“…my crew don’t mind it thick (Uh-uh) / Every woman ain’t a video chick (Nah) / Or runway model anorexic / I love what I can hold and grab on…” Posdnuos, “Baby Phat” by De La Soul
In the South, we’re known for appreciating a “thick” woman, and for a very long time, I was upset that I didn’t have the hips, ass, and breasts my people lift in praise. My mother takes great pleasure in telling stories about how my adolescent self used to stand in the mirror, wondering where my curves were. If I’d had three wishes, one of them would’ve been to give me a fuller, more desired figure. Then I went to college in a city with some of the best food in the country. I found the curves I’d been looking for, and then some. I could tell my then-boyfriend wasn’t thrilled with the weight gain either, but family and friends kept telling me I finally looked like a woman.
After college graduation, I felt good about my weight because I was working out, and the weight had settled more proportionately. My exercise playlists were filled with hip-hop and r&b songs that were dedicated to bodies like mine that didn’t get acknowledged in film and television, unless the women were promiscuous or prostitutes. Sometimes there may have been only one or two lyrics focusing on women with ample figures, but it would be enough. During a time when video vixens had become the cultural equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders of my youth, I could imagine myself in a hip-hop video. And so I’d kick a little higher, squat a little deeper, knowing I was worthy of song.
The confidence I had in my body was better than it had been in years. I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw, and so did others. Men called me “thick,” desire weighing their eyelids and shining across their lips. Then a few months after I turned 25, I had to have major emergency surgery that left me with a long scar down the length of my torso, ruining the shape of my belly button, and leaving me with digestive issues. My crop top days were over. Bikinis became a part of the past. At 25, this was supposed to be the time I showed off my body the most. Now I had to worry about explaining the scar to intimate partners, hoping it wouldn’t scare them away. It didn’t. They’d kiss the re-knitted flesh to show they didn’t mind, and I’d look away.
Years passed and I found myself involved with another man who didn’t like the weight gain I was experiencing as we’d settled into our Old Couple Routine- weekend dinners out, after-work happy hours, lazy Sundays in bed or on the couch. One night in bed, he ran his hand down the length of my side and discovered a roll of flesh. He kept rubbing his hand against it. Soon he began making comments about my weight, my goals, my habits… The break-up was messy, stressful. He was the first guy I’d “played house” with and with him gone, I couldn’t sleep well any more. I’d take Tylenol P.M. to close my eyes for more than 15 minutes at a time. And I didn’t want to cook. I’d eat at work because my coworkers forced me, but at home, there didn’t seem to be any point if there was no one there to share food with. I started to lose weight, but I wasn’t healthy. Needless to say, it was a difficult time, and I decided I needed to leave the city to move on. He and I saw each other before I left, and he told me I was losing too much weight. His comment reinforced the idea that there would always be something for him to nitpick, and I was grateful to be running away to Los Angeles.
“You were perfect before you went on a diet / You was way thicker / You think I don’t remember…” Andre 3000, “Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)” by Lloyd
When I lived in Los Angeles, I never felt more invisible. My weight was all in my hips, thighs, ass, and not in an acceptable J.Lo or Kardashian way. There was no denying I was a Southern Black American, with no exotic mix of ethnicities to make my shape worthy of attention. I’d also moved at the height of the latest recession. Most of my professional experience is in education. Job prospects were terrible. I ended up working at various non-profit organizations, which meant my salary was laughable. Some days I’d have to call in sick to because I didn’t have enough gas to make it to work. I was losing money because I didn’t have money. I was also in a relationship with an emotionally unavailable man would go through depressive periods where he didn’t want to have sex for almost a month at a time. If I brought up the lack of intimacy, he’d initiate contact, but it was clearly done to shut me up. Sometimes he would wait until I’d go to sleep before masturbating to internet porn. I have no problem with porn. I enjoy it with partners, just as I enjoy it by myself. It was the idea that he seemed to prefer the solo intimacy that left me hurt.
I felt undesirable professionally and romantically. I turned to food to punish him and myself. If he didn’t want to spend time with me in bed, well, candy bars would enjoy my company. My increasing weight gain would be his fault, the result of his constant rejection. Using my body against him when he didn’t seem to care about it, at least not sexually, grew old quickly, and when the relationship ended, I wanted to get rid of the weight as if I were getting rid of him.
But depression had already taken over. Getting out of bed was a herculean task. Friends advised me to join a gym. I couldn’t. That cost money I didn’t have, from membership fees to additional gas for travel, and the neighborhoods I could live in on my educational non-profit salary weren’t safe for runs. I couldn’t afford to drive anywhere but work and home. Soon I weighed so much that, when I’d go home for visits, family and old friends would rear back in shock and ask disingenuous questions to see if I were pregnant, which would send me down another spiral of fueled by depression and anxiety. I was getting older and had a history of reproductive issues like inconsistent periods and benign ovarian cysts. Comparing my weight gain with that of pregnancy had reminded me of more issues with my body that I’d worry about until I’d chew my fingernails into nubs.
