A Letter to the Physical Education Department
Note from the Author: This piece is written for performance.
A letter to the Physical Education Department,
I write to you regarding a particular incident from my youth. When I was eleven years old, I was in sixth grade P.E. and I resented the class. I tried, but it never really was for me. One day, when we were playing a game of freeze tag, as we all decided on where we would start in the gym, I saw the coach pull over the two “taggers”, the selected students who are chosen to run after the remaining participants. When the game started, they immediately ran for me. After a few seconds of jogging, during which these athletic girls, who always ran faster than me had not tagged me, my suspicion grew. To test this suspicion, I slowed down, and the girls running after me slowed too. I saw them looking confusedly at the coach and the coach scowling, and I realized that the coach had set them up to run to me, but not tag me until I had worked for it. Upon realizing this, as any smart-alec would, I began to overdramatically “run” extremely slowly. The coach, upset that her “plan” had not worked, yelled through the gym for me to “get over there” and walked me across campus silently to the principal’s office.
Sure, looking back, I can categorize this as a moderately traumatic event. But I am not so mad about the injustice as I am that this event stayed with me as long as it did, no matter how much I tried to suppress it. I felt so helpless and so worthless. That because I couldn’t run, because I was overweight, I was treated in this way.
My weight is something that I am confronted with constantly; every single time I look at the mirror, see the numbers on the scale, or pick at the extra fat stored in my hands or behind my knees, I remember how different I am than the majority of my peers. Sure, everyone has something that they are self-conscious about, but my weight is something I think about obsessively.
I have always been big, and I mean always: I was a 9 pound baby. But when I hit puberty, I became really conscious of my weight. I was an emotional eater with no self-control, which caused me to binge-eat into a semi-conscious haze. I felt bad about my weight, so I would eat for comfort. When I ate I would binge. Not only did binging bring more calories, it also came with a lovely side of self-loathing and disgust. And so the spiral began. I would sit like a zombie, who could devour a whole pint of ice cream in one sitting on the floor of my kitchen at 1am, but when I came out of my headspace, I would be appalled by myself. My mind was filled with a whirl of obsessive thoughts. My weight. My value. My lack of control. Because, after all, from a young age, it had been instilled in me that as the pounds on the scale increased, my value decreased.
We, as a culture, have seen the emergence of amazing changes in the realm of body-positivity. Fat-shaming has become a moderate social taboo, women are taught to “love the skin they’re in” by Dove, and there is more visibility for plus size people. But in reality, little has really changed. Visibility for people of different sizes has improved. Why is it still that Americans have such deeply ingrained ideals of beauty? Sure, we see plus sized models in the mainstream media more, but these women are barely over their expected and healthy BMI. It is seen as such an accomplishment to have a woman on a campaign who is actually a healthy weight.
However, the issue of a perpetualized “theory of beautiful” is so deeply ingrained that people want to be so skinny and fit themselves into the mold of what society views as “normal” that they give themselves mental disorders, completely ruining their relationship with food. According to Sondra Kronberg, a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorders Association, “The reality is that eating disorders are not just about being thin, they’re complex disorders with a biopsychosocial axis to them.” This means that people who have eating disorders truly have a psychologically destructive relationship with food. According to a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology where a group of researchers followed a group of girls from ages 12-20, nearly 13.2% of girls had suffered from a DSM-5 eating disorder by age 20.
Recently I have put my life back on a track I want to follow. Starting August 2018, I made major dietary changes and established an exercise routine. In total I have lost about 85 pounds. This was all something that I wanted to do. Sure, everyone wants to look “good” in a bathing suit, but my journey was more driven by my health and happiness. I knew that if I continued the way I was going, I would give myself diabetes and put myself at major medical risk. The obesity rate is staggeringly high in America; according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, in 2018, the obesity rate among adults is 32.2% for men and 35.5% for women. This issue cannot be overlooked, and I decided to make a change for my health and wellness.
But I still struggle with weight. I continue to compare myself against others. When I look at a picture of me surrounded by my size two friends, I cannot help but feel like the fat kid in sixth grade who couldn’t run fast enough, and wasn’t enough.
So, why is it that I felt, and still feel, the need to lose weight and tone my body in order to look better? Why are we still lauding models, actresses, and artists that have a destructive relationship with food? Why do people still idolize Jillian Micheal’s Biggest Loser, when in reality, these contestants are on a starvation diet, and a majority of the contestants regain the weight and more? Why do tabloids constantly feature ridiculous fad diets right next to a photoshopped model with teenage hips and a gigantic smile? Like, “Hey! Have you ever tried a stick of celery and a gallon of water for 30 days? If you do, you will be as happy as she is!”
But it’s not that way. Your weight and your happiness are not correlated. Your value does not depend on your weight. What you put into society has nothing to do with what you put into your mouth. So why is it that we still treat people this way?
Most importantly, why did you treat me this way?
Sincerely Yours,
The fat kid.