Hurray! It's okay to be a fat girl now
All of a sudden, we’re cool. We’re in. We’re A CAUSE.
There was a time when fat girls were just so... They were the ones the boys told their troubles to. The girls who sat on beds watching the hot girls get ready for a date, promising to make the 9.30pm phone call in case she needed an out.
Or the ones who the just-jilted boyfriend called, secure that he could expose his judgmental side, his ch*******n, his belief that it was okay to tell his girlfriend that she, at 53kgs should lose weight because, hey! He wouldn’t be asking me out soon.
Of course fat girls would find love. Some of them, great, soaring arias of it. Clothes-tearing, button ripping, sex on conference room table searing romantic novels of it. But often, it’s not the sort written about.
People don’t want to read about the vanquishing of a chocolate bar, alone, at two in the morning, after a fat girl has come home from a date on which everything was perfect, but the waiter smirked at her order of a burger, in place of the thin girl staple-green salad or soup.
People don’t want to know that although he asked her to sit on his lap, she was afraid to, because she was too tired to hover, placing at least ten kilos on her own knees in order to keep them off his lap, and if she had allowed her extra fat to land, then he would be all "OMG, how much do you weigh?!" So she was drowning the awkward memory in a whole bottle of Coke.
But now, things are different. Now, we’re in the game. The thin people have taken notice. Those who have many fat friends. You met the type ("Akchilly most of my friends are fat! Poor thing, she doesn’t eat so much and is gymming also. Must be some other problem.")
Words like fat-shaming, body-shaming, #IWontCompromise and #ImNoAngel are out there to empower us and deliver us from a life of being the underdog.
Fellow fat girls! Celebrate! We now have a tribe! We are a people! We are a race! We are not women. We are plus. Just like they say in all the fashion websites.
Soon, we will be an institution. Perhaps, in time, we will be a kingdom. We will have invasions. We will have political policy. We will have armies!
Ranks of fat girls fortified with gymming and chocolate bars, waving the fat-shaming rules in the face of our tormentors. We will have publications. Marches.
Who knows! Even a fat day! In which every empathiser with our cause will wear a fat suit and carry slogans like "Fats have feelings too!" "Fat girls are our sisters!"
The government will declare a law that anyone using the word "fat" in a public place will be jailed immediately.
Companies will have to employ 25 per cent fat girls in order to maintain diversity, and even food labels will have to bear a disclaimer every time the word "fat" appears on it. Two, if the word is "fat-free."
In time, there will be a tax exemption on money spent on a fat girl. Extra if the spender was non-judgmental and allowed her a dessert and a soft drink!
No one will want to be fat. But it will be okay for some to follow the path. And understood when people make lectures on "born, as opposed to choice".
There will be support groups too. "Lovers of fat girls", "Parents and friends of fat", "Being fatulous" and "Sizelicious".
We have years and years to go before we stop calling people out for being different. Someday, maybe we will.
Until then, we fats will have to contend with being a cause. With people leaping to our defence in movies, by song and even getting in to fist fights in some dramatic situations!
We now have the terminology that encapsulates all the humiliation, all the frustration and the hurt we have felt by being at the receiving end of clumsy jokes and cleverly disguised barbs that sting only hours after it’s too late to do anything.
Next step: World domination!