Sunday, August 05, 2007
U-G-L-Y You Ain't Got No Alibi
On a bus to Baltimore last week, three college students sat behind me chatting. Their predictable banter alone annoyed me being that I teach students who confuse television sparring with real conversation everyday. But I was willing to allow them their 20s. Then the three—two young men and a woman—began talking about an unfortunate girl they knew that was “stalkerish and “a little strange” and, according the girl, “kind of fat and disgusting anyway.”
I don’t know why, but at that point I had to see what this girl looked like. I guess it didn’t matter whether a fatphobe was blonde or redheaded, but I needed to know. And sadly, because I too was reared in an atmosphere where women judge each other on looks alone, I was downright mortified when I cocked my head around to peek that the girl was FREAKIN’ UGLY. She was pimply, blotchy and her eyes sagged at the corners like a puppy. I was mortified that she was acceptable just because she was skinny. Now I know what I just said was phobic to all the pimply, blotchy, saggy-eyed girls in the world, but for whatever reason I couldn’t believe an ugly girl could have the NERVE to come out of her face with that crap on the Chinatown bus to Baltimore. The two guys she was with just nodded in agreement.
Then last night, I was in a trendy bar in Park Slope. Our table of teachers was loud and rowdy, joking about our students and fellow co-workers having inappropriate sex. I noticed another two-guy-chick combo at the table to the left of us. I quite frankly didn’t look closely at them, just registering them in my mind as another crew of Brooklyn drabby chic. How many Von Dutch caps can catch you attention in the world? At one point the three started talking about a male friend who couldn’t seem to stop following his ex-girlfriend around.
“He’s just a fat slob anyway,” I heard the girl say. And her two friends just started laughing.
And again, I had to see what she looked like.
And again … she should have been barking. Which satisfied me.
The petty part of me was pissed off that you can be downright ugly and still be considered acceptable because you are skinny. I know the old “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” and other such trite messages that remind us to look at people’s content and not their outer appearance. But I also have always believed that when you are not perfect, you are warded by the forces of karma to be fair to others. My friends and I call this the fat champion syndrome. When you grow up fat, you tend to be the defender of the strange, friend to the different. You know that at anytime, in the middle of your senior prom, your first kiss, a swimming lesson where you finally learned to dive, someone could just call you a fat bitch and turn that happy memory into a nightmare. Therefore, we tend not to return the favor.
Of course there are fat girls that turn the other way and are rude to others to draw attention away from themselves. I tried that on for size one year, but it never quite fit. I learned my lesson the day that the special-ed girl on my block Alice Lee came outside on our stoop to talk to our crew. She was struggling to tell us a story, which was barely falling out of her mouth because of a speech impediment. Then her mama came downstairs to tell her to come up for snack. When her mama stepped out of the darkness of the brownstone vestibule into the sunlight, we saw a little brownish-red dead roach stuck in a clump of her hair. Alice saw it at the exact moment that we did, and we all caught eyes. The boys began to giggle, but I loudly guffawed. Alice was mortified, and she looked at me as if I had violated her. Me. Not the boys. Because she knew I owed her more. But I got my payback. Alice left, and we sat there and joked and laughed about her dirty mama for a good hour. But when the name calling got to its height, someone looked at me and began with, “You so fat that …” I got the message.
Either ugly girls don’t have the same code of honor, or they are more allowed to be unattractive than we are to be fat. Either way, both of those girls are lucky I didn’t return the favor.
I don’t know why, but at that point I had to see what this girl looked like. I guess it didn’t matter whether a fatphobe was blonde or redheaded, but I needed to know. And sadly, because I too was reared in an atmosphere where women judge each other on looks alone, I was downright mortified when I cocked my head around to peek that the girl was FREAKIN’ UGLY. She was pimply, blotchy and her eyes sagged at the corners like a puppy. I was mortified that she was acceptable just because she was skinny. Now I know what I just said was phobic to all the pimply, blotchy, saggy-eyed girls in the world, but for whatever reason I couldn’t believe an ugly girl could have the NERVE to come out of her face with that crap on the Chinatown bus to Baltimore. The two guys she was with just nodded in agreement.
Then last night, I was in a trendy bar in Park Slope. Our table of teachers was loud and rowdy, joking about our students and fellow co-workers having inappropriate sex. I noticed another two-guy-chick combo at the table to the left of us. I quite frankly didn’t look closely at them, just registering them in my mind as another crew of Brooklyn drabby chic. How many Von Dutch caps can catch you attention in the world? At one point the three started talking about a male friend who couldn’t seem to stop following his ex-girlfriend around.
“He’s just a fat slob anyway,” I heard the girl say. And her two friends just started laughing.
And again, I had to see what she looked like.
And again … she should have been barking. Which satisfied me.
The petty part of me was pissed off that you can be downright ugly and still be considered acceptable because you are skinny. I know the old “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” and other such trite messages that remind us to look at people’s content and not their outer appearance. But I also have always believed that when you are not perfect, you are warded by the forces of karma to be fair to others. My friends and I call this the fat champion syndrome. When you grow up fat, you tend to be the defender of the strange, friend to the different. You know that at anytime, in the middle of your senior prom, your first kiss, a swimming lesson where you finally learned to dive, someone could just call you a fat bitch and turn that happy memory into a nightmare. Therefore, we tend not to return the favor.
Of course there are fat girls that turn the other way and are rude to others to draw attention away from themselves. I tried that on for size one year, but it never quite fit. I learned my lesson the day that the special-ed girl on my block Alice Lee came outside on our stoop to talk to our crew. She was struggling to tell us a story, which was barely falling out of her mouth because of a speech impediment. Then her mama came downstairs to tell her to come up for snack. When her mama stepped out of the darkness of the brownstone vestibule into the sunlight, we saw a little brownish-red dead roach stuck in a clump of her hair. Alice saw it at the exact moment that we did, and we all caught eyes. The boys began to giggle, but I loudly guffawed. Alice was mortified, and she looked at me as if I had violated her. Me. Not the boys. Because she knew I owed her more. But I got my payback. Alice left, and we sat there and joked and laughed about her dirty mama for a good hour. But when the name calling got to its height, someone looked at me and began with, “You so fat that …” I got the message.
Either ugly girls don’t have the same code of honor, or they are more allowed to be unattractive than we are to be fat. Either way, both of those girls are lucky I didn’t return the favor.
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