The Elephant in the Room

My weight enters the room before I do. It doesn’t matter if I’m having a good hair day. It doesn’t matter if I walk in with a smile on my face. It doesn’t matter if I’m wearing makeup. My body is the first thing people always notice.

The first time I noticed I was different was when I was five. I was going on the bus to school and made friends with two twin sisters. The seat I sat in that day became my assigned seat on the bus. I didn’t know the choice I made would turn out to be a bad one.

Three kids in one seat on a bumpy ride to elementary school. I was at the end and I kept falling off. My naive self simply said, “I don’t know why I keep falling out of the seat.”

One of the sisters turned to look at me and said, “It’s because I’m skinny and you’re fat.” I went silent. I had no idea how to respond to that. I was only five, but I already knew “fat” was an insult.

I didn’t speak to them for the rest of the ride to school. That one comment consumed all my thoughts. I couldn’t get rid of it. I especially could not stop anticipating the ride back home.

When the end of the day finally came, I was forced to sit with them on the bus. I cried to myself the whole ride home while they whispered to each other about throwing my backpack out of the window. The bus driver knew the state I was in and didn’t care enough to find out why I was upset.

For the next few years, I would go back and forth with dieting. I watched “PowerGirl Fitness” on YouTube and was inspired by Breanna Bond’s weight-loss story. I tried one session of personal training with my father, but he called me a bunch of names when recounting what happened with my mom. Nothing ever stuck because I looked to food for comfort when nothing else was there for me.

My weight was always the elephant in the room. People felt the need to acknowledge it, even when it did not correlate with the topic being discussed.

I had experience being called names in real life. As I got older, my new battle was cyberbullying. If I thought that people could be so mean to my face, I had no idea how much worse it would feel from behind a screen.

I posted a song cover on YouTube when I was 10. I didn’t know it then, but I would soon discover that whenever I got views, I’d receive comments about my body even if it had nothing to do with the post.

“She’s chubby.” That was the comment. Nothing crazy, but at the time, I was broken by it. For some reason, it almost felt worse having a stranger comment on my body.

The next time was when someone from middle school replied to my Snapchat story and asked why my Bitmoji wasn’t fat.

As if I’m supposed to make sure my cartoon profile with a freakishly large head accurately represents my body. These were the same people who thought it was funny to make their Bitmoji a different race. And they were taunting me for having a thin avatar.

When I joined TikTok, nothing was different for me. I kept posting song covers and joined in on dance trends. I was safe as long as the videos stayed within my social circle. All bets were off when the views skyrocketed.

My most viral moment was an impression video that got over a million likes. Even though I had a sea of positive comments, my brain only focused on the negative ones.

I called my impression “my biggest flex.” The video was humorous. I wasn’t dancing or trying to look pretty. I didn’t do anything that would warrant a response about the way I looked.

Still, someone had to address the elephant in the room. “Your biggest flex is that you can stand on a scale without seeing the numbers,” someone said.

These trolls loved to come out of the woodwork to spread the word about my body as if they were Paul Revere. “Look, everybody! She’s fat! Hey you! Do you know that you’re fat?”

I recently posted about a television show I liked getting a second season. I was trying to be funny by stating my political ideology because the show satirically depicts conservative women. This obviously enraged some people. They had to find a cheap way of getting to me.

A user called me a lifetime supply of bacon.

Even though I’ve been working on my weight since the beginning of the year. Even though I’ve lost over 40 pounds. Even though I wouldn’t let myself go to bed until I reached 10,000 steps. It did not matter. That person was seeing me for the first time, and since I did not change enough, they still addressed the elephant in the room.

I wish that people wouldn’t make assumptions about me before they really get to know me. I wish that before somebody got the chance to talk to me, in person or online, they’d get a disclaimer about what I’ve been through.

They have no idea what it’s like to be deathly afraid to step on a scale for some math problem in kindergarten. To be only 10 and have a kid take your phone on the bus and laugh at you for having a dieting app. 

To hear your family members echo the phrase “a minute on the lips, forever on the hips.” To have your grandparent be concerned about you working at an ice cream shop because it might be “too tempting.”

To watch your friends call themselves fat when you know you’re much bigger than them, making you wonder if they think that way about you too.

To go to the mall and leave with nothing because clothes don’t fit. To have friends say they could never picture you in a relationship.

To blow out your birthday candles and have the same wish every year. To be thin.

They don’t know. And I’m so painfully aware of it. If there’s anyone who knows I’m fat, I promise you, it’s me. It makes me avoid the mirror. It makes me run out of the frame when a picture is taken. It makes me feel like I can’t live my life until I’m thin.

But I’m not there yet. For now, I’m just the elephant in the room.