Turning to exercise channels on YouTube, I tried to work out at home, but a train of self-doubt circled my thoughts. I was fooling myself about the possibility of losing weight. Even if I lost the weight, would anyone want me? How would a new size get me a better career? Could I handle being slim again and still unwanted? The songs on my workout playlists now mocked me. I could be thick, but fat meant I’d become a joke. I could still be in the videos of these songs, but maybe as the big girl chasing the men who don’t want her because she’s too big, her footsteps shaking the camera. My depression made me feel ashamed of the significance I was placing on my weight and physical appearance. So many people across the world have so much more to worry about. How my body looks is nothing compared to people without food, shelter, or medicine. How dare I worry about something so ridiculous as double-digit-sized clothes? I began a seemingly unending cycle of feeling guilty for feeling bad. I didn’t know how to stop the endless thoughts that I was awful, no matter how I looked at myself.
“Big thick plumber chick…” Manny Fresh, “Back That Azz Up” by Juvenile
I decided to go back home to Nashville because I couldn’t handle being depressed in Los Angeles by myself. That train of voices chugged along, spewing the thought that I was wrong, wrong, wrong no matter what I did. I became suicidal and tried to keep it from my friends. Nothing in my life was going well. Friends and associates were getting married, having children, being promoted, buying homes, achieving long-held dreams. Meanwhile I felt like everything in my life was telling me I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough to stop boyfriends from cheating or ignoring me for strangers on the internet. My professional experience wasn’t enough to find a decent-paying job. My creative talents weren’t enough to pull me away from the hell of a 9-to-5. The only thing stopping me from taking drastic measures was a vision of my mother’s face as she cried going through my stuff after my funeral. So I came home and felt like a failure. I was over 30, living at home, fat, with none of the material, professional, or personal markers of adulthood. I was miserable.
“She had the kind of body / That would probably intimidate / Any of ’em that were un-southern…” Andre 3000, “Pink Matter” by Frank Ocean
In the South, affection and care are shown through Sunday dinners, the exchange of aluminum containers still warm from the oven. If someone stops asking “are you hungry,” know that the love is gone. If you enter a person’s home and don’t eat what they offer, you may not be invited back. If you refuse to eat a dish because it was cooked with meat, there is a beat of silence as people weigh the insult you’ve tossed. A “thick woman” is healthy; she has an appetite, one that may be comparable to her sexual prowess.
People kept telling me that my romantic prospects would get better back home because Southern men love big women. What I heard was “at least the men who’ll accept any kind of woman will want you.” Stereotypes about southern men as big, dumb babies who like the women no one in “real cities” want hung in the air. I didn’t want to be a last resort, but I knew I couldn’t start a new relationship with so much insecurity crawling through me. Any physical intimacy I allowed myself happened when I recycled old lovers, preferring to deal with men I knew wouldn’t tell me no. I’d ask them if they thought I was fat. They’d politely call me “thick,” with a careful pat on my thigh before changing the subject.
I started working out again, but the weight wouldn’t move. Concern about my physical health began to keep me awake at night. Various doctors had assured me that my reproductive issues were normal, but what if now they weren’t? Maybe the weight gain wasn’t my fault, that there really was something wrong with me that didn’t have to do with depression or failed relationships or financial worries or professional stagnancy. Maybe something was physically wrong.
In the past, when I requested to have my thyroid and hormone levels checked, doctors would say I was on the edge of too high but not enough to receive treatment. Now home with good insurance, I was able to go to a doctor who was attentive and thorough. She diagnosed me with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) and put me on a diabetic medicine that’s been known to help women with the disorder. I lost over 30 pounds in the first year I was on the medicine. As I researched PCOS, I discovered studies linking it to various psychiatric complications like depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. I worked my way through the internet, reading as much as I could, relieved to know that I wasn’t an awful person, unworthy of life. My body and mind were working together to gaslight me. With my doctor’s help and a new resolve, I knew I could get better.
Even though I’m still not the size I’d like to be, I decided to stop allowing myself to be trapped by my body. I began accepting invitations to parties, no longer caring if old friends will be shocked by my appearance, and started dating again. I’m learning to separate desire and worth from the body. For so long it was easier not to approach anyone because of my weight. I would have rather been rejected because there’s too much of me and not because I’d never be enough. My body has been connected to how people saw me or didn’t see me, and I want to reclaim myself. It’s a slow process. I still don’t have most of the visible markers of adulthood, and my career isn’t where I’ve dreamed it would be, but I’m making progress. I’ve accepted that I’m more tortoise than hare. Now I look at myself in the mirror, hoping that if I had three wishes, I would use them to keep the voices out of my head that tell me I’m not enough.
“If models are made for modeling / Thick girls are made for cuddlin’…” Andre 3000, “Pink Matter” by Frank Ocean
