The game was up when I put on a pair of size 14 jodhpurs at the country store and they almost fit me. ‘No no no no no no no!’ I said, backing away from the mirror. The builder boyfriend looked over from where he was taking the blonde wig off a mannequin and putting it on his head in an attempt to entertain the other customers, who were not laughing at all. He is the worst shopping companion.
I looked back at myself in the mirror. Never have I been bigger than a 10 and now it seems I have passed from 10 to 14 without even pausing at 12 and without so much as a word from my nearest and dearest.
The problem is that our society is now so ‘body positive’ that when I balloon in the space of one wet, miserable winter, the reaction of my friends and family is to say nothing.
I squeezed myself into the 12, to dubious looks from the sales assistant, then slapped them down on the counter. ‘You’ve done the right thing. If you get the bigger ones you’ll only grow into them and where does it stop?’ said the BB, finally engaging with the problem, but only because he couldn’t get a laugh out of the customers. ‘This lot, eh? Talk about miserable,’ he moaned, putting the wig back on the mannequin.
That evening, I ran round the woods with the dogs before eating a small bunch of grapes for dinner. ‘It’s only seasonal. You’ll drop off,’ said the BB, who treats my body issues as though I were a horse. I’m not so sure.
The fat lobby feel they have some sort of stake in your fat, or control over how you talk about it
Every winter for the past few years I have got bigger and every summer I almost shed the weight.
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