flaps showing as “badges of honor” means inviting more stares, critiques, and questions - though they may be different than those that followed my obese form they still come from the same problematic structure that encourages us to belittle difference or continually center it as spectacle. This spectacle is often used as a celebratory tool to prop up those “why didn’t they just lose the weight” questions or as a warning to others to never get fat in the first place. While some days are certainly better than others, and I do feel much better about myself and my journey, it is important that we discuss why we expect folks who have lost weight to perform the skinny fat person role - someone there for our educational benefit. It is time we stop asking people why they didn’t lose weight sooner or how they lost it and instead just listen to what they want to say – trust me, if someone wants to talk about their weight loss with you they will invite you to participate. I often do. But pointing out someone’s skin – or hearing about their weight loss and interrogating them without invitation into what is essentially a personal and sometimes painful portion of their lives – only serves to situate these individuals as objects to learn from and symbols to hold others against. I don’t want anyone held against me, because I spent my life being held against others. So, if you want to ask a question without invitation I implore you to ask how we, as socially inspired actors, can change the conversation surrounding obese bodies without consuming the scars of transformation as an inspiring gimmick (here’s looking at you Biggest Loser).  Stevie at 18 years old |
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 When I was larger and I would discuss my troubles with others – the topics ranging everywhere from body shame to small theatre seats – people would often ask “well, why don’t you just lose the weight.” I want to discuss the complexities of this question and why it is highly problematic.
First, the implication present in this question is that slender bodies are better and thus this question contributes significantly to the propagation of violent beauty myths that imprison what I imagine to be a majority of individuals. Asking “why don’t you just lose the weight” instead of asking why seats aren’t made larger, for example, illustrates a complacency with the ways in which bodies are surveilled and shamed through spatial organizing, media ideals, fashion policing, and the like. Through asking this question you are essentially stating that you think the suffocating ideal of thinness that is enforced in every public and most private places is not only apt but desirable. Instead we should be asking why our spaces are organized in the manner that they are, why large bodies intimidate folks, and what capital gains from forcing a size 6 down women’s throats … just to name a few. Second, this question wholly supports a flawed and dangerous vision of ability that finds footing on the foundation of the meritocracy. It obscures the ways in which many folks can’t “just” lose weight due to ability, age, health issues, income, employment demands etc… I lost my weight through diet and exercise. I lived off of protein bars, chicken, tuna, and green vegetables. I spent three times as much money on groceries doing this. To do this I had to sacrifice already scarce leisure activities, and ended up with credit card debt as well. Even so, I was privileged to have access to a credit card and a job that paid me enough to invest in my health through clean eating. Also, I worked only one job, so food preparation was possible. Before losing weight I often worked two and sometimes three jobs. I ate on the go and I ate what was fast and pre-packaged. I was poor, so when I made friends with fast food workers in the mall they would slip me free or discounted fried toxicity. When you are hungry, a processed sandwich that doesn’t mold is still far better than nothing at all. It also fills you more than an apple – and they cost the same. You figure out ways to satiate your hunger through spending less and obtaining quick meals. I also had access to a kitchen with working appliances and pots and pans. Years before my weight loss I spent a few months living out of my car, which prevented any form of healthy eating. You can’t eat a salad for lunch or chicken for dinner without a refrigerator to store it in, a stove to cook it on, and a pan to cook it in. When I finally had enough for a place I was working all of the time, so again the temporal luxury of food preparation that is necessary for weight loss is something not available to all. If one also considers that most obese individuals are of poor or working classes we can begin the trace the ways in which systems of capital make it near impossible for vulnerable bodies to eat healthy let alone lose weight if they desire to. I was also able to purchase a gym membership. Let us also consider that I am also largely able bodied, and while I was very large I was still able to nail an elliptical three or four times a week. These are only some of the considerations that questions such as “why don’t you just lose weight” obscure. When we ask this questions we are erasing the complexities and vulnerabilities that folks navigate every day. When we ask this question we are assuming another human being exists in the same ways we do. I wish to stress that assuming this does not make someone a villain, as it is common to judge the world through our own experiences. Yet it is also comfortable to do that. What this question does is erase the discomfort necessary to learn, grow, and listen. Third, this question further interrogates