The Making of Me

Sometimes I can be conflicted with the word beauty. I lived in a world where beauty was one dimensional and I amongst other women had no choice to accept it. Although there were men who secretly appreciated us, we still did not fit the mold of celebration and it hurt many people who shared my physical likeness.

If you don’t like what you see.. change it! Is a phrase easier said than done when you were deeply in love with fried chicken and cookies, you craved the taste for peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches in the middle of the night and you couldn’t leave a store with out some type of candy in your bag. All changes has to start from within but the only thing I wanted within me was ice cream. It seems funny I know, but I amongst a few million people were dealing with a sickness we didn’t even know had a medical term until we went to see a doctor who said we were obese. Obese? Who made up this word I often wondered knowing that they probably shared snickers and laughs amongst their slimmer cohorts. All I wanted to do was be treated equally... fairly, but this was just my early teenage years. I had no idea what life had in store for me or my kind.

During my middle school years I was very angry. Angry because I was usually the butt of somebody’s fat joke. And we didn’t call it “bullying” back then. I was insecure and experienced low self esteem and I couldn’t take the pressure of being “cracked on”. Most of the time I would end up fighting and being reprimanded and suspended I didn’t know how to accept and love myself because I was told I was ugly. Society said I was ugly and no one told me different. I struggled to wake up some days. I didn’t even know at the time I was depressed. I just knew that eating made me feel better and with 6 kids in the home we always had food.

It was my second year of high school. Although I had friends, I still was the butt of people’s jokes. I didn’t take it as personal as I used to by this time. I calmed down with the fighting and with my grandmothers coaching, I had learned to ignore them. I was never lazy, I was a very active teenager and I was always into something I just didn’t look the part. One day, I was leaving class trying to make it to the 3rd floor before Math began, my teacher was a big douche so you had to be on time. A senior sipping water at the fountain saw me and figured he would try to impress his other goofy friends by throwing his joke in my direction. He was about 5’11 very dark-skinned pretty popular with a nice smile. I didn’t know what came over me. With my hands tightly clenched on the straps of my book bag I took a deep breath to match my long gaze and I just started cracking my jokes back! All I remember saying was,”I know you ain’t talking?!” And before I knew we were in the middle of a circle and we were laughing and joking until we were broken up by the late bell and security ushering everyone to their classes. I felt good.. great! He playfully pushed me and with laughter still falling from his lips he walked away. I didn’t even care about being late. Once I found my funny bone I began to find my confidence and being fat was just a part of me. I started to accept myself and people started to notice.

I started to attract some of the finest guys ever. Eventhough bbws were still not trending, the boys or the men still didn’t mind being seen loving on us. My nickname even had “Big” in it and I loved to hear it. There were a lot of big pretty women and handsome big men and on social media were started groups for people like us and our admirers. We used to have meet and greets and everything because we realized that if no one would celebrate us, we would do it on our own! And let me tell you, the fun we would have from the food to the dancing and romancing these events were the greatest and I tried my best to be at each and every last one of them.

I would say now and since about 2006 we were starting to become celebrated and accepted in society. I’m guessing the fact that obesity was a world wide pandemic at this point and some of your favorite friends and family shared this “curse”. We were known to many as “size sexy”. There were BBW models on and off the runway and in magazines posting in underwear, sleek and chic dresses. And yes we weren’t healthy. But you can be a size 2 and still not be healthy. I was told once healthy is a state of mind and that you can be a size 22 and be healthy. But these days the difference in me personally is that I don’t live to eat anymore, I eat to live. I had to let my old habits die because I love myself enough to know my limits. I’m still human I still have sweets every now and then but I’m eating a lot cleaner these days and having a healthy mind, breaking free of negative thoughts and patterns, depression is a thing of my past.I’m still size sexy. I just learned to love and take care of myself. I am beautiful.