Things only became more surreal. The photographer had two assistants who would hand him the camera or lens he wanted. He told me where to stand and how to pose like an action figure. He wanted me to loosen up, but I am not good at loosening up when a camera is pointed at me. Eventually I got the hang of it and cracked a smile or two. I started to feel cool, like I was having a moment. Then I remembered what would happen when these images were published. I knew I would be mocked, demeaned and degraded simply for existing. Just like that, the moment was gone.
In the early days, before there were a lot of pictures of me available online, I would show up to an event and organizers would often look right through me. At one event, a gathering of librarians, a man asked if he could help me and I said, “Well, I am the keynote speaker.” His eyes widened and his face reddened and he stammered, “Oh, okay, I’m the man you’re looking for.” He was neither the first person nor will he be the last to have such a reaction. People don’t expect the writer who will be speaking at their event to look like me. They don’t know how to hide their shock when they realize that a reasonably successful writer is this overweight. These reactions hurt, for so many reasons. They illustrate how little people think of fat people, how they assume we are neither smart nor capable if we have such unruly bodies.
Before events I get incredibly stressed. I worry that I will humiliate myself in some way—perhaps there won’t be chairs I can fit in, or perhaps I won’t be able to stand for an hour, and on and on my mind goes.
And then, sometimes, my worst fears do come true. When I was on book tour for Bad Feminist, I did an event in New York City at the Housing Works Bookstore to celebrate Harper Perennial’s fiftieth anniversary.
There was a stage, two or three feet off the ground, and no staircase leading to it. The moment I saw it, I knew there was going to be trouble. When it came time for the event to begin, the authors with whom I was participating easily climbed onto the stage. And then there were five excruciating minutes of me trying to get onto it too while hundreds of people in the audience stared awkwardly. Someone tried to help. Eventually a kind writer onstage, Ben Greenman, pulled me up as I used all the muscles I had in my thighs. Sometimes, my body is a cage in the most glaring ways. I was filled with self-loathing of an intense degree for the next several days. Sometimes, I have a flashback to the humiliation of that evening and I shudder.
After hauling myself up onstage, I sat down on a tiny wooden chair and the tiny wooden chair cracked and I realized, I am going to vomit and I am going to fall on my ass in front of all these people. After the humiliation I had just endured, I realized I was going to have to stay silent on both counts. I threw up in my mouth, swallowed it, and then did a squat for the next two hours. I am not sure how I did not burst into tears. I wanted to disappear from that stage, from that moment. The thing about shame is that there are depths. I have no idea where the bottom of my shame resides.
By the time I got back to my hotel room, my thigh muscles were shredded, but I was also impressed with how strong those muscles are. My body is a cage, but this is my cage and there are moments where I take pride in it. Still, alone in that hotel room, I sobbed and sobbed. I felt so worthless and so embarrassed. Words cannot convey. I sobbed because I was angry at myself, at the event organizers and their lack of forethought. I sobbed because the world cannot accommodate a body like mine and because I hate being confronted by my limitations and because I felt so utterly alone and because I no longer need the layers of protection I built around myself but pulling those layers back is harder than I could have ever imagined.
79
There is a price to be paid for visibility and there is even more of a price to be paid when you are hypervisible. I am opinionated,
and as a cultural critic I share my opinions regularly. I am confident in my opinions and believe I have a right to share
my point of view without apology. This confidence tends to upset people who disagree with me. Rarely are my actual ideas engaged.
Instead, my weight is discussed. “You are fat,” they say. Or, because, for example, I share that I love tiny baby elephants
in my Twitter bio, they make an elephant joke where I, of course, am the elephant.
While on a publicity tour in Sweden, I mentioned on Twitter that the Swedes had their own version of The Biggest Loser. A random stranger suggested I was the American export for the show. The harassment is a constant, whether I am talking about
something serious or trivial. I am never allowed to forget the realities of my body, how my body offends the sensibilities
of others, how my body dares to take up too much space, and how I dare to be confident, how I dare to use my voice, how I
dare to believe in the value of my voice both in spite of and because of my body.
The more successful I get, the more I am reminded that in the minds of a great many people I will never be anything more than
my body. No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.
80
During my twenties, I was broke. I remember the payday loans with the outrageous interest. There was so much ramen. Filling the gas tank with like five dollars at a time. Phone getting cut off. No health insurance for years and rare visits to the doctor. I had to get a CAT scan once, I can’t even remember why, and it took me years to pay off. I didn’t go to the dentist for years. This is not a sad story because I am lucky. This is just life, and frankly, I’ve had it easy in terms of material comfort. I am privileged. I always have been. I had a safety net because my parents would never have let me starve or be homeless, but I was on my own, as an adult should be, and I was often very, very broke. I was writing and no one was interested in that writing. I know, now, that I was putting in the work. I still am, of course, but back then I was just beginning to figure out how to use my voice in both fiction and nonfiction. I had a lot to learn and so I wrote and wrote and wrote and read and read and read and I hoped. I was going to school and then working and getting better and better jobs and then more school, and I was becoming a better writer and, very slowly, a better person. I became less broke, and then I was fine, not making that much but making enough money to always be able to handle my business. Twice in the past nine years I have moved and moving is expensive, but I could afford it. The last time I stood in my empty apartment before heading out, I sobbed. That is not something I am prone to doing. I allowed myself to feel everything. I allowed myself to acknowledge how far I have come. This isn’t bragging. This is an atlas.
During my twenties, my personal life was the hottest mess. The hottest. It will never be that messy again because I’ve grown up and I finally give enough of a damn about myself to avoid burning myself in that kind of fire. I’m still a mess, but I’m a different kind of mess now. I can generally identify what the mess is and where it’s coming from. I am learning to ask for help, slowly. I am learning a lot of things.
My eyes are wide open. They are prepared for whatever they might see.