- I was chubby when I was a kid, so my parents sent me to fat camp.
- They said they wanted to keep me from developing health issues as I grew older.
I was 12 years old, sitting on half-log benches around a dead firepit with some other kids. The oldest woman I'd ever seen in my life strode up to us and sat down. I don't remember everything she said; it's been over a decade now. I remember one of the things was: "I know I'm ugly. I don't care. I'm old. People think I'm ugly. That's not my business. I like who I am."
That woman was Bobby, one of the counselors at the fat camp I went to as a child. Her job was to ensure that we didn't spiral into eating disorders or despair. She could look you in the eye and tell you that it didn't matter how much weight you lost if you were rotten on the inside. The teenagers all hated her.
I was a chubby kid. My parents sent me to fat camp because they didn't want me to become diabetic. They wanted me to feel more confident, to fit in, to not be bullied as much at school. Everything I taught on paper at fat camp was healthy enough: I learned new recipes with vegetables; I tried new sports; I did all the regular summer-camp activities.
When I lost weight, I stopped getting bullied
But one of the things I learned is that everybody loved me more when I was skinnier. Fat camp was the petri dish of the real world. No amount of counseling can save kids from comparing themselves to each other. I learned that I had quite a bit of social currency compared to the kids who were more overweight than me. People would talk to me or want to be friends for no reason. People gave me things for free. I even made it into the less-fat-kid heterosexual dating pool.
I don't remember an exact moment, but my growing brain decided that the most important thing I could do for myself and my future was to become the sort of person that everyone likes. When I got home from camp, I started doing daily exercises in my bedroom. I started watching videos on YouTube about how to do makeup. I decided no one would ever again treat me like an undesirable fat kid.
I stopped getting bullied at school. Everyone treated me better. But it did not fix all my problems.
I didn't like myself
Deep down, the real reason why I needed everyone to like me was because I didn't like myself enough. That didn't go away once I lost weight. In fact, I felt worse. The whole time I'd been trying to decipher my feelings of gender nonconformity. My greatest fear was that coming out of the closet would destroy my life completely. Once I built my life around a fake, perfect persona of myself, I realized that it really would.
It got to the point where I felt awful all the time, like I was piloting my body from very far away and had no autonomy over my life. I felt like I either had to change or die. Thankfully, I decided to change.
When I first came out in high school, I lost all my pretty privilege because I stopped looking like a nice young lady and started looking like a prepubescent boy with a huge ass. Taking testosterone gave me nearly two full years of severe acne before my body acclimated to the new hormones. And allowing myself to live however I wanted made me gain weight, too. I have not fit our cultural standard of beauty since I was 16. I never regretted it once.
When you see me for the first time, you no longer see a thin and pretty girl. Instead, you see me as I am. No amount of privilege could ever feel better than living my life on my own terms.
I've finally come back around to what Bobby was trying to tell me 11 years ago: People think I'm ugly, but that's not my business. I like who I am.