When I learned French I was able to announce to the class, “ Je suis courte” (I am short) “ J’ai les cheveux bruns” (I have brown hair) “ Je suis americaine” (I am a female American) “ Je suis grosse” - ugh (I am a fat lady). When you learn a foreign language you begin with the vocabulary of a child, able to describe the world and yourself in only the simplest of terms. I didn’t get really heavy until after my mother died, but I grew up thinking I was fat, and knowing it was a failure of character. Actually, I was a pretty normal-size kid. I tried to fill in the dimples of my cheeks with Play-Doh but it kept falling off. She used to call me Juanita Gordita, which means (because of the - ita diminutive in Spanish) “Little Fat Jona.” I also remember my uncle telling me that only fat people had dimples (not true, by the way, but he was a Catholic priest and I was predisposed to consider his pronouncements as pretty authoritative). One of my earliest memories is my grandmother, who would produce hundreds of homemade flour tortillas, and dozens of enchiladas swimming in cheesy, red chile sauce out of a kitchen the size of the walk-in closet of my last house in America. You might get past that after you get to know me. That’s probably the first thing you’d think when you see me.
We live it every single moment of every day.
Here’s a fact: Fat people know they are fat.
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