KJK4044

Fact: I am fat. “Obese,” according to my last physical. Fifteen years ago, those sentences would have unraveled me. Fifteen years ago, I would have done (and did) anything - no matter how stupid or dangerous - to avoid the body I’m currently in. I would have starved, exercised to excess, tried any diet pill or weight-loss supplement or appetite suppressant that crossed my path.

But then I got older and fell in love with weightlifting and endurance sports, and I got healthy - truly healthy, instead of just thin. So when I put weight on in pregnancy, I didn’t stress. I was healthy, my baby was healthy, the rest was just details. And when I struggled to get the weight off after giving birth, I did my best to take it in stride. I set goals for my health, not the scale. I signed up for triathlons and ran and swam and biked. Of course I had passing negative thoughts - did I look like a whale in my swimsuit? Was I too fat to run in shorts and a tank top in public? Even as I had these thoughts, I was generally able to dismiss them. Surely no one was looking at me. And even if they were, who cared? I had just as much of a right as anyone to run in shorts and a tank top in the summer heat. I knew fatphobia and fat stigma were real, but who cared if some random neighbor had a negative thought about me while I ran by their house?

One afternoon, while running down a main road, a full water bottle sailed over my head and landed on the lawn next to me as a medium blue BMW sped off. For a split second, I wondered if the bottle was thrown at me on purpose, but it seemed too strange to be true. Plenty of people littered, especially on that stretch of road. It was probably just some idiot who wasn’t paying attention. Even so, I decided to get off the main road and finish my run on the neighborhood’s quieter side streets. A mile later, deep in the residential streets, a car approached me head-on. The medium blue BMW. As it neared me, it slowed. I half-paused, wondering if it was someone I knew, or someone lost and hoping for directions.

Instead, a teenaged boy, staring at me with disgust, leaned out of the passenger side window and threw a full bottle of water at me, hitting me in the stomach. I was flabbergasted. “Are you f*cking kidding me?!” I screamed. The car drove away as I scrambled to write down the plate number.

I thought about calling the police then and there, but it felt... excessive? Over-the-top?... to call 911 about a bottle of water. Besides, I was pretty certain that it was the same car that had thrown the bottle of water at me on the main road a mile ago and I didn’t want to wait around to see what would happen if it caught up with me a third time. I finished my run and went home and cried.

A few hours later, after learning through the grapevine that other runners had been similarly harassed but hadn’t gotten a plate number like I did, I filed a non-emergency police report. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, I repeatedly said to the officer. I just wanted to document it in case they did it again. “I run there with my toddler in a jogging stroller,” I explained. “I’m also a cyclist, if they did this to me when I was on my bike they could’ve seriously injured me,” I explained.

I did not say to the officer that it felt like I’d been targeted for being a fat woman, that the kid who threw the bottle looked at me with such hateful contempt that I immediately felt ashamed and powerless, even before the bottle hit me. I did not say how angry I was that these ridiculous little monsters ruined running for me, at least a little bit. I did not say that I felt afraid and embarrassed, and certain that I had brought this on myself by running outside during the day in shorts and a tank top while fat.

Even as I had these thoughts, even as I write them now, I know I have no reason to feel ashamed. But today, I put on a long-sleeve shirt and capris to run. I told myself it was because of the slight chill in the air. Because the long-sleeve shirt is high-visibility and it’s early and I wanted to be sure cars could see me. I told myself I was running a different route, the one I don’t really like, “for the challenge.” Maybe that’s all true. But also maybe I learned a lesson about being too fat in public. Or maybe it’s fairer to say that my subconscious has reverted to an old lesson, one I thought I’d gotten over five or ten years ago.

I hate that, for a while at least, I won’t fully know if my choices are mine or if they’re driven by the unearned, undeserved shame that’s wormed its way in behind the anger and fear. I hate that all I can think about now is when running season will end so I can credibly go back to hiding in my garage to work out alone, without people telling me that doing so is letting the harassers “win.” Because no matter what I do, there’s no denying that on some level, they’ve already won.

I have to think about them - about the fact that the adults who raised them to believe that they have a right to treat people this way are my neighbors. About the fact that people’s opinions about my body, and what they think my body says about me, can jeopardize my safety - and by extension, my toddler’s safety - at any time. I have to think about the fact that people who hear this story won’t take my word for it when I say that I believe that I was targeted for my body size because “there’s no proof.” The proof is in the face I saw looking at me as the bottle hit me. I know that look. Every person who has ever been fat knows that look.

I’m trying hard to forget. It was only water, after all. I wasn’t hurt. I didn’t even call the police for over two hours. I’m one of the lucky ones - they weren’t throwing rocks, or bottles of urine, or a frozen turkey (which nearly killed a woman a few towns over back in 2004). I wasn’t on my bike. I didn’t have my toddler or my dog with me. I’m lucky.

And yet I can’t help but feel as though whatever comes next has been irrevocably changed.