Discrimination
Photo Credit: Litmuse (Flickr.com)
“Hey fatty, hit the gym!” someone shouted at me as a car blasted by.
I rolled my eyes. Stupid frat boys. They were just dumb enough, and just drunk enough, to find something like that funny.
I’ve always been fat. Not overweight, but fat. Really fat. Like Garfield in his first year fat. And no matter what I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to be anything but fat.
Honestly, it’s never really bothered me, and it wasn’t about to start bothering me then. Every now and then, I’ve found myself feeling a little insecure, sure. It’s hard to live in a world that obsesses over freakish women and feel like a normal person when you’re on the opposite end of the distribution.
I continued walking down the street, undaunted. It was a hot day, and I wished I could be wearing shorts. Unfortunately, I’ve got to wear two layers when I go out on walks — the world’s biggest pair of spandex shorts and a part of jeans to cover them. Ironically, the spandex shorts don’t do much to slim me down, but they do help keep my thighs from brushing together and getting rubbed raw by my jeans. It’s a real problem when you’re fat, though I’ve often wondered if skinny people suffer from it too. I could wear loose-fitting shorts, but then people see the horrible bulges hanging off my legs and tend to stare at them. I’m not self-conscious, but I’m smart enough to know that the more I cover up, the less I look like a spectacle.
I’m actually quite fashionable for a fat person. It used to be difficult to find clothes, but lately, with Americans getting fatter, there are more plus-size stores selling more stylish things. On that particular day, I was wearing blue jeans, a white shirt, and a loose black shawl made of thin fabric that was draped over my shoulders. They say you should wear vertical stripes to cut down on your horizontal curves, but I don’t like looking like a watermelon. I stick to solid colors, and wear clothes that fit well and that drape over my roundest parts. I also make sure to get my hair done regularly and wear plenty of makeup and jewelry. All of these things help detract from my shape. Just because you’re fat doesn’t mean you can’t embrace it.
I continued down the street, stopping at the building where my interview was going to be held. The potential job was at an office tucked inside an old shopping center, but I noticed that there were three places to eat within 100 feet of the store. That made me sigh a bit in frustration. I knew it was self-conscious to think along these lines, but I hoped it wouldn’t come up in the interview.
I went inside, introduced myself to the receptionist (who must have been a temp or about to quit, because that was the job I was applying for) and sat down next to a girl who looked like what I can only describe as a Barbie doll. She was blond, and thin, and pretty, with perfect teeth and a large bust.
“I’m Amy,” I said. “Are you here to interview too?”
“Yeah,” she said distantly, as if she wasn’t paying that close of attention to me. She didn’t provide any further discussion, such as her name or any pleasantries or anything of the sort. Pretty people tend to do that to fat people. It’s almost like an unconscious reaction, like they know they don’t need to try around us.
“Um…” I said. “So, are you from around here?”
“Yeah,” she said again, and looked down at her cell phone. She started fiddling with it, clearly set on ignoring me. I decided to abandon any attempt at communication with her and flipped through a magazine instead — not People or Us, which were both in the lobby, but the copy of National Geographic I’d brought with me.
Finally, the receptionist looked up. “Amy?” she asked, looking at the pretty girl. I stood up. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you were Agatha.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Because I don’t look like an Amy.”
The receptionist smiled. “Exactly,” she said. “Come on, I’ll take you back.”
I was escorted to a small conference room, where two men in suits were sitting. The receptionist introduced me to them — Alan was the older of the two, sporting a ridiculous gray mustache and a plump belly tucked beneath his ugly red tie and worn gray suit. Joseph was the younger man, and he was quite striking in his red turban and navy blue suit. I assumed he was a Sikh, which was not so unusual for a college town.
I sat down, put on my best personality, and answered all of their questions. I knew that I had to make a good impression before they saw the Barbie doll sitting in the lobby, and I felt like I was doing so. As I stood up to leave, they seemed pretty happy with me overall. “We’ll be in touch,” Alan said, and Joseph nodded as he said it.
I didn’t expect to hear back from the firm right away, and it’s a good thing, because it was nearly a week before I got a call from the receptionist. Not the woman who had been there the day I’d interviewed, of course, but a bored, disinterested voice that seemed to be reading as she said, “Alan asked me to thank you for him and to let you know that while he enjoyed meeting you, we had another applicant who was more qualified.”
I sighed. It can be hard to be fat. It’s the one type of discrimination that’s still legal.
Fiction, Writing Scraps | SeanJJordan | 
January 21, 2010 12:12 am
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