Fit vs. Fat - The Color of Pride

by Karla Carrington (Subscribe to Karla Carrington's posts)
Dec 9th 2008 7:00PM

Categories: The Good, The Fat and The Hungry, Diet & Weight Loss, Fitness, Nutrition & Supplements

Welcome to the Good, the Fat and the Hungry. I'm Karla and I have been -- or am -- all those things. Here, I will share with you my lifelong struggle with my weight, and I hope you'll follow along on with my determined attempt to lose nearly 40 pounds. I promise to tell you every win and setback along the way every Tuesday and Friday.

barack obama

The first time I was called the "N" word, I thought it meant fat. I was five years old and until that day, all the names I'd been called by mean kids had to do with being fat. It happened as I was making my exit from the kindergarten bathroom. I can remember bumping into a little white girl about the same age. I said "excuse me" as I'd been taught to do -- even though it was her fault -- and her response was absolutely stunning. She said, "Move, N word." For reasons I did not yet understand, it hurt deeply. Surely such an ugly word like that had to mean fat, too.

I went home and recounted the exchange with my then 29-year old-mother of five. I knew right away that it was serious because she explained the meaning of it through eyes moist with tears. She tried to counter the ugliness by speaking in such terms of endearment over Civil Rights marches and great leaders who fought for change. But it did not ease the pain of that little girl's words. My 5-year-old mind could not understand how my color could incite such ugliness more than being the fat kid in school did? Great, one more reason to be ashamed. Shame over being black helped make me fat.

A few years later, the movie Roots came out. I was only seven years old, but my parents insisted that we watch as a family. We watched, and it made me mad as hell. The N word was all over the place. I had heard it many times since that first pre-school exchange, so I did not bristle hearing it on TV. But now I was an angry black. Growing up in the South in all white suburban neighborhoods where we were not welcome, with ghetto fabu-less cousins and haughty church folk as our only same race contact, I was certainly not filled with the black pride so widely touted on Afro centric t-shirts made popular during the 70's. I was angry that my hair was nappy and my lips were big. Being an angry black helped make me fat.

Shame and anger made me fat. I grew up knowing only one way to mask my pain: Food. For real, I would eat till I was numb. I was fat, and it was fine with me. Misery so deep settled in me, and I attracted the same in partners and friends. I'm not quite sure why I ever thought I could eat away misery, but I did. Matter of fact, I think I ate Misery, the movie! I ate so much, I can't remember. Food and my emotions were connected. I had to learn to detach because emotionally I kept a reason to binge. Shame and anger about my race encouraged me to eat and eat and eat. It wasn't until I got older and began to study black history that I gained a sense of pride about my heritage. Knowledge about the greatness and sacrifice of black leaders gave cause for my chest to swell. Overcoming shame with pride about who I really was helped make me thin.

The anger I felt dissipated as I began to show love to all, including myself. I began to see the beauty and strength of black people, my people. I took note in the beauty of white and brown as well. It is in the eye of beholder and when you behold with your heart, you can love, respect and embrace all. Comfort in my own black skin helped make me thin.

Today I am damn proud to be black. No chemicals in my hair. Twelve years natural and nappy, by choice. I love every unpermed hair and wouldn't have it any other way. Oh, and those big lips, yup, love them too. I weigh less now than I did at eleven years old. Self love and acceptance helped make me thin.

Let's not forget that if I NEVER had a reason to strut my stuff with pride before, here's a good one -- in two words: Barack Obama.

Comments (2)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kate 12-10-2008 @ 7:01AM

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PJ 1-26-2009 @ 1:09PM

You know, I hear accounts like this, and it astounds me, truly. It's amazing what different 'realities' we grow up in.

I grew up in southern coastal california. My town I'm sure was dominantly white but quite a blend of mexican, black and asian as well. When I was there we had no gangs, it was a fast-growing city but by the sea, very laid back.

Somehow, the prejudice of my parents generation escaped me. When I was little I asked my parents why I had dark freckles on my arms, just a few. They said that was skin pigment, simplified for a kid. My freckles were as dark as one of my dad's heroes, Bill Cosby, whose pic was on the front of his album he often listened to (damn his early stuff was so hilarious!!), so I figured it was kind of random chance that I had only dots of darkest-brown instead of a whole arm, maybe half an arm? or whole body that way. I spent much of my early childhood secretly wondering why people didn't come in blue and red and/or with spots and stripes, like animals.

I noticed my own little girl was curiously free of prejudice when she got to school and told me innocently of "the girl with the brown face" which to her was simply descriptive, like "the girl with the red hair" or "the girl who is really tall". Kids who have biases really young must get them from family I'm guessing. She had no idea what any of it meant, it just seemed obvious to her that people looked very different, just like our too-many-cats look different.

Anyway, through my Jr. High the famous musicians were Michael Jackson and Donna Summer, and when I was 8 I really wanted to BE Aretha Franklin for awhile, so weirdly enough I just didn't "get" whatever most people seem to that differentiates race; it just wasn't relevant.

