I come from a long line of Fat black women. Form my grans on both sides, to my aunts, and mother (who only became fat once she had me) I have seen and been a part of being Fat and Black (I get the added bonus of being tall lol) my whole life. Luckily, I was raised feeling normal for my size, well at least until I went outside.
That is when I started to see just how different I was. Going shopping with friends and other family members was often dreaded bc I knew my clothing options were going to be abysmal or just inappropriate and ranging between looking like a bag of Skittles Tropical Burst, or a burlap sack MooMoo, oh or lingerie. I could not fit anything displayed in girls or women for that matter, and trying to find a visual que on where I should look based on models was pointless (thankfully, that has changed a ton!).
Age appropriate clothes for a Fat gal that were affordable and could be washed and wouldn’t fall apart was hard to come by for me, so I just became a tomboy. I could at least get appropriate coverage and the clothes were affordable for my size and they fit!
Men’s clothing also made me feel more secure about myself too when I went out in public, I’m pretty sure this had more to do with the fear of being sexually assaulted than anything else, though when it comes to that, clothing doesn’t really matter… How my blackness impacts my weight is a whole other can of worms that deals a lot with opportunities available, fear, and doing what you know vs what you should know.
I remember growing up in public housing and my mom being deathly afraid of not being able to feed us, so when there was a program for food or food bank, she signed up and went out to get what she could. She never wanted her kids to have to deal with anything she did growing up, so we always had plenty to eat. Was it the best stuff we could be eating? No, frankly most of it was incredibly unbalanced nutritionally and loaded with salt, but as a single mother working with kids to feed she did what she could as best she could with her resources being what they were.
A balanced meal wasn’t something I learned about how to make until after high school, and even then I wasn’t actually using what I had learned until I got a better job and could afford to buy good ingredients to make better food (well into my 20s). My food habits have improved a ton, but it has definitely been an experience adapting recipes to my pallet and health while accruing new tastes. I have taken to writing recipes that I have adapted and altered so that I have options that I know work for me when I go to cook and don’t know what to make to keep from falling back into bad food habits (Top Shelf Ramen, talking about you). I’m still not as well off to do as I’d like in regards to my health, but my reality is I’ve always been fat. Even when I lost a ton of weight due to cancer, I was still fat. Is it possible I won’t be fat in the future? Maybe, but that’s not what I’m focused on or care about.
My being Fat and Black is just another part of who I am. With being black impacting so many parts of my life on a micro and macro scale, I was at least ignorant to a lot of that in my youth as I didn’t quite understand how my being black affected me in ways I could word. I mean I knew there was something different, but I just could not put my finger on it. At least until I moved down South (story for another day). I spent a lot of time in my life being insecure of my stretchmarks and wanting to cover myself, but having a woman as confident and big as my Aunty living un-apologetically got me to reevaluate how I presented myself….well once I got to college anyway (life is a journey you know).
It’s one thing to hear you are beautiful or worthy, but it can be hard to believe it when you don’t see it when you look around you. Form the media I consumed to the people in my community that I would observe how they carried themselves to see how I should. The message was clear that my Fat Black ass did not fit in. I tried hard to fit in at first, but then I just was exhausted and decided to be ok with being the other.
Thankfully, I did have amazing people in my life that nurtured my passions and talents which did wonders for my ability to get lost in creating, but even that was impacted by my views on myself. Here I was this fat black gal, but I never drew fat people. I drew black people as dark skinned versions of characters that already existed, but as I ventured into making art for myself more, fat people were not included in anything I made and original black characters were not exactly abundant either.
It wasn’t until my Aunty invited me to visit her in Pittsburgh right as I was about to go to college that I had the big Ah-HAAA moment. My aunty was very proud of me and wanted to spend time together before I started College. I had a blast seeing the other half of my family and enjoyed the shopping trips where she showed me where I could find clothes for my body that fit. That makeover that she did for me really did wonders for my confidence. When we got back to her place she told me to go wild in her closet and I could take whatever I wanted. Ya’ll I got on the Greyhound back to Alabama with 2 garbage bags filled with clothing and my carry on. I clutched those clothes to my body as if they were gold bars.
That summer changed something in me and from that point forward, I started giving more of a damn in how I presented myself when I went out. Putting care into how I dressed myself got me into makeup and built my confidence even more. The last time I visited Pittsburgh when she was alive, I brought my makeup kit with all the makeup I had tested and scoured for that complimented dark skin and gave all the women and guys in the house that wanted one, a makeover. It was a truly beautiful and inspiring moment to see their faces light up at how makeup can be used to highlight what’s already there and that there are options, but it does take some digging to find them.
My Aunty Towanda may be gone now, but she was one of the most empathetic, strong willed, and soft hearted people I ever knew. She was hard on the outside, but she truly cared hard. I’m thankful for having her in my life when I did because she helped me to fill comfortable in my own fat skin which then added to the growing pile of self worth that got me to start being more inclusive of the characters I created and the stories I wanted to tell.
