You’re ugly.

And that’s cool.

I was just thinking… The radical bodylove/self-acceptance movement has my full support and it’s helped me a lot. But a recurring phrase used within the movement is “Everyone/Every body is beautiful”. Every size, every shape, every color, etc.

Isn’t this where the whole issue of body discrimination and self-hate starts? At the feeling that we must be beautiful in order to love ourselves or hope to be loved? And while beauty is partially in the eye of the beholder, shouldn’t we be honest and admit that there are traits that a majority agree to be less-than-pretty?

So how about we drop the entire drive for beauty? How about we stop trying to feel better about ourselves by insisting on beauty, whether it’s by seeing beauty in our current state, or working to achieve it through change? How about we adopt the attitude that everyone is an equally respectable and worthy and lovable human being no matter what they look like – and not feeling obligated to either be (considered) beautiful, or tell people that they are?

When you try to make someone feel better by telling them they’re beautiful, isn’t that a bit like telling someone they’re not fat in order to comfort them? Aren’t both examples implying that unless you look pleasant (in terms of standards and majority opinions), you don’t get to feel good about yourself? Aren’t both, denying fatness and denying ugliness, implying that these traits are something horrible to have?

Why do we need to be beautiful in order to feel good about ourselves? Why can’t an ugly person be overtly and “awarely” ugly, and still feel good about themselves? What do we owe anyone beauty for? What would we owe ourselves beauty for? Golda Meir was one ugly motherfucker but while I don’t like her politics, she was successful and loved like fuck. Albert Einstein was one ugly potato head, so what. He was a genius.

Fuck beauty.

Thanks, Doc.

Yesterday I went home from the doctor’s with a wide smile on my face and a feeling of accomplished world conquest in my chest. This doctor’s visit was well worth its 20 Shekels and the 30 minute walk because apparently, the practice was not “just next to the mall” after all.

I went to see endocrinologist Dr. B. because I was starting to suspect my thyroid to be behind my body’s refusal to shed those pounds. Thanks to radical self acceptance activists’ sites like The Militant Baker or The Body is not an Apology, and the realization that all women, no matter what their weight, are raised to feel some kind of insecurity, I had already not just made peace with, but learned to love my body. Which changed not only my perception of my body, but of everything around it, too.
But I still want to know why I had to miss out on everything for hating my body for so long. Just ,why. After all, a gastric bypass did nothing, atkins combined with extreme gym-hitting and daily hours of swimming did nothing, a month-long attempt at pro-ana did nothing, nothing did anything. I only lose weight when I’m not even trying to, and shoveling McDonald’s, Snickers, and coke for lack of time to cook. Yet my body has, for the last 12 years or more, kept returning to the same weight over and over. So, why?
After I’d ordered eltroxin off eBay to see how my thyroid responds, and finding that I lost a bit of weight and felt better overall, I took these findings and my questions to Dr. B. A doctor who is among the rare gems of doctors who don’t dump all of your health problems on your weight, or dismiss them to tell you to get skinny instead. Because that attitude is an atrocity. “Doc, I have mood swings and suicidal thoughts that terrify me.” – “Yeah but first, here’s a referral to a dietitian.”… “I can’t turn my neck without excrucia–” – “What have you tried in terms of weightloss?”… “Doctor, please check my pelvis and hormones, I’m just not getting pregnant.” – “Lose the weight and you will.”… “Doctor, I suffer from migraine and falling asleep uncontrollably.” – “Yes, and here’s the card of a dietitian so we can make you look a little more appetizing.” (the latter were the exact words of the school doctor, a woman no less, when I was 14, and I think her head needs to roll for crushing what little self-love is left in an insecure fat teenage girl, with her choice of words).

Dr. B however, took a good look at my blood work, my med history, and at me, and said: “Nope, your thyroid is normal.” After several questions, answers, and theories, Dr. B said what all those “I bash fatties because they’re unhealthy” people out there should let sink in deep:

“Though, look. I’ve seen your bloodwork and your medical history. I’m looking at you. You’re not at any risk, your stats are good. You are what’s called healthy obese. You don’t need to lose weight.”

Oh yes.

To Guy Nr. 5,000,000

No, you didn’t deeply hurt my delicate feelings. But you did strike a nerve. My “Come the fuck on, not that again”-nerve.

So on one dating site, the one where you can communicate without paying, I met a guy who seemed nice enough, also handsome, and apparently, interested. Contact died down for a few days, which was okay because I’m in the middle of a 1-girl-move where I’m mostly busy and exhausted hauling my possessions from one place to another by bus.
I do so in spite of there being some 30 extra kilos on my hips weighing me down. I do so in spite of having less stamina than fit (not: slim) people. I do so because I’ve always been pretty much on my own and learned not to rely on others too much. Now, as per social experiments conducted with consideration for the repeatability factor, had I been a slim, delicate-looking, petite little creature, passers-by would have volunteered to help every step of the way as they saw me with a table in my hands, a backpack on my back, and a shopping cart strapped over my shoulder. But I’m fat. So somehow, according to the public’s strange attitude, I don’t qualify for help. Finally, the neighbor’s gentleman kid offered to take my trolley up the stairs, but I could do that last bit on my own. Too.

Now this guy, after a few days of radio silence, writes back. I’m thinking I’m gonna propose a date that somehow includes my possessions in his car/on his back. Well, long story short, no. I think he wants to sell me Herbalife. And the next criminal trying to leech money off me with that disgusting poison, I swear to God, I will make them watch while I barbecue their children and eat them while they’re still screaming. Because I like to eat quality food. I am a foodie. A gourmet. I don’t eat much, but when I do, it needs to rock.
He basically tells me that he had not paid much attention to what I had entered in the basic info of my profile: I’m full-figured. So now it came to his attention, and he decided to bring it to mine. Because I care so much that he is put off by my being fat. Oh wait, I don’t. What I do care about, is that this is a symptom of the cancer in our societies. We are brainwashed into thinking that “fat” is the worst a woman can be. An ugly face? Fine. A stupid, loud mouth? Fine. Unfaithful? Fine. A gold-digging whore who marries so she doesn’t have to earn her own money? Fine. Fat? “Now listen, I would like you if…”.