I never believed people around me were prejudiced. I never saw it. I like to think I would have said something if I did.

When I was 18 my best buddy was a guy I met in a college tennis class who was from Nigeria. Nobody understood a word he said but everyone sort of laughed and pretended to. I was the only one that made him walk through every word until I 'got it' and helped him, for which he was grateful. I didn't know that my dad had issues until then, until we were inseparable. He was terrified. His younger sister-- blonde homecoming queen-- married someone black in OK and literally they had the burning cross on the lawn, dogshit thrown on the doors and cars, terrible response from people (though ironically they got it just as badly when she first married a full blood native). He felt like it was going to ruin my life and endanger me and so on, and he got really panicky thinking that any minute now we'd be lovers.

That wasn't as weird as the white women who accosted me in public (like movie theatre) bathrooms asking me about my boyfriend... was it true, about black men? I was usually too shocked to have a pithy comeback (usually starting with 'we're only friends', but then if I admitted that, I felt as if I were disowning him in some way, and that wasn't right either). He had his own share of harrassment from the black guys in college, about me. (Of course, he's from a culture where everyone is black, so he doesn't have the same psychology most my friends who are local blacks do; you might say he's not paranoid, even reasonably-so, because he didn't grow up in a world that held that against him.)

So one day we're in a K-Mart and some kid, maybe 8? sitting in a basket, looks up at him as we stroll by and shouts, N-word! My jaw about dropped to the floor. Not as much as the kid's and his mother's, because my buddy had literally backhanded the kid into Sunday INSTANTLY. (He said later he'd never hit ANYBODY, even in school, and it was like his body acted without his brain even being involved, just INSTA-reaction.) Me and the mother and the kid literally just stood there with mouths open in astonishment! Then I grabbed his arm and hustled him out of there before he got arrested for assaulting someone's child or something.

But I couldn't believe it! The only people I'd ever even heard use that word were blacks themselves -- either in stand-up or casual negative ref to self/others.

I have cousins that literally fit into every imaginable minority group in the country, from race (mexican, black, native) to other stuff (gay, lesbian, mentally challenged, physically challenged, etc.). My family's like a walking UCofBenneton ad. My cousin TJ is one of my favorite people, he is the son of my aunt (whom I mentioned above). Smart, ethical, handsome, he's a great guy. He majored in social work and I helped with the editing on a few of his bigger papers and we got to talking about prejudice. Now I grant he grew up in OK and I in CA. But it just blew my mind that he felt there was racism everywhere. He had interviews with people in papers and they obviously felt so too. They talked about like, salespeople or hostesses helping or seating other people before them, or "the looks" people give.

Being severely obese I know "the looks" bit too well, and some of the other bias-results.

But I never saw it. I'm gradually becoming a little more aware of it. I'm profoundly offended when I do see it. It makes me think anybody acting like that must be a little retarded frankly.

When I was a kid they told me I was Cherokee. They didn't tell me anything else at all so I grew up thinking I was "Indian". I cried over cowboy movies. I hated white people 'in general'. When I was 17 I met a REAL native (he was nearly black, but in a different undertone color) and realized, brushing my hair in the mirror, "You look pretty damn white to ME!" I didn't find out about my history until then, till I went to family asking. (My mom died when I was 9 and dad's fam was across the country, guess that's why.) So oddly I grew up thinking people were prejudiced against "my people" -- but never suffering it directly or personally since I look plainwrap generic.

In my adulthood I've met groups of black people that put me off; it was like I'd stepped into a bad sitcom. I wondered if that was big-city influence, or just those individuals. AS individuals I've never had any issue with people who happened to be black, but in groups, sometimes it seems like they insta-bond and start acting out some cultural mythos that I'm not even entirely sure is real; as if it's some kind of defensive measure ("since we're never gonna fit into your world, we are officially being 3X the stereotype assigned to ours"). I'm a closet sociologist so I've thought about this a lot. I suspect there's no way I can understand it since I simply don't have that experience-set.

I talk to people in the grocery store all the time of every race; in public places; the kid's school; it seems so strange to me that people would be... segregated I guess, socially voluntarily. I think sometimes blacks perceive it a difference more than I do. Kinda like, if you wrote a post, and lots of people read it, but a couple people were mean about it, you would have a 'mean impression' from readers (esp if there was something similar about the ones mean, eg all men or something) even though really, MOST the readers were perfectly normal, a few were kind, and only those were mean--but emotionally it has more impact than the small % merits. There's been several times in adulthood and at work where I observed that someone who was a dark race (of almost any race that was dark skinned) seemed to hold themselves out of social stuff they'd have been welcome in, they just didn't 'feel' they would be; hard experience, maybe.

Anyway, I guess I had never considered, until your article, that if a person grows up in an atmosphere of hostility or insult, that it's got to have a huge effect on self-esteem and of course, that has a huge effect on other things, including weight and body-image.

I liked your post. Thanks.
PJ