The Rhetoric of the Body

I am a fat fuck.

No, really, I am. I am 6 feet tall and 232 pounds. I have a BMI over 30. And I have some health complications because of my weight. I have somewhat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a rapid resting heart rate. But I am healthy by Myrtle Beach standards.

I want to talk a bit about being fat, because when you meet a fat person for the first time, what do you think, on a subconscious level?  Fat lazy fuck. If only they weren’t so fucking lazy and stopped eating doughnuts they wouldn’t be so fat. That’s what goes on in the depths of your subconscious when you meet someone who is overweight. In this country, we view obesity as a moral failing. For sure, sometimes it is. But often it isn’t.

I wasn’t fat until I started taking psychiatric medications. I was 6 feet tall, and weighed 182 pounds. Boy, do I miss those days. But I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, started taking lithium and antipsychotics, and I put on 30 pounds in a month. And I have never taken it off. Oh, for sure, I have tried. I have tried everything. I’ve gone on 5 or 6 major diets over the years and managed to take off 30-40 pounds, but it always comes back on, as soon as I start consuming something close to a normal calorie intake. I can eat 800 calories a day—for a month—and not lose weight. Caveat: I don’t go to the gym, but even when I did, it didn’t really help.

But the point here is that in my case, my obesity is not a moral failing. It is a direct result of my medication. So thought about that for a long time. And I thought about the fact that I used to pass judgment on fat people all the time, and make all sorts of assumptions, without realizing that it may not be a moral failing for them, either. The simplest explanation is that it’s just faulty genetics. Or it could be medication. Or it could be something else. Point is, I don’t do that anymore. Pass judgment, I mean.

There has been a big push towards body positivity in marketing in the last 20 years. It started with those Dove billboards in New York City, with quote unquote “normal” women. I thought that was pretty dumb at the time. I don’t anymore. The human body comes in all shapes and sizes. When you’re young, you’re shallow, and you only want to date Instagram models. When you’re older, sex is not the most important thing in the world, and you care more about someone’s personality. At my age, I don’t pay much attention to a person’s body at all. Though I will add that people who are fit and athletic tend to exude more self-confidence and therefore appear to be more attractive.

I don’t have a lot of self-confidence and I do not consider myself to be very emotionally healthy. And a lot of it is because of my weight. Because I know that people do to me what I used to do to other people—they look at me, and pass judgment. So I have to overcompensate with my rhetoric. If I can’t be better-looking, then I will be smarter. And I overcompensate through clothes—my image is very carefully crafted, and I wear a lot of expensive designer clothes to partially obscure the fact that I am overweight. I overcompensate in all sorts of different ways, but especially in my speaking and writing.

I would like to get to the point where I don’t care—where I am happy with my appearance. I’m not there yet. When I get out of the shower, I don’t look in the mirror. Part of this is because I used to be an absolute unit. When I was 26, I could have been an underwear model. I had half a mind to drive to LA and join the porn industry. So I lament the body that I once had, and lost. I mean, let’s be realistic—I’m really not that bad. A lot of people would be thrilled to only be 30 pounds overweight. But I’m a DJ, and I have an image to uphold. You can’t be a fat DJ. I mean, you can, if you’re a hip-hop DJ. And there are a handful of fat underground DJs. Carl Cox, for example. Nobody calls him fat. Eats Everything owns it. But not too many others.

Myrtle Beach, of course, is a very fat city. Los Angeles is not. I was in Santa Monica a couple of months ago and I got fat-shamed. I jaywalked across an intersection and someone leaned out of an SUV and yelled Fatso!  You’d think people would stop calling you fat when you get to be 47 years old. Nope—I get it on Twitter all the time. You hear a lot of about women on social media who get bullied about their physical appearance, but it happens to men, too. The difference is that I’m rich and successful and I don’t really give a crap. I don’t think DJ Khaled cares. Or maybe he does.

I don’t think anyone likes being fat. If I drop the soap in the shower, when I bend over to pick it up, my belly touches the tops of my thighs. I have a belt with a square buckle that digs into my fat when I sit down. I bump into things. It’s annoying. And I have $15,000 worth of suits that I can’t wear anymore, so I guess there is a real economic cost, too. Look—I am married, and I have been married for a very long time, but there is still a part of you that wants to be attractive to the opposite sex. And even within a stable, loving marriage, you want to continue to be sexually attractive to your partner, for practical and philosophical reasons. You don’t want to let yourself go.

Feeling sorry for myself is not an option. The good news is that even though I am 30-40 pounds overweight, I don’t gain much more weight than that. I’ll never end up on My 600lb Life, because I don’t have a food addiction. I’ve watched that show, and those are people with real problems. I really have nothing to complain about. It’s pure vanity, that’s the problem. I want to be dashing. I want to be handsome. But these are not the cards I was dealt.

These days, I just want to be good enough.

Go fuck yourself,

Jared

Music Recommendation: Khen – Authentica. Khen (from Israel) is my favorite producer, and this is my favorite track of his. I played this live at the Inside ETFs Conference a few years back. Was a big hit.

P.S. We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards will always be free. Feel free to forward to as many people as you like.