3 Letter Words (Not 4)
As a writer, words are precious to me. I recently contracted with a wonderful voice actor to narrate my Seven Sisters of Avalon series and it is rewarding, terrifying, exciting… all the adjectives, to hear someone with such a lovely voice reading my own words back to me, words I wrote fifteen years ago. Words live.
Many years ago, when I was likely in my 40s (too much work to math it out), I was sitting at a restaurant in Studio City with two of my good friends who I rarely got to see because we lived so far apart from one another. In conversation, I happened to describe myself as “fat,” not in a disparaging way but as an objective, unemotional statement in regard to something else.
One of my friends went pale to the point that I thought she might be ill.
“Don’t say that about yourself, Katrina,” she muttered looking at her hands. She is also a writer, now far more successful than I am and no doubt as in love with words as I am, and yet the word made her profoundly uncomfortable. To be fair, she was and is classically beautiful in that Real Housewives of Atlanta way. She has participated in competitions based solely on how perfectly crafted her body is and spoiler: I have not. I imagine that anyone describing her as “fat,” even herself, was the stuff nightmares are made of.
I had to think about that a lot. If one of my dearest friends is that uncomfortable with obesity, what must she think of me? She never meant for it to, I am sure, but it forever changed how I saw our relationship.
I did ask her for clarification, “Say what about myself, exactly?”
“That you’re fat. Don’t say that you are fat.”
“But I am. I am fat. I have brown hair!” [well, back then, I did] “I am also short and tired and clever and a few more adjectives as well.”
The idea of someone being objective about obesity without it being an ugly, negative thing was just a bridge too far for her and she is not the only one. The negative conclusions society draws because body shape are rampant and we can examine that old adage of, “What other people think of me is not my business.” Do we care? If “we” refers to the royal “we” or “me and the mouse in my pocket,” then the answer is a resounding, “No, I just do not care and I’m not going to be apologetic or avoidant about how my body is shaped.”
I care about me. I care about my health and I care about my comfort. I care about my quality of life. I don’t care what thoughts about me someone else rakes over the coals of their trauma responses and ignorance.
I have not talked to my friend for many years, not because of that but due to, as far as I know, a natural drifting apart that happened. I suspect that now, all these years later, “old” is an equally repugnant word to her. I hope she made friends with those words, whether they apply to her or not.
She sometimes described herself as “hating” other women who she perceived were prettier or better built than she was and for me, that was a bridge to far. I could not imagine having negative thoughts about someone because they are shaped differently than you are. She quickly clarified that she doesn’t really hate them, but… and she didn’t seem to have an end to the sentence.
My friend was dealing with her own stuff, of course. We all have stuff and so often, we can’t relate to what others, even those closest to us, are feeling because our thoughts and feelings do not have the filters they do. Our past experiences and the triggers they create color every moment of the life we live and sometimes, it alters our perceptions in strange ways.
This is, however, the reality we live in and my friend’s reaction was fairly mild compared to some. I remember watching an episode of Dr. Phil a long while back about a woman who actively hates fat people. One of the observations she made is that we can’t possibly reach to wipe our hineys which, in her estimation, just added to and in some ways, defined, the grossness of obesity. This video is a review of the episode that a guy posted on YouTube and it is the only version of it I can locate:
No telling how much of this is set up, but yes, some people do feel this way. Last week, I wrote about people over a certain age disappearing and the blatant disregard others show for them. It is compounded if you happen to be old and fat as well. If you are old and running marathons, then you are a hero. If you are old and have surgery to look a certain way, you still get to be beautiful.
Admittedly, it does not bother me how other people think anymore. I guess I made myself invisible as well because I rarely consider what people who aren’t me think about me. I am what I am. This is the shape that a Katrina Rasbold apparently comes in. I removed myself from any conversation where I care what they think.
Yes, it is challenging to wipe your butt, especially if, like me, you have little T-Rex arms. I know there is a number on the scale that if I go over, I’m going to be in trouble in that regard. That same number on the scale is the one where my sleep apnea gets markedly worse and my arms start to fall asleep on me just ‘cause.
I move Heaven and Earth to stay away from that magic number, but yeah, every now and then, it creeps up on me.
Something that has helped me tremendously is using wet wipes in addition to toilet tissue. You have to be careful and buy the ones that are safe for septic systems if your home uses one.
Another blessing is this baby:
https://a.co/d/ejhJZvC is the link and there are many different kinds of them. This is a shower head that is detachable and docks into a strong magnet. You push a button to release the shower head, then pop it back onto the magnet when you are done.
This sort of shower head lets you clean All The Places extremely well, which anyone who is obese knows can be a challenge. I use an unscented soap like this one…
which minimizes irritation in skin folds. You may find that as your body gets bigger, you have less tolerance to the chemicals in dryer sheets, laundry additives, scented soaps, and body washes. It is essential that you can not only wash the deeper folds and crevices but also that they are exceptionally well rinsed and dried. This helps to keep down any irritation that can turn to infection, which is irritating at best and life-threatening at worst.
If you have not used a detachable shower head that can reach your whole body, you might be surprised at how sensitive some of the areas are that are not exposed to sunlight and do not brush against your clothing. [Author’s note: I do understand that the “water sports” innuendos abound here but that’s not where I’m headed with this] This intense sensitivity often indicates that the sweat, lint, and dirt that naturally collect on our bodies is starting to create irritation, even though technically, you feel you are clean.
Bathing is great but it is difficult to get fully clean while bathing because you are basically sitting in your own watered-down juices. A bath is a luxurious, relaxing, amazing fat person stew. I highly recommend standing and rinsing off with a detachable shower head before you exit your tub when your bubble bath is completed. Sadly, the ol’ body doesn’t just soak clean anymore.
I’m not trying to talk to you like you’re too dumb to know how to clean your own body. I’m fairly intelligent and I just found out about this in 2021, several decades into being obese, so if I can spare anyone even a few years of being in the dark about the joys of detachable shower heads, then I’m showing up for it (and this is still not an inuendo). That shower head will be the best $30 or so you ever spent.
Now, decades away from that uncomfortable conversation with my friend in a diner far, far away in every way, I can still comfortably identify as objectively fat and old. I could ask a kindergartener, those bastions of truth, if I am indeed fat and indeed old and I am confident they would sign off on both ideas.
But “fat” and “old” are three letter words and even those kindergarteners know the “bad words” are four letter words. Three-letter words are ones we love like art, act, god, awe, hug, bed, joy, bun, dog, cat, fey, kin, LOL, fab, nap, fly, sun, win, fun, and so on. Some of the worst words are four-letter words like rude, ugly, envy, lies, hate, hurt, debt, pain, can’t, don’t, harm, evil, fool, and fear. Also, “gone” which I am informed that old diner in Studio City now is and which we all will be some day no matter what words we use to describe ourselves now.
Sure, there are awesome four-letter words but what kind of a wind up to a cool blog post does that make?