bodies that are shamed and humiliated on a daily basis. This question places blame on the individual who exists in particular, political circumstances instead of on systems of power and inequity that work to keep individuals in dire straits. This question, and those similar to it (such as why don’t you go on a diet, why don’t you get a surgery, why don’t you try walking an extra mile) propel conversations of inadequacy and ineptitude while simultaneously seeking to erase stories of great import. Those questions contribute to moments where young girls are daydreaming of cutting away their flesh. They contribute to barnyard noises shouted out of car windows. They contribute to photos that are cruelly posted online with captions like “someone let the pig out of the barn.” While they often come from a place of good intentions, they – like telling someone they are beautiful in “their own way” – are poison. They are implicated in the maintenance of pain and cruelty. They are implicated in a routine and toxic conversation that states some bodies are worth more than others. Furthermore, they have the potential to instill a sense of failure into people who desperately need encouragement. Each time this question is asked there is an air of judgment beneath it that cuts and burns. I encourage people to consider that not every person who is deemed “large” wants to lose weight, and that’s ok. I have heard the argument about health and higher costs of health care (we healthy folks shouldn’t pay more for them). What of individuals who utilize tanning beds and further their risk of cancer? What of the folks who often wear heels and further their risks of damaged leg tendons and nerves? My point is not that we should start interrogating those folks. My point is that we should stop judging others based on what they do or do not have on their body. My point is that we live in a society that is incredibly dangerous. From air pollutants, water contamination, GMO’s, and streams of radiation emanating from our various electronic devices – we are all going to need healthcare and there isn’t a single way to guarantee which body will need more or who will pay for it. Nor should that be our concern. Our concern should be securing a system of ethical care that nurtures all bodies equally without reference to those who can pay. Our concern should be cultivating a kinder and more accepting world that doesn’t encourage humans to traumatize others with their cruelty. The various mechanisms of power in place are really quite adept at inflicting trauma – they don’t need assistance and we should, as socially conscious actors, resist the hell out of them. We should begin creating a better space where we talk to strangers instead of belittling them; where we help someone struggling instead of walking by; where we call out problematic statements, jokes, and questions instead of pretending we didn’t hear. We are all guilty, but we should release our guilt. Guilt serves no purpose other than keeping us frozen. Instead we should seek out the stories of others as opposed to assuming we know them. We should dig for the problematic questions and work to eradicate them. We should start a new conversation.  In 2005 I sojourned to Rhode Island from Utica, NY to see a rock and roll band play. I was with two good friends, both of whom were attractive, kind, and much thinner than I. I always had a terrible habit of comparing myself to the people I was with – feeling somewhat misplaced and always far too visible when my girth was placed alongside their more slender forms. On the way to the show we stopped off at a rest area – the three of us stood in front of the mirrors atop the sinks and primped, as they say. Of course as big as I felt, when I looked at them I felt bigger – more out of place because there was no space big enough to hold me.
There was a scale in the bathroom – one of those pay $.25 and get your weight carnival-esque type machines. I avoided scales. It had been years since I stepped on one. I decided to try. I weighed over 330 pounds. I knew I had gained some since leaving high school, but I didn’t realize it was so much. I was crushed. I felt nauseous. My self-disgust reached new heights in the public restroom of a parking area on the highways between New York and Rhode Island. My only sanctuary was the metal walls of a stall that millions of strangers had visited over time. I turned to my friend and asked her if she could tell that I weighed so much. She said she could but it was ok because I was beautiful in my own way and fuck anyone who said different. ***Please, if you take anything from this blog, I hope you take this --- avoid telling people that they are beautiful “in their own way.” Avoid telling someone that, while they are not pretty like girls in magazines, they have their “own look” about them. You shine a light on the fact that they don’t fit, and while these words come from a place of good intentions they are poison. They are a condemnation. It is not about supporting the status quo. It is not about buying into ideals. It is not about wishing to fit a fabricated and violent mold. It is about breaking those things. It is about not being compared against something that's done nothing except haunt you. It is about not feeling as if there is something wrong with you. It is about not being made to feel like the unwilling spectacle or cabinet of curiosities even around those closest to you.