Fat shaming… it’s personal.

I’ve been fat-shamed all my life. And each and every time it has wounded me. Hurt me. Made me want to run back to my lair and hide… and eat.

For me, most of the fat-shaming has come from men. I’ve heard everything from “you’d be really attractive if you lost some weight” said by some guy who thinks I should be grateful for a sniff of sexual interest from him, to “Whoa, are you sure about that outfit, love?” yelled out of the window by a White-Van man.

Then there’s been all those cruelly veiled jibes (sometimes thinly disguised as humour) from both male and female colleagues, casual acquaintances and perfect strangers that humiliated and belittled me, yet I felt compelled to laugh off.

Why did I laugh them off? Why did I feel the need to pretend that nothing they could say bothered me? What stopped me from addressing their appalling rudeness head-on?

The answer is: Shame.

A deep-rooted sense of shame and the fact that the nakedness of my pain would be visible to all. And I couldn’t bear that. Their contempt and their piteous looks. No. Much better to act like I didn’t care.

The problem is that I’ve built up a lot of rage. That’s my excess baggage. I’ve years of held-in responses, from taught-with- tension witty one-liners to screaming vengeful rants that would ricochet around the bar/office/shopping centre until someone called Security. And that’s not good for me. It adds to my self-loathing.

I need to rethink how I see myself and explore why I block out my emotions with food. And I will be sharing this journey with my readers.

This scares me. In this area (and many others), I’m not brave. It’s an issue I’ve avoided facing all my life.

Meantime, I will make it clear to anyone that making a comment about my size is unacceptable. That I do take fat-shaming personally and that I won’t put up with it. I’ll simply hold up the flat of my hand and say NO, keep your bullying, fascistic opinion to yourself. I don’t want to hear it.