Because, now he tells me that if I lost some weight, I’d look a lot better. And I’m sure that’s true. But (1), I’m fine. But (2), then he’s like, “You can easily…”. No. I can not “easily”, I tried, and under doctors’ supervision did everything right, and still only lost 10% of what other people lost on the same programs (plural), so shut the fuck up. If everyone “could easily” lose weight, I doubt a whole lot of people would choose to stay fat and get so much hate and disrespect from society. It’s like being gay. The proof that being gay isn’t a choice, lies in the fact that nobody in their right mind would choose to be gay in such a hateful, homophobic environment.

First of all, while not very photogenic, I look good enough. I have what’s called an hour-glass shape, and let’s not get started on my face. But it doesn’t even matter. Because this body, is mine. Even if I got married and had children, it’d still be mine. I don’t owe anyone to look a way they like, not even my husband. Which this guy, just like the 4,999,999 others telling me to lose weight, is not.  I don’t buy that beauty/ugliness is on the inside. I do know looks matter. However, there is no one right way to look. I have seen many fat girls who looked better than many slim girls, and vice-versa. One person likes this, the other person likes that. This is what made me realize, when it comes to apearance, it’s okay to be fat and even a little insecure about it – because most girls are insecure to an extent. Even the prettiest model will pull the sheets over herself in the presence of the guy she just had sex with. We are taught insecurity. We are taught to obsess about our looks, and guys are taught to pick a woman by how presentable she looks to his dumb friends. Because men, too, are taught insecurity: “Is my girlfriend hot enough, or will the bros tease me?”. Who cares as long as you enjoy boning her? I know my weight is one factor in why I’m still single. On the other hand, it is by far not the only one. I’ve seen women, fatter than myself, getting married to handsome, smart, “quality” men.

I have been hit on by many men who are shorter than me, or bald. These are two things I simply am not attracted to at all. And that’s just as okay as someone not being attracted to fat chicks. However, it would never, ever, occur to me to tell them: “Yeah, I’ll give you a try, but only if you get leg extension surgery/hair implants”. Unless they dare tell me do something about the weight.
Because let’s face it. Men complaining that I’m fat, aren’t worried about my health, but about how my appearance graces them. And actually, the leg extension or the implants may just be less tortorous than losing a significant amount of weight. All you have to do, is lie down with the doctor and pay. then recover, and you’re all set. Weightloss is so much more difficult, and so much less pleasant. Weightloss is suffering. It’s exhausting, it’s depriving, it’s no fun to be obsessing all day about the question: if I do this or eat that, how will this affect my ass? It’s an oxymoron. They tell you to be slim in order to be happy, but how does obsessing and depriving and exhausting yourself over your weight, make you happy?

Hence, no. I will not give that bald dude or that short guy a chance, because he, just like I, deserves to be accepted the way he is, or left alone to remain free to find a true match, not a “Painfully change what you’ve been all your life until I came along and didn’t like it”-match. I will tell him I’m not interested, if I tell him anything, and let him move on. This is the only right way to handle someone whose exterior doesn’t appeal to you. For clarity: telling someone to change, is the wrong way. I am healthy, I am beautiful, I get laid, and I refuse to sacrifice any more of my precious life to suffering from one desperate weightloss attempt to another.
This guy used the term “ideal weight”. What is that? Who determines that? Mr. BMI? I’m sorry, I thought a person should have more authority than a math scheme. My life will not be controlled by numbers, not the numbers the BMI-God throws at me, not the numbers I see when I step on the scale, and not the numbers of inches a man is shorter than me, because I care about none of them. I did for most of my life, and I realize now, painfully, how much I missed out, not by being fat, but by behaving the way society tells fat people to behave: “hide, and don’t have fun because a fat chick dancing isn’t a pretty sight”. I have near-literally tried everything. Restrictive diets, pro-ana diets, diet products, the Herbalife scam, diet pills, hours of exercise and swimming, the adjustable gastric band (which helped me lose 50 kilos, then the weight stagnated on the same mark give or take 15 kilos exactly, strangely), and then, the biggest mistake of them all, the gastric bypass. And when I think about it, I already eat less, and healthier, than many of my slimmer friends. It’s probably not a nutrition issue at all. So stop preaching at me that I could “easily lose” a few more pounds. I can not. And if I could, I would still not suffer to do so. I’ll be happy to lose some weight through activities I enjoy, but will I force myself to skip that dessert or to walk myself dizzy on that treadmill? Hell no. I am done suffering, and he who wants me to suffer so I’m more pleasing to look at to others, does not love me and has as little a place in my life as his opinion has worth. My life has been about suffering and trying twice as hard to get half as much, for too long. No more.

Honestly? Fuck every last one of you, no matter who you are. I’m sure you’re good people with good intentions, but shut up. If my big butt means more to you than any of my other qualities and flaws – and I have “bigger” flaws than my ass if you were to look past that – then I guess I – *I* – mean less to you than my weight does. And that is not a relationship I wish to entertain. I’m fat. I will probably always be fat. And that is okay. My weight is one of many things that partially define me. My weight is not the main, nor the only thing, that defines me. Just as your lack of a chin, your receding hairline, or your short penis, doesn’t define you.

Here’s how to handle a potential date whose appearance has a flaw: take it or leave it.