Thursday, 25 June 2015

586 THOUGHTS ON “THE FANTASY OF BEING THIN”


  1. The thin person inside me finally got out — it just turned out she was actually a fat person.
    HOLY SHIT YES. This is awesome.
    And I completely agree that “I’m too fat right now ” or “I will when I’m thin” are just excuses. And understandably so, because it’s terrifying to face up to your REAL abilities and limitations — it’s much more comforting to believe that you don’t have to try anything until you figure out how to get by on 1000 calories. Thinness (or thinnerness) is the imaginary magical talisman that will allow you to have everything, but until you have it, not having everything isn’t your fault.
    When of course the truth is, not everyone can do everything, and the things you’re good at or the things you value aren’t necessarily the things that everyone considers valuable. When you have that checklist mentality, you end up focusing on things you think other people would want, not things that would make you happy. I’m notoriously bad at thinking of anything I’m good at, so let’s take my boyfriend as an example — he’s really good at building antennas. Is that something everyone wants in their obituary? Is it on anyone’s 43 Things? Maybe not, but it’s what he values.
    When I was in like fourth grade, we did an exercise about imagining what name we would want besides our own. I wrote about how if I were named Ashley I would be skinny and pretty and be good at gymnastics. (The teacher wrote a gentle note about how changing your name probably won’t do those things.) I don’t know if I really wanted to be good at gymnastics — I hate being upside down — but I perceived that as being something that other people valued that I couldn’t live up to. Meanwhile, the things I was good at, like memorizing poems and spelling, were fundamentally worthless because a) they weren’t generically perceived as valuable in a “checklist of things an 8-year-old should be able to do” sense and b) I was good at them already.
    Mind you, I still do this, I just haven’t got any decent excuses anymore. Sometimes I blame ADD, but mostly I say “you know me, I can’t do anything I think I might succeed at or also anything I think I might fail at.” And I beat myself up for, say, not immediately knowing how to do things, or not being great at things I admire in other people. There’s no reason for this; I do it because I’m neurotic. It is, indeed, much harder when I can’t blame that stuff on my fat. But it’s more honest, too.
  2. This is awesome, awesome, awesome, and spot-on. The “change your body, change your life” idea is really the only thing powerful enough to keep a person willingly semi-starved and weak for months (or years) at a time.
    Thank you for writing this. It’s precisely the thing I still struggle with, and what you said about the difference between “you can’t be anything else” and “you don’t have to be anything else,” well, damn. That belongs on a throw pillow on my bed where I can see it every day.
  3. Damn. I want to print this out and frame it. I’m one of those people who’s been in single-digit sizes several times only to find it unsustainable. I have a tiny, tiny wardrobe because I’ve only just given up the idea of wearing those really nice clothes I bought when I was a size 6. My larger sized clothes are mostly crap because they were intended to be temporary. Sigh. My thin-person fantasies usually revolve around clothes and exercise… and I can buy clothes and exercise no matter what size I am, right. Silly person.
  4. "…smart money says I am never going to chuck city life to buy an alpaca farm … And my chances of marrying George Clooney are very, very slim."
    Oh, my god. Those are two of my dreams, right there! Albeit the former is more attainable than the latter.
    I was somewhat surprised when I finally reached the mythical land of skinnydom. I thought I’d finally get a boyfriend, friends, and a good job. Okay, so I was taken more seriously professionally than when I was fat, but the first two never materialized. And, I was more miserable thin than I ever was when I was overweight and didn’t obsess about what I ate and didn’t spend all my free time exercising or thinking about food or both.
    At my highest weight, I was fearless. I would debate and argue with people, confront people who gave bad service, etc… After losing the weight, I turned into a wimp. I no longer had my fatness to blame for what I perceived to be wrongs directed at me.
  7. I love this post. I love this post. I love this post. I’m having to duck my head under my desk so my co-workers aren’t seeing me get all teary-eyed, but I love this post.
  8. Wow. I… Just WOW. Your blog always makes me think, but this post speaks to me more than anything else you’ve blogged about. I’ve finally begun to accept my body, but I never admitted I cling to the FoBT mindset. This is going to be an ugly, but very necessary, period of introspection. Thank you, Kate.
  9. Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!!!!
    I do this all the time, with almost the exact same fantasies: I’ll get a better job, I’ll have tons of friends, I’ll be confident enough to start taking dance lessons, etc. etc. Fillyjonk is spot-on with the responsibility avoidance thing… I’ve been doing it for so long I’m really not sure how to *stop*.
    So instead I swing back and forth between thinking I have this glamorous skinny person inside me and hoping the “skinny person” (where “skinny person” is defined as “person I’d love to be”) inside me is Nikki Blonski. It still distracts me from contemplating what precisely I am, but hey.
  10. Hmm, I never had the fantasy of being thin. I think because at the time in my life (childhood and the teen years) when I was the shy, sad, lonely girl daydreaming of all the things she wanted to be, I was thin. And the time in my life when I started becoming more outgoing and made friends and got a boyfriend and started actually being happy (college) is when I started getting fat. So I never bought into the “if I get thin again my life will change for the better” because in my experience, it was rather the opposite.
    The post still resonates though. The idea of: “you don’t have to be anything other than what you are right now”… that’s really just… huge.
  11. You asked, so here it is:
    When I’m thin, I will finally be a valuable human being.
    And yes, I realize how fucked up that is. YEARS of therapy, people.
  12. You know, “The Fantasy of Being Thin” would make (1) an awesome title for a book and (2) an awesome premise for a book.
    Thanks for really digging into what the Fantasy is and what it means to so many people (myself still included, many days), and why it hurts so much to part with it.
  13. I think you’re absolutely right.
    But I wanted to add one thing.
    Sometimes, people don’t use The Fantasy of Being Thin as an excuse so much as they honestly don’t think they’re allowed to do the things/be the person in their fantasy, just because they’re fat.
    I couldn’t have been popular at school – I was fat. Fat girls are never popular.
    I couldn’t be outgoing – I was fat, and nobody likes the fat girl.
    I couldn’t play sports, because fat girls weren’t allowed on the team (thank you very fucking much, Gym Teacher!!).
    Etc., etc., etc.
    It wasn’t so much that I was allowing my fat to control me, it was that I really, truly, 100% believed those things. Imagine my absolute shock when I moved to another area and people actually wanted to be my friends? But… but… I was fat!!! Couldn’t they SEE that I was FAT? I honestly didn’t GET it. It took me a LOOOONG time to wrap my head around the fact that these people didn’t just see a fat girl… they saw ME. The PERSON who just happened to BE fat. And they thought that ME was OKAY!!! Wow! I couldn’t believe it! And then even when I moved back to my hometown and would see the bullies and the fat-haters around town (I never went back to the same school) and they would inevitably say some nasty shit… it still hurt, but it didn’t affect me like it did before. I’d already learned that some people thought I was okay, so fuck ’em.
    The one thing that was hard to let go in my Fantasy of Being Thin, though, was the thought of going back there and surprising the hell out of them. I wanted them to look at me and not recognize me, because I wasn’t The Fat Girl anymore. I wanted them to gasp in shock as they looked at me and saw the person that they had belittled simply because I was different. That particular fantasy was hard to let go, because it would have been the sweetest revenge.
There is soooooo much more to read here:- http://kateharding.net/2007/11/27/the-fantasy-of-being-thin/

       
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