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Confessions of a (Former?) Fat Kid
I grew up as the only chunkster in an immediate family of very thin, fit-looking people. While my mother has always been slim and elegant, my dad was constantly shredded from coaching wrestling, and my brother had been blessed by the skinny genes, I struggled with even finding jeans. Consequently, I was mocked by my peers from a young age, called stupid names like “whale” and “fatty”. I didn’t help myself with my insistence on wearing cowboy gear — spurs and all — to class, flamboyantly paired with my favourite fleece sweatpants. Call me the inventor of modern fashion. When I thinned out in junior high, somehow I still managed to be fat by extension — my first crush was a sweet and dorky country boy named who our harsh peers had nicknamed “moobs” (man-boobs) because he had a little extra padding. I vehemently defended him, but the jibes stuck to me like marshmallow fluff on a graham cracker. Consequently my self-image was such that even when I got thin playing high school sports, I had a very different idea about the way I looked.
I was surrounded by people who had unhealthy outlooks on food and fitness, and during my high school years, before the body positivity movement became widespread, there was an emphasis on the shame surrounding bodies that were different. The pressure to fit in was intense, and the fit was tight — it had no room for larger bodies. Despite the fact that I was…
