The Real Me is Thin. Arabella Weir

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      The real me is thin. Of course she is. The real me does not need a size 16 (sometimes even a 18) to accommodate her mammoth arse (not my real one, obviously) when buying trousers. Properly fat women wear sizes 16 and 18, not me. I am not fat. I can’t be. I don’t feel like a fat woman. Well, not all the time. Obviously, I feel like a fat woman a lot of the time. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t think there was another ‘me’ out there, another, thin me available somewhere. The fat woman I feel like a lot of the time is my go-to person, the one I feel like when I feel bad about myself, which is how I feel when I eat, more often than not. But that can’t be who I really am. Admittedly, I find myself temporarily housed in a slightly-larger-than-planned-for body but, you see, that’s OK because it’s not my real one. In my real life – the one I’m supposed to be having, the one I had planned on having, the one I’m going to have – I’ll be wearing slinky party dresses with micro spaghetti straps, lovely bikinis and city shorts, of course I will… just as soon as I shake off this fat woman’s body, which, as we’ve established, isn’t mine anyway. I’ve no idea who put me into it. I certainly didn’t. How could the odd handful of chocolate-covered peanuts, sporadic slices of butter-laden malt loaf, and the occasional bottle of wine in one sitting possibly be responsible for getting me into this body? This overweight body I did not plan for and don’t recognise?

      Right from the beginning – well, my beginning anyway, when I was little – the real me wasn’t supposed to be fat. My parents made it clear they did not want a Fat Arabella. They wanted, expected, demanded, even, eventually, a Thin Arabella. The indisputable fact that Thin Arabella had never made an appearance (my birth weight was close to 11 pounds) didn’t seem to factor into my parents’ expectations. They seemed to think that Thin Arabella must be in there somewhere and that I, Fat Arabella, was deliberately hiding her to annoy them. As I grew up it became clear from their confused, slightly irritated reactions whenever I said I was hungry that they didn’t know who this girl was. My mum and dad couldn’t possibly have been meant to have a Fat Daughter. They’d both got degrees from Oxford, they read important books, spoke foreign languages, played musical instruments – good God, they went to museums for pleasure. People like that don’t get fat kids. Other people get fat children, not people who drink real coffee and look down on people who wear driving gloves, go on package tours, and disguise loo rolls under knitted dolls wearing crinolines. My mum and dad were cut out to be winners, and winners’ kids aren’t fat.

      The real me must surely be the one my parents were expecting, the one they had in mind when they longed for a daughter to follow their two boys. When a couple long for a girl they do not long for a fat one. They dream of a sweet, adorable, and, above all else, pretty girl. They must have been mystified. ‘Hey, Genepool, we didn’t ask for fat! Who ordered the fat one?! Not us!’ Who actually wants fat? No one. They certainly didn’t dream about having just any kind of daughter – thin or fat, ugly or pretty, three legs, four arms… They wanted what everyone who yearns for a girl wants: pretty, charming, a little bit cheeky maybe, bright would be a bonus, but not if it’s at the cost of being attractive. Winners have gorgeous girls. But what happens when she comes out fat? What then? You still love her, of course you do, you just set about… erm… modifying her. Encouraging her, shall we say, not to eat; and also perhaps to be a little embarrassed about her body and how much she eats – even if, at the start anyway, she eats only what her siblings eat, yet alarmingly it seems to make her fatter than them. That must be her fault.

      So, right from the beginning, the scene was set for a lifetime of believing myself to be fat – whether I was or not. Fat in my head, whatever my body shape. I was a chunky wee thing, and although (I’m told) I was much loved, it felt more like much judged, particularly for my appetite and fluctuating size – a deadly combination, and inextricably linked, according to my parents. If I was hungry it must be because I was greedy, because – seeing as I was evidently not thin – I couldn’t ever be genuinely hungry. A message I learnt early on: fat people aren’t allowed to be hungry.

      Of course, my parents’ attitude to my size as I was growing up isn’t entirely responsible for my lifelong struggle with food, eating, overeating, and weight. I’ve chosen a number paths that reinforced my deep-seated belief that Thinner Equals Better; but Mum and Dad’s effort to secure themselves a thinner daughter certainly set me off down that road – how could it not?

      So here are a few stories from the life of a fat daughter, fat schoolgirl, fat girlfriend, fat actress, fat mum, and fat wife – or, to put it another way, how I got to thinking my bum looked big in everything, whether it did or not.

      This book is for any woman or girl trapped in the wrong thinking that there’s another, better, ‘real’ her out there. It’s for any woman who has trouble accepting the size and shape she is. Really, it’s for any woman who’s ever thought twice about anything she’s putting into her mouth.