*** I went into those public metal walls and I closed my eyes. I imagined cutting myself away with scissors and tying the pieces back together. Even the scars would be an improvement. I almost drove back, but I always felt at home at shows. In a room of misfits – tattoos, mohawks, torn clothes, missing teeth – I didn’t feel hyper-visible. When the dance began it didn’t matter what you wore or looked like, it mattered that you could keep pace and move or stand back in grand appreciation. I always kept the pace up; it was part of my resistance. I decided to go. I was wearing a mauve shirt cut wide at the shoulders with a black camisole underneath. This particular shirt had black felt birds scattered around the neckline and I loved it because it was hip. Finding great clothes when you’re obese and on a strict budget is pretty much a modern purgatory filled with shame, frustration, and often times a good deal of bathroom and/or fitting room breakdowns. It seems retailers and fashion designers are hell-bent on dressing obese bodies in denim button downs with embroidered birdhouses, because it hides the body. It screams that the body isn’t sexual – it isn’t a threat and it is laughable. It is something to decorate in mellow patterns because that body shouldn’t want to stand out – it should want to hide and fold itself into pastel colored pop tents. There is something ultimately comical about affordable plus-size clothing – always in pastels or grayscale with three-daisy buttons or some other ridiculous and infantile accompaniment (like birdhouses). When a body is dressed in these garments it becomes safer. These clothing styles state that the wearer is like a grandmother or a child, they are not a threat, and warm. They are not witty, sexual, or confident. Skirts are never cut short or tight, pants often have elastic waist bands, and shirts avoid low necklines. The goal is to cover the skin as much as possible, to suffocate it underneath layers that deny the existence of mass. Of course there are many great shops dedicated to plus-size fashion, and there are some cute styles there. You pay for those styles. Such stores are not as common as the local Sears and they are far more expensive. This too states that if you are fat you are going to pay. You are going to venture away from the skinny shoppers and you are going to spend an entire paycheck on two outfits – all so you don’t look like an Easter egg when you walk out the door. Even stores that have a plus-size section divide the store so that the thin folks and the large folks don’t look through the same racks. As an obese woman you are relegated to an over-there space – it is easier to keep track of the bodies then, and it keeps bodies in their “place”. So, I was wearing this shirt that I was really quite fond of and in the midst of the dance the shirt was pulled widely around me. The boat neckline that was such a refreshing change from the chokingly high crew neck wasn’t a smart choice for a rock and roll show. Let me explain that, while I often had individuals grab my body or clothing maliciously while oinking at me or making some other such barnyard noise, this was not what happened here. When you dance you lose your footing, you start to fall, and you grab hold of whatever is near. When you dance you are surrounded by bodies – all sweating and bumping against one another. A casualty of the dance is torn or stretched and pulled clothes. Yet I felt vulnerable and exposed and deeply shamed. No one was looking at me (that I knew of) because the high from the show was too thick. But there I was, my shirt drooped to near waist and I wanted to cry. I had a brilliant time dancing, but all the parts I had been trained to hide were in view – the sleeves had fallen so my shoulders were showing, my fleshy arms available for all. The camisole, while covering my breasts, was dreadfully tight and clung to the roll of fat below my chest. I remember quickly drawing the shirt up and tucking as much of the neckline as I could under my bra and camisole straps. Then I ran out the nearest door, both from heat and the determination not to be seen. But the door led right to the entrance of the tour bus. This was serendipitous in its own way because it gave me the opportunity to meet the band. Yet while hugging two of my (then) favorite musicians I was painfully aware of my body overflowing around them. I flushed with shame when I asked the lead singer to sign my ankle (it was symmetrical to a tattoo a have on the other leg) and I had to hold onto the shoulder of a friend to both stay balanced and support my leg with my other hand. I decided on the way home – both riding the waves of euphoria that follow a great show and considering how my body shame took such joy from me – that I had to change something. Something had to give. I had come to this realization multiple times before. I lived my life dreaming of a different body. I even wrote a story about a magical portal that takes people to a factory where they can assemble their form from doll parts for the price of their empathy. It was a price I probably would have paid then. Unfortunately, the real-time monetary price to lose weight – and make no mistake, it takes incredible financial resources to healthily drop pounds from your form – was too high. It would be another two years before I had the ability to do so.  In less than one week I am having a fold of skin removed from my abdomen. It is the remnant of the loss of 140 pounds. It is a marker of how far I’ve come. My shame over it is a reminder of how far I have yet to go. As the surgery draws near I find myself juggling complex thoughts regarding transformation, shame, embodiment, and voice – I totter between wishing to share my story and silencing it. It is not easy to admit that I am having cosmetic surgery, and it is not easy to discuss the deep-rooted body dysmorphia I navigate, or the impact that has had on my selves and on my relationships.
