Thick. Big boned. Fluffy. Curvy. Let’s be real, you mean fat. Go ahead…you can say it…FAT! It’s the three letter F word that people only say in whispered tones behind my back. This is me, a fat girl, officially giving you permission to say it. Because guess what? Fat is an adjective, but it’s also a noun. It’s a thing I have a lot of, but it’s not the only thing that defines me. 

Let’s rewind to 1990. Scene: Mrs. Currie’s third grade classroom, picture day. I wore my favorite magenta sweater and my biggest black and white polka dot bow. Not to toot my own horn, but I looked adorable. I walked into class with my head held high. Then I saw him. Jimmy Swenson. He was the Zack Morris of our class, and I wanted to be his Kelly Kapowski. 

“Hi Jimmy!” I said, a little too enthusiastically. I really wanted him to notice my cool outfit.

“Umm…hey,” he grunted at me, and then turned back to his conversation with Lainey Carson. 

“You know she has a crush on you, Jimmy,” I heard her say.

Jimmy recoiled, “Ewwww! She’s so…FAT!” 

And they laughed together and carried on their conversation as if they hadn’t just ruined my entire life. I could feel myself shrinking. Not literally of course; that would have been amazing. From that moment, taking up less space was my primary goal. 

Fast forward to middle school. Ah, middle school. Three years of hormones, angst, cliques, and just straight up awkwardness. My identity of fat girl firmly in place, I spent this time honing my personality and working on witty comebacks. I made sure that if I was going to be the fat girl, I’d at least be the funny fat girl. I also spent a lot of time hating my body. I got my first stretch marks in middle school. Tiny, shimmery stripes that criss-crossed my hips and budding breasts. I first noticed them while getting ready to go swimming at my Grandma’s house. I ran into her bedroom, terrified that I had contracted some sort of skin disease.  

“Oh, it’s ok darlin’,” she reassured me. “Those marks just mean your body is growing faster than your skin is ready for.”  Her explanation made me feel a little better. But not really. I went to my mom that night in tears. She comforted me and told me I was beautiful and that she loved me. She also told me about the diet she was on and asked if I wanted to try it with her. I absolutely did. 

The next day I started the Fruit and Rice Diet. For those who may not know, this is a diet that restricts calories to 800 per day at the beginning and moves up to 1,200 per day by the end. Men can lose up to thirty pounds in a month and women, up to twenty. Sounds great, right? It wasn’t. I was hungry all the time, and that made me angry. Hormones were coursing through my body, which angered me even more. It was the longest two days of my life. That’s right, I only made it two days before I cheated and ate a whole bunch of cookies. It was the first in a very long line of diet failures.

That brings us to high school. I actually enjoyed high school. I wasn’t spectacularly popular, but I found my people in marching band and drama. Nerds unite! Auditioning for plays was usually met with mixed emotions. I almost always got a part, but it was never as the ingénue. I wasn’t “leading lady material.”  Yvonne (the innkeeper in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Ouiser (from Steel Magnolias) and a character named Garney from a play I don’t even remember were some of the roles on my high school acting resume. At that time, there wasn’t a whole lot of fat girl representation anywhere, and my confidence was mediocre at best. I was just happy to be on stage in whatever old lady capacity they could use me. 

In addition to theatre, I was part of the color guard in my school’s marching band. Those memories are genuinely some of the fondest I have from high school. I loved spinning flags and marching with the band. And I was damn good at it too! I was an officer for two years and became the captain my senior year. My confidence soared when I was on the field. But in the back of my head, as always, was that voice that told me my arms were too big for the sleeveless uniform and my belly was too round for the spandex that encased it at every performance. The diet failures continued throughout high school. Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach…I tried them all. The only things they gave me were hunger and a lack of confidence.

I continued to yo-yo diet throughout college and my twenties. I married the first man that told me I was pretty, and I spent nearly ten years in a meh relationship because I settled. The last two years of our marriage were routine, and we basically lived as roommates. I didn’t love myself, so I didn’t know how I should be loved and it took a toll. A lifetime of exercise classes, fad diets, and shopping in minuscule plus size sections had done a number on my self-esteem. I didn’t feel seen. I didn’t feel like anyone could relate to me. Ursula from The Little Mermaid and Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray were some of the only fat characters I had ever seen. Where were all the fat girls? Why didn’t we get to have role models? The only other fat women I was familiar with were in my family, and they all hated their bodies just as much as I did. I was starved for positive fat representation.  

Enter Instagram. Weird, right? We’ve been told that social media can have a detrimental effect on our psyche. It was the exact opposite for me. It was a whole new world of fat babes who were living their lives unapologetically and looking fabulous while doing it. I’d never seen anything like it—women with visible belly outlines, women in tank tops and strapless dresses, and women rocking bikinis with cellulite and stretch marks unhidden. It wasn’t just the prettiness that struck me though; it was also the sisterhood. Finally, I’d found a group of women who looked like me, had feelings like me, hurt like me, but most importantly, just wanted to be seen like me. For the second time in my life, I’d found my people.

I dove in headfirst with the voraciousness of a bear devouring its first meal after hibernation. Likes, posts, and comments were my world. I basked in the beautiful energy that all these fat women were putting into the universe. The confidence that I was gaining online began to transfer to my real world. My friends started to notice it and even compared me to a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. So cliché, but I understood what they meant. My style changed, my confidence was higher than ever, and I was truly beginning to accept my body just the way it was. I even met the love of my life through Instagram. I don’t necessarily recommend shacking up with a guy who slides into your DMs, but it worked for me. We dated long distance for two years, and then he moved here and we’ve lived together now for two years.

I haven’t “dieted” in about five years. I’m working on my relationship with food, and loving myself is an active choice that I make almost every day. Sometimes I look at myself and that voice whispers, “You’re way too fat to wear that” or “You’re way too fat to do that.” I silence that voice quickly, though, and think about eight-year-old me and how proud she is of the beautiful, funny, loyal, smart, and yes, fat, woman I am today.

-Kristin McDonald

Kristin McDonald is a middle school English teacher, a lover of unicorns, and a forever fat girl who resides in Houston with her dude and her three fur babies.