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My wedding was perfect – and I was fat as hell the whole time
(A beautiful little story, full of insight and grace AND I loves me some Lindy West!)
Aham and I got engaged on my birthday. He took me to dinner, suggested a “quick nightcap” at our neighbourhood bar, and then, surprise! Everyone was there – our friends, our families, the kids, four random people who were just trying to get a damn drink on a Sunday night without being accidental set dressing in somebody else’s raucous public proposal (sorry, dudes). I was so happy. He took my hand and led me to the back; there was a paper banner that said my name (the bartender made it – we go there a lot); there was a live string duet. I was confused. Why was there a sombre cello at my birthday party? Why was my boyfriend doing his Intense Face? Wait, it’s almost 10pm on a school night and we’re at a bar – why ARE the kids here? Then it all happened at once: the knee, the ring, the speech, the question, the tears. All the hits. It was a full-blown grand gesture.
Months later, I asked him why he did it that way – such a big spectacle, such an event, not precisely our style – and I expected something cliched but sweet, like, “I wanted to make sure our community was a part of our marriage,” or, “I wanted everyone to know how much I love you.” Instead, his response cracked me up: “One time when you were drunk you told me, ‘If you ever propose to me, don’t do it in the bullshit way that dudes usually treat fat girls. Like it’s a secret, or you’re just trying to keep me from leaving you. Thin girls get public proposals, like those dudes are winning a fucking prize. Fat chicks deserve that, too.’” I probably would have finessed it a bit if I’d been sober, but way to lean in, bossy, drunk past-Lindy!
It’s not that I’d ever particularly yearned for a grand gesture – the relationship I cherish lives in our tiny private moments (and, as I’d later discover at my bridal shower, I’m surprisingly uncomfortable being the object of public sincerity) – but the older I get and the longer I live in a fat body, the harder it is to depoliticise even simple acts. A public proposal to a publicly valued body might be personally significant, but culturally it shifts nothing. A public proposal to a publicly reviled body is a political statement.
I’ve dated men who relished me in private but refused to be seen with me on the street, or who told me, explicitly, that we had no serious future because they were afraid their friends would laugh at them. I’ve been eagerly approached by men who clearly saw me as nothing but an arousingly taboo body type, which I find equally demoralising (other fat people don’t mind, I know – that’s cool, too). I just wanted to be a person, and, if I was lucky, to fall in love with a person – neither in spite of my body nor because of it. Once I finally did, I wanted to crystallise that, make it solid, and broadcast it where younger versions of myself could find it.
Months later, I asked him why he did it that way – such a big spectacle, such an event, not precisely our style – and I expected something cliched but sweet, like, “I wanted to make sure our community was a part of our marriage,” or, “I wanted everyone to know how much I love you.” Instead, his response cracked me up: “One time when you were drunk you told me, ‘If you ever propose to me, don’t do it in the bullshit way that dudes usually treat fat girls. Like it’s a secret, or you’re just trying to keep me from leaving you. Thin girls get public proposals, like those dudes are winning a fucking prize. Fat chicks deserve that, too.’” I probably would have finessed it a bit if I’d been sober, but way to lean in, bossy, drunk past-Lindy!
It’s not that I’d ever particularly yearned for a grand gesture – the relationship I cherish lives in our tiny private moments (and, as I’d later discover at my bridal shower, I’m surprisingly uncomfortable being the object of public sincerity) – but the older I get and the longer I live in a fat body, the harder it is to depoliticise even simple acts. A public proposal to a publicly valued body might be personally significant, but culturally it shifts nothing. A public proposal to a publicly reviled body is a political statement.
I’ve dated men who relished me in private but refused to be seen with me on the street, or who told me, explicitly, that we had no serious future because they were afraid their friends would laugh at them. I’ve been eagerly approached by men who clearly saw me as nothing but an arousingly taboo body type, which I find equally demoralising (other fat people don’t mind, I know – that’s cool, too). I just wanted to be a person, and, if I was lucky, to fall in love with a person – neither in spite of my body nor because of it. Once I finally did, I wanted to crystallise that, make it solid, and broadcast it where younger versions of myself could find it.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/21/my-wedding-perfect-fat-woman
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