[Continued from "No, Fatties (Part 1)."]

As an adult (well, after I moved out on my own at 16), I’ve gone through healthy and not-so-healthy phases.  There was a time that breakfast was Hostess Donettes with the lard-inclusive “chocolate” covering and a pint of milk.  Lunch was crab-with-a-k salad and Diet Pepsi.  I knew better, for sure, but I was young and decided that now that I could eat anything I wanted, I would.  I grew out of that.

I exercised.  I used to jog nightly.  I belonged to gyms – and actually went and worked out.  I took yoga.  I took gym classes in college so that my grades depended on me working out.  I trained for months and completed a marathon.  That’s over 26 miles in one shot to those of you who don’t know.

Yet, I’ve always been fat.  I’ve always felt fat.  Looking back now, I was not fat when I was 16, but I felt fat.  If I could go back I’d tell my 16-year-old self that my body is fabulous, probably the best it will ever look, and that I should have a lot more fun with it a lot sooner.

Because I’ve always felt fat I’ve made it a point to take stairs when I can, to walk reasonable distances even if I had a car, and to do my overeating in relative private.  I don’t want to feel like anyone is looking at me thinking, “Well of course she’s ___, she’s fat” or “No wonder she’s fat, she ___.”

Internalized fat-phobia caused by our fat-phobic society?  Maybe so, but I also know how I feel.  I don’t like how I feel when I look down and see more of a belly than I want.  Some people don’t like looking down when they see they haven’t gained the weight they want.

I have never based my happiness on the number I see on my scale.  Hell, I don’t even think the scale I have right now is accurate.  I have never thought that if I just lost 10lbs I’d be happy, nor have I thought that if I wore a certain size I’d be happy.  I don’t base happiness on that, and I don’t try to tell others that they should do so.

But it can’t feel good to know that you are physically unable to take one flight of stairs down.  I don’t care if that’s because you’re fat, or injured, or permanently physically disabled – the world has stairs and they need to be ascended and descended.  No, someone’s whole self-worth should not be based on a flight of stairs, but it is completely understandable that someone be frustrated that their life is more difficult than it could be.

I’m frustrated that my feet are flat and wide and I can’t wear sexy high heels without looking like an idiot.  It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if I did try to jam my feet into high heels and walk around precariously that people would comment out loud, on Twitter, or wherever.  It seems perfectly reasonable to me that my ex-husband’s girlfriend used my weight as a way to try to hurt my feelings, which, as I said, I think had more to do with her fear of gaining weight than with my feelings about my weight.

And it was probably my fear of getting even fatter, of not being able to get around, of getting winded going down a set of stairs, that I tweeted, “If you’re that fat you should take the stairs down, not the elevator. Take the stairs up, too.”

Let me make this clear, the world is not a happy, wonderful place in which everyone is happy and no one is offended.  Actually, the world is a shitty place.  It doesn’t owe anyone anything, no matter their weight or their size.  I say this at a time when I am very happy.  I live with a wonderful man in a great apartment in a cool (cold right now) city with my cat and my dog.  There is nothing I need that I don’t have, and actually I have much, much more than I need.  Still, the world is pretty shitty.

People can be mean, boo hoo.  People say nasty things.  People tweet nasty things.  So the fuck what?  I’ve read many things on Twitter that offended me in some way and I’m ok.  I can choose not to read things I don’t like, or read the things I don’t like because I like making myself angry.

I’ve seen tweets making fun of people’s outfits.  Does that mean the fashion challenged should be up in arms?  They can be, but what’s the fucking point?

So I thought it odd that two people bothered to respond to my tweet in a negative way.  Two people I know in person, by the way, one of whom I know based his current dwelling on the number of stairs – because going to and from home would force him to climb more of them.

Sure, I don’t know the particular circumstances of the person about whom I wrote the tweet, but neither does she (I think) know that I was looking at her when I tweeted that.  I didn’t go up to her and say, “Hey, fat ass, take the stairs, maybe then you wouldn’t be so fat.”  Nope, I judged and tweeted from afar – on the opposite side of an L station platform – and based on my own feelings.

My feelings that she was waiting for an elevator when it would have been much easier and much quicker to take one flight of stairs down.  Didn’t she need to be someplace?  Wouldn’t walking at least generate some body heat to help combat the outside temperature of around 20ºF?  And what about the electricity wasted on the elevator?  Maybe I’m time-wasting-phobic, personal-energy-wasting-phobic, and electricity-wasting-phobic, too, not just fat-phobic.

I swear.  True story.

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