Editor’s Note: This is a chapter from the memoir I wrote while in grad school. It is titled Fat Man’s Daughter and deals with my weight issues as both the daughter of a morbidly obese man and later as the morbidly obese mom of four children.
Evaluating George
I’ve always been bigger than normal although I never recall being fat. I understand I was fat when I was an infant. As the family story goes, I had to be put on a diet before I could even walk. It seems unheard of to have to put an infant on a diet, but it’s the truth. The photos of my infant self show a plump happy baby. You can count the rolls of my belly. Yet, a fat baby isn’t quite the same thing as a fat adult. You forgive a baby. The fat rolls are cute and adorable. It’s not as easy to say that about a fat adult. When I think about it, I realize that I went on a diet for being overweight long before my dad ever became concerned about his own weight.
When my doctor had my mom place me on a diet, we lived in Arkansas. My dad was in the Air Force, and while he had a beer belly, he was still within accepted weight standards. But shortly after my first birthday, my dad retired from the military and we moved to Michigan. He began working as a guard at Jackson State Prison. By the time I was seven, he had to leave that job due to health issues. That’s when his weight increased by leaps and bounds.
Back to me. As a child and teen, I wasn’t fat. Or at least I don’t think I was. I was big primarily due to my height. I’m not outrageously tall, but I had a few inches over most girls my age, and as a teen every inch felt like a foot.
I clearly remember walking the halls of my old high school, surrounded by my friends. Most of them were around 5 feet tall, while I was 5’7”. I felt over-sized and awkward despite having more than five years of dance training. It didn’t help that I felt my best friend was basically a Barbie doll. To me, she seemed perfect. Tiny, blond, with huge blue eyes. Every guy we ever met drooled over her, including the man I would later marry. Despite my size, she overshadowed me.
In high school, I wasn’t too worried about my weight. I wasn’t overweight. My pant size was 9/10 (before vanity sizing), and I had a 24-inch waist. But I weighed about 40 pounds more than most of my friends. My extra seven inches had a lot to do with that, but I didn’t talk about my weight very often. In high school, I remember feeling like 100 pounds was the ideal weight, and I was way over that. I was described as “big boned” and tall.
I was a cheerleader for basketball, the drum major of the band, and had taken ballet, jazz and tap for years. I knew what my body could do and for the most part, I felt comfortable in it. Or as comfortable as a teenage girl can be expected to feel. I remember obsessing over the tiny paunch that was my belly. I’ve never had a flat belly. I know that technically, I have abs somewhere in my middle region, but I’ve never seen any evidence of them. The only time they seem to exert their presence is when I’m sick and have been coughing. Then somewhere, under the layers of fat, I feel the aching muscles being unduly exerted by my unstoppable cough. So that’s what abs are, I muse.
At one point, my dad tried to make me feel better about the little paunch that was my stomach. He talked to me about Marilyn Monroe, and how one of her pin ups where you can clearly see her paunchy stomach, yet she was still a sex symbol. Yes, Dad. That’s nice.
It wasn’t just my height that made me feel large long before I truly could be described that way. My feet have always seemed huge to me. In high school, I wore a size 8 compared to everyone else’s size 6, and the few size 5. Today, my feet have spread even further to a size 9. Even my feet are fatter now.
Then there’s my hands. I actually like my hands. They seem elegant to me. They’re thin, with long skinny fingers. My ring size is about a 6.5. What I love most about my hands is my fingernails. My nails are thick, and they grow quickly. I love the way my nails look and how easy it is to achieve that look. I rarely use nail polish. There’s too much oil in my nails to allow the polish to stay on. The few times I’ve tried, I’ve ended up with peeling nails within hours of application.
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I used to love watching my dad shave his face. He would sit in his chair, his mouth skewed to one side as he scraped the blade along his cheek. He never shaved it completely off. Instead, he’d clear off the center of his cheek until just a thin line of hair remained, traveling along his jaw line to where it met under his bottom lip.
He was so careful, making every stroke with precision. When he was done it was my job to be the judge. Was it even? As I got older, and his health deteriorated, I would wield a pair of scissors trimming up his bushy mustache.
I didn’t realize it then how important his appearance was to my dad. But little clues over the years make it obvious to me now. Starting with the stories my mom tells of them when they were first married.
My dad, my mom would say, spent more time in front of his mirror than she did.
“He used to spend hours gazing at himself,” my mom would say on a sigh.
With good reason, I thought whenever I saw my favorite photo of my dad. It had been taken just before he and my mom were married. He was wearing a bomber’s jacket, the brown leather already worn. Anyone would describe him as handsome. His blue eyes glimmered with amusement as they looked out from the frame.
The eyes I wished I had. I’m the youngest of five children – three girls and two boys. The girls, except for me, had blue eyes. The boys had brown eyes. I, however, was unhappily stuck with eyes that were neither blue (my first preference) nor the deep chocolate brown that would have been my second choice. It wasn’t until years later that I realized my eyes were hazel. Hazel wasn’t a word in my parents’ vocabulary. I envied my dad’s baby blues, the color so faded they perfectly matched the bleached out denim that I wore proudly in the 80s.
Whenever Mom would tease Dad about his infatuation with his mirror image, my dad was always ready with his rebuttal.
“There’s no conceit in my family,” Dad would declare, letting everyone know that it was perfectly normal and expected of him to be so enamored with his reflection. “If I was conceited,” he’d continue, “I wouldn’t be perfect.” This was always said in a tone as if conceit would be the only fault my mother could list.
Dad was always so careful about his appearance. When he got dressed, it would be a big production in our house.
“Bernardine,” he’d shout at my mother. “Bring me a shirt.”
My mom would appear with a carefully folded shirt in hand. My dad would make a sweeping gesture over his belly dusting off real or imagined items. Then he’d take his shirt from my mother, slipping it over his shoulders without ever leaving his chair in the living room.
As he pulled the shirt down over his belly, he’d look closely at its material. More often than not, he’d quickly pull the shirt off, balling it up and throwing it on the floor.
“Get me another one,” he’d order my mother. “This one has a stain.”
It wasn’t always a stain. Sometimes it was because the shirt failed to cover his belly completely. It was extremely important to my dad that his belly be covered adequately. If a shirt couldn’t cover his belly as he moved, it was discarded.
I never remember shopping for my mom’s clothes, but shopping for my dad was always a family outing. Mom, Dad and I would pile into the car and drive for hours to the store. We lived in a rural area and the nearest shopping mall was an hour’s drive.
Once we arrived at the store, my mom would search the racks, bringing her choices to my dad for his approval or scorn. After several hours of selection, we’d leave with several new outfits for my dad. We also never failed to stock up on underwear and T-shirts, preferably Hanes. After all, it’s not easy to find a 4X in just any store.
