“Baby. Fat people stink.” This from my favorite aunt. My mom’s sister. Because that matters. Perhaps the most impactful person in my life. I wasn’t shocked, appalled, or surprised at this statement. Not coming from her. Standing at 4’9 or 4’10, she was the spunkiest, most mouthy person I have ever known. At eight years old, I knew this statement wasn’t about me personally, nor was it meant to degrade me. It was instead… a cautionary tale. One that has influenced my hygiene routine my entire life, AND was perhaps the greatest impetus to my personal style.
My aunt was trying to prepare me for what could be my fate as a fat girl growing up in the eighties and nineties. During my adolescence, fat people weren’t privy to the courtesies, political correctness, and deference they experience now (however small these existences are). Fat people were openly ostracized and berated. Just watch an episode of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” if you need evidence of this. At nine years old, I became hyper-aware, hyper-vigilant in washing my ass crack, smelling my armpits, and curtailing any sweat that threatened to escape by body. More importantly, I became hyper-fixated on my overall appearance. Puberty rocked me. If I was aware of my fat body as a child, adolescent and preteen me was obsessed with being fat. Or being fat, but not appearing fat. Because fat clings to you, it’s omnipresent. So began my quest to camouflage the rolls, and neutralize the subjugation by the masses.
Black people are not a monolith. Fat, Black girls don’t have monolithic experiences. With some dedication to creating looks, playing with aesthetics, I discovered that clothes are a neutralizer. I’m convinced that outfits and my style neutralized people’s perception of me. Perhaps I wasn’t categorized as the 1980s/1990s version of a “baddie”, but I sure wasn’t expelled to the hells of fatdom. I was allowed to exist as me. Neither desired or derided. I existed on the cusp. I wasn’t ignored, but I surely wasn’t acknowledged the way my skinny friends were. As I became more experimental and more assertive in my aesthetic, the less the “fat” label was used. Dressing well created blinders for the people around me. I wasn’t treated like a fat girl. I was popular. To let my parents tell it, I had too many friends. When I cut my hair, went natural, and became even more adamant about the statement my clothes would make about me, the more I was desired, wanted. All while being fat.
Nothing much has changed. As a middle-aged grandmother, my clothing options still predicate people’s perception of me. Quiet as kept, I swear that dressing well has placed me in rooms that I otherwise wouldn’t be in. Given me an edge when interviewing for jobs. I look at the other fat women around me and I see the disparity in my acceptance, and theirs. I want to shout out “put on a look” to these women as if clothing is the answer to everything. As if a blazer can change their life. Or a well-appointed shoe will lessen the male-female pay gap. I know that limitations are placed on fat women, and that stereotypes and generalizations coupled with fatphobia allow for a political incorrectness rarely tolerated in other groups of people. But my delusion allows me to believe in the superpower of a lewk. And I’m okay with that.
