When I was a little girl I dreamed of being an actress. I was even told I had talent, on stage and at home when I pretended to be sick so I could miss school. Theater was my first love, and I still remember one school teacher telling me, in front of everyone, that it was the best performance of “la tirade du nez” she had ever seen.
I wanted to be an actress. But I was fat.
Until very recently, I had always been fat. A fat child, a fat teen, a fat adult. It took me years to learn to love my body, a journey that was complicated by a fatphobic society hellbent on waging a war on fat bodies.
Being fat in the early aughts automatically disqualified you from being “beautiful”. That’s not me saying it, that’s the unbelievable beauty standards of the time: the ultra-skinny look was celebrated and adopted by everyone from models to actresses to it girls. The body positivity movement was not mainstream yet, and diversity was not something most people talked about. Hollywood, and entertainment in general, was still largely dominated by white, straight, skinny people, and nobody ever questioned it (not that we are faring that much better today). So what happens when you have dreams of acting and seeing yourself on the big screen, when you’re a fat little girl?
I remember watching reality TV at that time and feeling deep shame about my body. Wathing The Simple Life with Paris Hilton, my heart would break when Nicole Richie would be called fat, even though to me, she had a normal body (this was before she started suffering from eating disorders). It angered me when Khloe Kardashian’s family would shit on her body, even though again, to me, an actual fat person, she was definitely thin. Both women were gorgeous, but since they were “fat”, they were automatically categorized as being the “ugly duck” of their families and friends. Every day I was also reminded that I was fat aka not good enough. Every time I saw women being insulted on TV, it made it ok for me to be insulted in return. My confidence shattered. I stopped doing plays even though I loved going on stage. I wanted to do musicals, but that was out of the question: no one wants to see a fat girl dance.
Maybe I could have pursued my dream of being a fat actress. Maybe all I had to do was work really hard. Maybe all dreams can come true if we believe hard enough. Or maybe I was never that fucking stupid. In the 2000s I wasn't “unconventionally attractive”, I was just straight up conventionally ugly.
Sometimes there are barriers that are hard to smash down by yourself. So instead, when I became an adult, I joined the body positivity movement. It not only helped me learn how to love myself, but also how to understand discrimination and prejudice at a societal level (I went on to pursue bachelor’s and master’s degrees in politics and sociology). In return, I hope I helped others love themselves, and find a safe space to be themselves.
I never became an actress, I never became famous, but I did learn the importance of representation and diversity. Please don’t bring back the heroin-chic look. Stop propping up only white skinny people. I don’t want more teenage girls to hurt like I did, to spend their school years hiding in the shadows. No one should be afraid to pursue their dreams.
bree beauregard
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