Fat.

I am angry.

Actually, angry is too kind of a word. I am livid. Indignant. Furious. Enraged.

I am tumultuously, turbulently pissed off, and I'm going to tell you why.

I, like many of you, have become a fan of Catfish over the past year. Although it's something I don't tell too many people, there was a time in my life when a big part of my social life revolved around online relationships. Some of you may remember Prodigy; when I started high school at a brand new school without any friends, overweight, two years younger than most of my classmates, with a mom whose chronic illness was just starting to get pretty bad and making life at home pretty stressful, Prodigy was my savior. It was a place I could go and be myself and get away without being judged for the way that I looked in a world that is so adept at doing just that so swiftly and viciously, and for well over a year, I spent most of my time online talking to some pretty amazing people. As I got a bit older, began to lose weight, and gained self confidence, I grew out of my online phase, though I'm actually still friends with some of those people to this day. Still, watching Catfish brings so much of that back. I've never "catfished" anyone, but certainly knew that it was possible to care about someone that you'd never met, and even fall in love with them. Of course the premise of the show was interesting to me. I lived it, once, many years ago.

But that's not the point of this blog.

I noticed a disturbing trend during the first season of the show that I brushed off then, despite the fact that it hit so close to home. Now that we're pretty far in to the second season, I can't ignore it anymore. I was twenty minutes in to Tuesday night's episode when I had to shut the TV off and come here to get this off my chest before I could watch any more, because it literally brought me to tears.

What the ever loving fuck is wrong with this world that we live in, that beautiful, kind, and caring women feel, and believe deep down in the very cores of their beings, that being loved by a man and being overweight are mutually exclusive?

Look, I am going to say this once: I do not believe it's right to lie. I don't believe it's right to lead someone on, online or otherwise, with false information. I believe in personal responsibility. But to anyone who has never been overweight, you don't know what it's like, and you will never know what it's like. Period. End of story.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard or saw someone thin say or write online on a message board or in response to an article about the obesity epidemic in America, "well if you eat less and work out more you'd lose weight" or "well if you don't want to be fat anymore, then change," I would have enough money to accomplish the overthrow and reinvention of the putrid messaging that our society bombards and brainwashes us with every single second of every day. Are those things true? Definitely. If you work out more and eat less, then you will (most of the time, anyway) lose weight. If you don't want to be fat anymore, then you can alter your lifestyle to change that. But pretending that it's easy, that it's a simple solution, that it doesn't come with the stress of dodging the minefields of every social encounter imaginable, because they always revolve around food and drink of some sort, that it doesn't come with the stress of the unfair way our society perceives and judges you, as lazy and unmotivated and disgusting, and how sad and lonely and depressing it can be, that it doesn't come with tears and pain and frustration.... that's just cruel. It's not a simple solution. It's a solution borne of painful changes and learning and growth that requires a lot of love and support and patience from the people around you and unfortunately, not everyone has that luxury.

And how much do you want to bet that the thin person running their mouth just finished eating some sort of junk food that they are fortunate enough that their body can metabolize correctly, while the person they're bashing is trying to feel content on the 4 ounces of grilled chicken and boiled broccoli they had for dinner during yet another attempt at dieting that will most likely, eventually, fail?

If it was that easy, you stupid, stupid people, wouldn't everyone be thin?

Side note: To be clear, I'm not referring to you, dear reader. I mean society in general. I love my readers. :)

At what point do we stop with the fat-shaming and take a look at everything that is wrong with our society, and they way they treat people who are overweight? At what point do we look at the fact that it's cheaper to buy a family of four dinner at McDonald's than it is to buy a healthy meal at the grocery store? Or the fact that that "healthy" meal at the grocery store isn't even healthy at all; that the hormones, and antibiotics, and fillers, and chemicals that the government has allowed companies to put into our food render pretty much anything we eat harmful to our body in some way, shape or form? At what point do we stop letting the entertainment industry tell us who is beautiful and who isn't, and learn to judge for ourselves based on who a person is inside, instead of out? At what point do we realize that all this negativity drives overweight people back into the arms of food - food that comforts, and fills, and can't talk back or reject or judge or shame?

I bet some of you are thinking, "Well, if people don't eat healthy and don't work out, then what do they expect? Of course they're going to be fat. Why are we blaming society? What about personal responsibility?"

