Wanna know how it feels to be an overweight American living in Western Europe? Imagine that for most of your adult life you’ve had an annoying younger sibling that runs right behind you, constantly tripping you up, stepping on your heels and tugging at your sleeve and then one day, you turn around and the sibling has grown up. She is now much bigger and stronger than you and, fed up with the fact that you’ve been ignoring her for years, she puts on a pair of brass knuckles and punches you in the face.

It sort of feels like that; being floored by a niggling inconvenience that you had been able to shove aside for years. Moving here (though my trip here in August gave me a disturbing preview) has shown me once and for all, just how easy it has become in the United States to think that fat is normal.

I have never been skinny, or even slim, really. It’s a frustrating thing, being teased for being overweight, even when you do mostly the right things. I think the major thing I do, and have always done in regards to food, is over eating. I just don’t know when to stop. If there’s more food on the table, you can be sure I’ll eat until it’s gone, even if I’m no longer hungry. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is a habit I developed somewhere in my childhood and it is a very difficult habit to break. The thing is, I was very active in sports from the time I was nine until I graduated highchool, so while I did over eat and it put me at the higher end of my weight curve, I was never actually obese. I was in good shape, and maybe 20 pounds over weight. The thing was, I could get away with that fairly easily once the twenty pounds or so migrated into my boobs. Then all of a sudden the teasing stopped and I started getting dates. The extra weight was easily ignored when it relocated to a prime location.

Through most of college I was wearing a size 10 or 12, carrying most of my extra pounds in my chest and my body image improved a good deal, although I still judged a lot of my intrinsic value by what men thought of my body. Towards the end of college I began drinking a lot (for all the wrong reasons) and my already sluggish metabolism slowed down even more. Pair this with a few years of severe depression and a hormonal condition called PCOS and voila, I had gained 50 pounds in a little over a year.

You’d think this would get my attention, don’t you? Well, it did. At first I was too depressed to care and once I did care, the state I was in was enough to make me feel like losing weight was hopeless. I talked about doing it all the time, but I never really put much effort into it. I worked two jobs, was up all hours of the night and lived by myself. I had no one else to cook for and I was usually too tired or too broke to bother with healthy grocery shopping or excercise. I drove everywhere; in the US that’s usually the best options as far as transportation goes. It wasn’t hard to find clothing in my size. There are several well known specialty stores for large people in the States, but now almost every store has a section in plus sizes. Being a 20 was no big deal as long as I could still buy clothes that weren’t stirrup pants or moomoos.

I met CB and was very worried of what he’d think of me when we met in person for the first time. He was from Belgium and I’m not so unworldly as to be unaware of the American acceptance of obesity and the rest of the world’s repugnance towards it. I’m overweight for American standards, so I figured, for his standards I practically had my own field of gravity. I was so convinced that when we met, the first thing I’d see on his face would be disgust and dissapointment, quickly masked by an overly-hearty attempt at friendship. But it wasn’t like that at all. He made it quite clear early on that he loved me for me; for everything on the inside and nothing on the outside (well, ok, he doesn’t complain about the boobs). I had lost 18 pounds over a few months before he came to see me, but I put it all back on before I went to visit him a few months later. Again I was scared of rejection, and again he gave me nothing but love. He still does, every single day.

And I have never been laughed at or insulted here for my weight, which is significantly greater than about 95% of the Belgian population. I’ve been laughed at for my pathetic biking skills, but hell, even I laugh about that sometimes. But I still have to do my clothes shopping in the United States. I still feel uncomfortable on public transportation in some of the more narrow seats. I still look around every day and see things that I wish I could wear, but could never pull off because of my weight. I try to eat healthy (although I definitely slip on this at times) and we don’t own a car so I bike or walk a lot more than I ever did in America. I have lost about 22 pounds since I moved here 3 months ago. I still have a long way to go before I’ll be satisfied with how I look and feel, but this is the most progress I’ve made in a long time.

And I’m thankful. I won’t lie and say that moving to Belgium has been good for my body image. It’s been awful. I feel fat all the time. I get so jealous of everyone I see on the street or in the bus. I want so badly to feel “normal”. But it’s that sense of shock, that visual reminder of how people should look that finally pushed me into action. Living in the US makes it so easy to ignore that extra weight that’s stepping on the back of your heels, but sometimes it’s much healthier when it punches you in the face.

Oh, and I haven’t forgotten Music Monday, by the by. Here is a song by Kate Nash (not one of my favorites when I first heard her, but love, love, LOVE her now) that always makes me think of how must people feel in their youth. I think this is a very catchy song that reflects body image, plus I love the violin piece, and to top it all off, it’s a FEMALE singer/songwriter. You don’t have to tell me….I know I’m good.

Skeleton Song by Kate Nash

Skeleton you are my friend
But you are made of bone
And you have got no flesh and blood
Running through you to help protect the bone

Skeleton we have been friends for years
And you have seen me through some trials
And tribulations and some tears
But everybody thinks I’m weird
And I should have known
That it wouldn’t be long
Until you, you’ve got me standing in an awkward position
With unwanted attention and a need for explanation
And it’s not that I’m letting go of you
But I don’t know what to do
Skeleton we are so close
But you have got no body
So why do you insist on wearing clothes
Skeleton when we were young
It was easy
Even though the other kids
They would tease me
But I was only seven I had you
But now I’m twenty-two
And now it’s different, when I take you out
And you, you’ve got me standing in an awkward position
With unwanted attention and a need for explanation
And it’s not that I’m letting go of you
But I don’t know what to do
‘Cause sometimes at night,
I dream of the most terrible things
I take a hammer and I creep out of bed
And I raise it high
And I smash your head
Fibular and tubular
And ribs and cages, too
In fact, while I’m here
I’ll smash the whole of you

Smaaaaaaaaaaash !
But Skeleton, you are my friend
And I could never bring your life to an end
Yes Skeleton you are, you are my friend
And I will be there for you until the end
And even though, when I take you out
You’ve got me, you’ve got me standing in an awkward position
With unwanted attention and a need for explanation
I could, I could never let you go
And that is all I know
And that is all I know
And that is all I, that is all I know
And that is all I know, know