Being "Fat" in Thailand

“Ja moh. What is that in English?” “Nose.”

“What about gluay. What is that in English?” “Banana.”

“And what about chang?” “Elephant.”

“You are an elephant.” “Why am I an elephant, Nonnie?”

“Because you have a really big body like an elephant.”

This is not an uncommon conversation that transpired this evening. In fact, I am told by Nonnie and others, mostly the children, about the large size of my body quite frequently. The word for fat in Thai is ‘uan’. I hear it quite often – as in “coon uan laew” (you are fat already),“Tam pom, dtey coon uan” (Tam is skinny, but you are fat), or my favorite “Khun Uan”, a pleasant little title one of my co-workers likes to call me, meaning Miss Fat One. I know that I am bigger than the average Thai person - it is quite an evident thing. I am just not Thai, there is nothing I can do about that. And at my extreme 5 foot 3 inch stature, I often feel like a giant in this teeny weeny culture. Coming from a different culture where talking about other’s sizes or asking another’s weight is extremely taboo, it has been a process in adjusting to this candidness of conversing. Coming from a long past of low self-esteem, struggles with body image, and disordered eating patterns, this process has been made all the more difficult.

I don’t really know when this history started, but I think it has its origins in my dance background. Starting dance lessons at the age of two and continuing them through the end of high school, I think even during adolescence I was acutely aware of the fact that I was bigger than most of the other girls. I did not have the slender, muscular body of the other girls in my gymnastics class. I did not have the lean, stick thin body of the girls in my Irish Dance classes. My legs were, and always have been, strong and thick, and my baby fat stuck to me way longer than my toddler years. Coupled with the fact that I was exceptionally shy, I had a hard time making really close friends in my dance classes, which in my mind only accentuated the difference between them and myself. At the age of ten or eleven, I already believed that I was less than others because of my appearance.

When high school came, I was lucky to meet an amazing group of girls who I am still friends with today that helped me start to feel like I belonged. However, when my grandmother passed away during my ninth-grade year, I fell apart. Instead of really grieving her death, I started focusing all of my energy on the parts of me that were wrong, something I have only recently realized is my natural reaction to stressors and anxiety. Instead of dealing with the stress or grief or frustration, which is usually completely unrelated to my body or my appearance, I turn inwards and start to perseverate on my flaws. Following my grandmothers death this looked like actively not looking in the mirror for about three or four months, with the exception of getting dressed in the morning. I did this because my preoccupation with my flaws and my weight led me to believe that I was better off not seeing myself in the mirror. However, I think subconsciously part of my motivation was to see if anyone, particularly my friends and family, noticed my eyes deliberately gaze straight into the porcelain sink as I washed my hands at school or as I instantaneously averted my gaze from the mirrors leading out of the foyer in my home. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t doing well. But no one ever said anything, so I just kept doing it. Over time I began to look in the mirror again, but when you tell yourself that you are not worthy enough of being seen even by your own self for such a long time, it is hard not to believe it and it is hard for it not to become a part of who you are. My actions may have changed, but my thought processes had not.

Moving into college, my fixation with my body and my image took a different shape than in high school. Instead of avoiding the mirror, I feel like I could not stop looking in it. At my darkest times, I would often head into a bathroom after classes to make sure I looked okay before walking through campus only to dash into another bathroom, usually the one next to the school theatre that no one seemed to know about, as I was able to get a better, more critical look at myself before entering into the dining hall. On a campus that is notorious for its students looking like they just walked out of a “J. Crew Magazine… but with a hangover”, it is hard to not feel intimated by the extreme activeness, male and female alike, of the student body. Everywhere I looked, I saw perfection. I could not be the thin, bright-eyed blonde leaving the gym in her flawless Lululemon workout attire with barely a bead of sweat on her body. Instead I was the girl working out for two or so hours a day for some months, the voice in her head telling her that she was the heaviest person in the gym and that she should feel guilty for how much she ate that day, which sometimes was not even enough. But then it would stop. I would stop going to the gym, sometimes because I would start feeling better but sometimes I just did not have the drive or time to keep going. This often led to emotional eating or more frequently the strict restriction of different foods. It makes me ashamed to remember thinking thoughts such as “I wish I just had the willpower to not eat” after an “unsuccessful” attempt of only not eating for two days or “I just wish I could make myself actually throw up” as I leaned, dry heaving over a toilet. I was dealing with my own demons and yet I felt like I didn’t have the “resolve” enough have a “real, full-fledged” eating disorder, very well knowing the psychological, chemical, and medical reality of eating disorders. But the brain is a strange place, and in these times, mine wasn’t working at it’s best.