Okay then, how about we give "people" a face? When I refer to "people" in this blog, let's assume we're talking about me. I'm sure anyone that knows me would agree that I truly do believe in taking responsibility for myself and my actions, and I've struggled with my weight the entire life. I eat relatively healthy, but began emotionally eating as a coping mechanism a few years ago which caused a pretty big weight gain, and have been struggling to stop using food as a crutch ever since. It got even worse when my mom died last year, but I'm still fighting. I believe in personal responsibility, and I struggle every day to make healthy choices, not just because I want to be thin and beautiful, but because I care about my health as well. I want to feel good just as much as I want to look good.

But what if I told you one of my deepest, darkest fears; that no man will ever love me if I don't lose weight? That if I don't lose weight, I'll never get married and have children, which is something I really want for myself in this life? What if I told you that this fear wasn't unfounded - that it wasn't something I developed on my own? What if I told you that it was based on conversations I've sat and listened to with male friends of mine - "friends" of mine - who talked about how they couldn't date this person because she was too fat, or gave other guy friends of mine a hard time for dating "fatties", while I was sitting right there, wondering what the fuck they said about me when I wasn't around? Or that it was based on a night in college when I met a nice guy and was having a great conversation with him and his friends actually came in to get him and said, just loud enough that I could hear, "Dude, we're not letting you go home with a fatty"? Or that it was based on my experiences with online dating; how every time I decide to give it a try I come across profile after profile where a man will say, flat out in his "About Me" section, "I don't date overweight women"? Or that it was based on the fact that every time I turn on the TV or go to see a movie I am told over and over and over again by the beautiful celebrities we all worship that I, and my body, are not good enough?

Honestly, after years of these kinds of experiences, what am I supposed to think?

What would you think, if it were you?

How about the fact that, today, while being bombarded with food and treats and drinks at work, I almost made it through the entire day without indulging and after I finally did, I sat in my car and cried because I was so disappointed and frustrated with myself? Or the fact that I'm scared to eat in public because I don't want people looking at me and thinking, "she really shouldn't be eating that"? Because you know that they do. You've done it yourself, I'm sure. I know I have, and every time I catch myself doing it, it breaks my heart.

I don't want my weight to define me, but it does. It defines me entirely. Perhaps that makes me weak. Maybe I should be able to ignore all of the negativity around being overweight that I've been bombarded with for the entirety of my life, but it's pretty difficult. With a million voices around me screaming that there is something inherently wrong with me simply because I'm not thin, it's hard to scream loud enough back at them to be heard. It's hard to scream loud enough to even hear myself.

I am struggling to lose weight because I want to feel comfortable in my own skin; because I want to feel beautiful; and, as I mentioned, because I want to be healthy. But don't think that I don't have this anger simmering inside me at the fact that I have to lose weight to feel this way; that I have to lose weight in order to feel beautiful and fit in. Because the fact of the matter is, even when I was at a healthy weight, according to society's standards, I was still fat. And that's how it will always be for me.

And so I watch these episodes of Catfish where, over and over, a girl lies to a boy about the way she looks because she is, in reality, overweight, and believes/knows (you choose, but in my mind, "knows" is the correct word to use there) that, if the boy she's talking to finds out what she really looks like, he won't give her the time of day, and every single time the girl comes clean, the guy wants nothing to do with her. Don't tell me that the reason he wants nothing to do with her is because she lied, because you know damn well that if she looked like Jennifer Aniston or Scarlett Johansson or some Victoria's Secret model, the lying would be a moot point. After all, the high school football star quarterback never dates anyone but the blonde, thin and beautiful head cheerleader, right?

So really, in these episodes, who is the villain? In my eyes, it's both of them. The girl shouldn't have lied. And the guy shouldn't have been an asshole about her being overweight. Sure, there's something to be said for being physically attracted to someone, but these are people who have been talking to each other, sharing the intimate details of their lives, for years; if you really care about the person the way you said you did, it wouldn't be such a deal breaker. I can say this with confidence, because I've been through it. The guys on Catfish are never stupid enough to say it on camera, but you know damn well what they're thinking: "No way I'm going to date a fatty." And as I watch it happen over and over again, episode after episode, it makes me want to scream, because something has got to change. 

I don't know what the answer is. I wish I did. And when I think about how badly I want to effect this change, I get so overwhelmed at the reality of the fact that I'm only one person - how could I even begin to make a difference? How can I begin to try to change the thinking of the billions of people on this planet? I don't know if I can, or if anyone ever will. I just wish with all my heart that it didn't have to be this way, because it hurts more than you will ever know. Until then, I'll just keep hoping that someday, on an episode of Catfish, the guy will learn the truth, and will still love her anyway.