As I've been mulling over the connection between my weight, my body image, and my receptiveness toward romance, I saw this card posted on this week's Post Secret, and I felt like I could have written it:
I was stunned because yes, that's exactly what I feel whenever I'm getting down on myself and thinking I seem all but transparent to men my age. I think delusional things like, "If I were as thin and fit as I used to be, these same guys would be falling over themselves to talk to me," or I try to rationalize that in a way, being overweight is a good filter for guys who are shallow and only concerned with looks.
The reality is that I am the one rejecting guys, not the other way around. It's not so overt as them coming over to talk to me and me laughing in their faces, but I repel people by making myself unapproachable. When guys are friendly - and even flirtatious with me - I find myself so wary of feeling foolish that I scoff at any possibility that they'd find me attractive. I assume that they're bored, that they're trying to find an in with my more attractive friend, that I'm standing between them and something they need so they're trying to be polite about getting me out of the way, or that they may seem nice but probably have girlfriends who will show up at any second. And so on and so forth. I can imagine an infinite array of possibilities and alternate realities, while believing that a guy would find me attractive and engaging and actually want to talk with me is utterly impossible.
My body language tends to be haughty and almost smug sometimes, rolling my eyes at guys' feeble efforts to show off or not even looking at them, as if I'm above these things and impossible to please. Other times, I act like I am trying not to be seen, hiding behind headphones and a sketchbook, keeping my head down and averting my eyes, doing whatever it takes to avoid even a casual friendly encounter.
I don't really know why I'm like this. It's not the end of the world if I am open, smile, even have some friendly conversation, and then it turns out the guy's not at all interested, has a girlfriend, or wasn't even smiling at me in the first place. Is my fear of appearing foolish or overeager so powerful that it's worth being alone with my defense mechanisms the rest of my life?? I would be the first to criticize people who are afraid of putting themselves out there and interacting with others, yet I find myself doing it all the time lately.
Another maddening aspect of this behavior is that I'm not naturally like this. I'm ordinarily a very warm, approachable, friendly, funny, and outgoing person. I talk with people all the time, eliciting genuine laughs and thought-provoking exchanges. I'm charming, considerate, and once I am talking with just about anyone except a male of datable age, I am the essence of a confident woman wholly at ease with herself and the world. So why do men my own age turn me into a nervous wreck?! Why can I have many-hour conversations with guys a little older than me that cause them to declare they wish they could have found a girl like me when they were my age, yet anyone between 25-39 is some sort of foreign, terror-eliciting species to me?
I started to wonder if it's because I have a good deal of male friends my own age who share their feelings about women with me, perhaps to excess. I see how shallow, emotionally stunted, self-involved, and often cruel they can be, and I assume that all guys their age must be the same. When I talk with strangers at concerts or in bars, I can almost hear them going home and telling their me-equivalent friends that they met a pretty smart, funny, and interesting girl, but they didn't bother following up because she was fat. I can literally hear them saying what one of my particularly unkind friends once said, "If she's let herself go this badly by the time she's 29, I can't imagine what she'd become if I started dating her," followed by the aside, "nice tits, though, for a fat girl."
When I am out with girlfriends and two guys approach us, I assume I am the "landmine" or the fat friend who has to be amused so the more attractive guy can talk to my friend. That's not often the way it works out, and on more than a few occasions, both guys talk to me and ignore my friend, but I am so trained to believe that at the end of the night, they're going to ask for the thinner girl's number that I don't really bother getting my hopes up anymore.
I know that my cynicism comes from years of bad relationships, just as I know that men don't mistreat me because I'm overweight - they treat me badly because I let them. It does seem easier to scornfully call me a "fat bitch" than it should, but when I was in shape, it was "dumb bitch" or "crazy bitch" or any other modifier they could imagine. The point is that the men who are inclined to call me names and treat me like garbage were going to do it anyway, regardless of my weight. And if I put up with ugly treatment, then that's what I should expect.
This brings us full circle in a way, as my weight does repel men who are shallow and only looking for someone with a super gym body who dresses like a stripper. If someone shows interest in me, it's more likely they're actually looking at my face and listening to my words, or that they're looking for something more substantive than a hottie they can take home that night. That is, in some cases. I still do occasionally encounter a baffling variety of man who seeks out the "low-hanging fruit" of heavier, less attractive girls because he assumes, as a particularly misogynistic friend of mine put it "that they're so desperate to get laid, they don't care what I say or do." Apart from an astonishing lack of insight about women, I find that debasing kind of attitude essentially inhuman (and rooted in transparent, ugly insecurity), but I still get wary whenever someone seems a little too assured of himself without displaying genuine confidence. As if I'm supposed to be the one he's settling for.
Recently a friend broke up with his girlfriend after realizing that he didn't love her and was starting to find her annoying. He said he found her completely vapid and boring to be around, save for the fact that she had an amazing body and was always willing to do whatever he wanted in bed. While I was suggesting that staying in the relationship (especially when he was considering cheating on her) wasn't fair to either of them, I felt that it had to be pointed out that part of why he found her boring to talk with is because all she did in her spare time was go to the gym and shop. "How do you think she gets that amazing body?" I asked, "by sitting around reading about physics and current events?" He tallied up the amount of hours she needs to spend at various fitness classes and working out with her trainer, and he recognized that that was the same time he and I spend pursuing degrees in science, reading, and engaging in a whole host of hobbies and fascinations that make us diverse and (I hope) interesting people. He realized that he never asked her about her day anymore because there are only so many times that a person can tell you about working out, shopping, and watching television before you find them utterly insipid and tedious to talk to.
So, like many women my age and weight, I am in a bit of a Catch-22. I want men to find me attractive for my personality, for my heart and my mind. I want them to listen to what I have to say and enjoy me for the substance of who I am. Yet, men my age are unlikely to give me that chance because they are still looking for the girls who spend all day perfecting their bodies and fussing with hair and clothes and makeup. I worry that if I make myself more physically attractive and act more approachable, I will attract the wrong kind of guy, who would mistreat me either way, but I also know that if I do nothing, I won't attract any kind of guy.
I don't know the solution. I want to say All Things in Moderation, since that seems to be my mantra lately. It's possible to be of a healthy weight and fit without spending all my time at the gym taking spinning classes. I can even work hard at it and develop a really great figure, but still dress like a lady and be myself. I can try having some confidence in men that they're not all pigs and believe that some of them might be looking for the same kind of connection I am?
I just really don't want to be wrong, work my ass off to get fit with the expectation that men will treat me better, and find they are even crueler to thin girls. But I guess if I am wrong, I'll still have my personality?