In many ways, this battle has been a strictly personal one. I have learned the art of putting on a good face and pretending like everything is okay. However, it was not until I started being vulnerable and opening up to others, like my immersion group to Mexico and a retreat group my senior year, that I began to start a healing process. My senior year of college was a really critical time in learning to accept and even start to love myself, mostly as a consequence of those by which I was surrounded. I started for the first time working out solely for the purpose of making sure I was healthy and as a de-stressor, rather than because I was ashamed of the food choices I had made in the day. I was genuinely enjoying Crossfit classes I was attending twice a week and could see the changes it was making on my body. On spring break to Cancun, I wore a bikini for the first time since I was probably five. I felt myself gaining more confidence and self-esteem, which definitely was not hampered when the beautiful soccer player I had been secretly crushing on since freshman year stopped me a few different nights to tell me I was “a total babe”.

But then Boston College greedily told me it was time to leave in the form of graduation. As a consequence of not properly grieving leaving college, indulging in home cooked meals and mom’s baking, and going on birth control to manage excruciating and often debilitating menstrual cramps, I gained fifteen pounds. Heading to Baltimore in August, I was at the heaviest weight I have ever been. Of the first seven months of my time in Baltimore, I have one photo. I could not bear to face the weight gain or to think about what this could mean in terms of my mental processes. I did not want to go back to my high school or college ways. I had started to make progress - I didn’t want to break that. I lived and worked in the same facility and had a free membership to the gym, so going to the gym was often my only out of the therapeutic treatment center. I felt so disgusted at myself for those first few months. I felt so unbeautiful. I was obsessively weighing myself everyday. But I decided, for the first time ever, that I did not want to go about this alone. I confided in my community members about my past history and allowed myself to cry in front of them, something I very rarely do, about how I had not felt beautiful in so long. I cried because I did not know what the next steps were. I cried thinking about my siblings, wondering if my habits have ever been an influence or factor on their lives. I cried because I couldn’t do it alone.

After that moment, with the support of my community members, one of whom who has a very similar history of negative body image and disordered eating patterns, I could feel my mindset changing. I was not as preoccupied about my image or my appearance because I knew I had nothing to prove to them or those around me. I was going to the gym several times a week, but like my senior year of college, I wasn’t using it as a compensation tool. I could feel my body getting stronger as a product of the cardio weight lifting classes I was attending. I wasn’t focused on the weight I was losing, and actually stopped weighing myself for the rest of my time in Baltimore. I knew my body was changing and I felt proud knowing that I had done it healthily. My clothes were fitting looser. I felt good. I felt strong. I felt beautiful.

It was not until I came home to Boston that I realized the full extent of my time in Baltimore. I had lost just over twenty pounds and went from a size 12 to a 6 jean size, a size I have not seen since about the eighth grade. I was proud of the progress I had made in Baltimore and resolved that this year in Nong Khai was going to be a continuation of learning to love myself for who I am. I dyed my platinum blonde hair to my natural color of light brown (which has since turned back to blonde from the Thai sun) and left my makeup bag at home except for a tinted moisturizer and a tube of mascara.

And for the most part, it has been just that. I have learned to love my routine of washing my face, brushing my teeth, throwing on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, quickly putting my hair in a bun and walking out of my front door in the morning. I love playing soccer or fishing in the pond (mud bath…) next to our house with the teenagers. For the first time ever, I don’t feel the need to impress anyone and feel quite comfortable with the face I am presenting to the community here. And it does not hurt that those I live and work with often tell me several times a day how beautiful I am. That is not to say I haven’t had some harder days. Some of these do come from the fat comments, knowing how hard I have worked in the past year and a half and just how far reaching my past of negative body image spans. However, for the first time in my life, my initial reaction is not to agree with these statements, as I probably would have three or four years ago. As soon as any of these statements are said, my unconscious reaction is “actually I have an extremely normal sized body. I am healthy and my body works in the way it is supposed to.” It is funny though, while I am being told how fat I am by some people, I am also being told by others how much weight I have been losing here and that I need to start eating more because my family is not going to recognize me when I get home and they are going to think that no one fed me in Thailand. I try to assure them that I eat plenty here and that I honestly think my weight loss has had to do with the heat and not eating cheese.

Even with the mix of comments that I am getting too skinny, it is still hard to be told that you are fat every couple of weeks. However, I think it is in many ways a test for me. Just in the way that in the ninth grade I told myself I was unworthy of seeing my own self in the mirror for so long that I began to believe it with every fiber of my body, this unconscious reaction of the already perfect state of my body is starting to seep into my consciousness.

And just to make sure it does, this Lenten season I did not give up anything, but instead resolved to tell myself that I am beautiful and worthy of love every time I notice my Claddagh ring during the day, which ends up being about five or six times a day. The Claddagh ring, an Irish ring which originated in Galway, Ireland, is a crowned heart being held by a set of hands to represent love, loyalty, and friendship. The Claddagh ring is traditionally worn with the heart facing outward toward the fingers for someone who is not in a relationship or with the heart inward for someone in a relationship. Although I am currently single, I have switched my ring so the heart is facing inward, something I have never seen on my own finger, which makes me notice the ring more. This is my season of falling in love with myself, of being in relationship with myself. Of learning that I am beautiful and worthy of love, and always have been, even if it takes a silly ring and being called an elephant to help facilitate that.