I offer these words to begin a conversation I feel we need to have – about how we see our selves, others, and the treatments that result. I offer these words as a political statement: every story has worth and perhaps with one sharing another will be encouraged to do the same. Maybe we can work towards a bridge across our experiences without consuming the life of another. The plan is to write a series of blogs – with great ambition I have decided one per day until the surgery – that details many stages of my transformation and the new worlds I have traveled since losing weight. I do hope you’ll join the conversation. Part I – Big Body Matters In Kindergarten I weighed 120 pounds. I remember the school nurse lecturing me and making a phone call to my parents. I didn’t understand then why this was a big deal or why we should have to talk about it so much. I knew I was bigger than the other children, but that didn’t seem to matter before I entered school. I realized quite quickly that it did matter. My body, or rather the ways in which my body occupied space (too much), did matter to those around me. It was too large. I moved too slowly. I breathed too heavily. The taunts started at five and lasted until twenty-three, when I began a journey to lose weight. School was hellish. I imagine it is for most of the misfits and wayward souls. I could be wrong about that, though. I don’t think I am. People screamed out my name (Stephanie) as Step-on-me “or don’t because the fatass will break your back.” Boys grabbed at the folds of excess weight in the hallways and laughed. Sometimes when walking through the halls people would oink or moo behind me. Always there was a reminder that I didn’t quite fit into the world the way people wished that I would. I couldn’t fold in on myself, and I didn’t want to shrivel underneath their words. I cried on the last day of classes when I watched my high school fade in the side mirror. It was joy. I weighed over 300 pounds yet still found a space to believe in a different, less painful existence. I thought things would be different now – as if those halls were the only place folks are expected to cut themselves down under bodily expectations. Of course this was quite wrong and foolishly naïve, but we need hope to get us by and sometimes we store too much of it in the wrong place. What happened in hallways shifted onto the streets. People love to scream out of their car windows. “Buy a treadmill.” Of course fatass endured. I still don’t exactly understand the appeal of that particular taunt because, realistically, most asses are fat. It wasn’t just walking around my city - this happened everywhere. Folks in restaurants stared with morbid fascination while I ate. The clerk at the grocery store scrutinized each purchase made. The doctor shamed me. Employers asked if I thought I was “up to the pace” of retail. Eyes followed me around the mall where I worked, as if I were there for their entertainment – a body created for them to measure themselves against and praise their own form against my own. I was an unwilling spectacle. Yet I presented myself as proud and fierce. I learned in school that if you broke in front of them you didn’t inspire mercy – you just waved blood under the nose of a very emaciated hound. They bit deeper when you broke. Perhaps guilt made them dig deeper, or power. Either way, I presented strong and full and sometimes convinced myself that I was. Underneath it all I hated myself. I stood in front of mirrors and cried a lot. I refused compliments that centered my physicality. I admired other, more beautiful bodies and day dreamed they were my own. And I was angry. I was angry nearly all of the time. Most of all I was angry at myself for being angry, because I knew the taunts and occasional assaults were the result of minds supersaturated in a field of normality politics that excludes all – even those who embrace the rhetoric. I knew that centerfolds poisoned minds. I knew that money affords things not available to all. I knew that it wasn’t as much about me as it was about the relentless stream of messages that proclaim how we and others should be. And I knew these things deep in my soul, but that doesn’t change the effects of cruelty or the brutality of self-hate. It doesn’t mitigate the moments where you desperately wish to be someone different. In the end it came down to a decision – lose the weight or continue to break myself down in front of glass and in the lonely corners where folks couldn’t see (and sometimes where they could). Now, that sounds simple. I want to clarify that the decision, the journey, the maintenance … none of it is simple. It is mired in hard choices, demands for resources, and new sets of shame and guilt alongside celebration. It is, quite simply, a road you never stop walking. It is a voice that carries, and it is rich and terrible in both beauty and trauma. |
AuthorStevie N. Berberick is an Assistant Professor of Communication Arts at Washington and Jefferson College. Stevie often finds themself hostessing solitary dance parties in the kitchen, hanging out with their furrmiliars (Ivy and Halle), or playing with alchemy while electroforming jewelry -- when they're not reading, researching, and/or writing, that is. Archives
May 2020
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