Looking Glass Self
by Adrian Sandersfeld
You watch Hairspray on a sick-day, home from school, in the winter of 2007.
You hold an ice pack on your belly (under your shirt) because you think it will soothe the pain of the stomach flu that has kept you awake for nights on end. You have to reconcile with your measurements every time you grope at your own girth. You ache.
You hate being sick.
You hate going to school (perceived, judged) just as much
You get over the stomach flu and go back to school.
You wish you were like Tracy Turnblad.
You have a complicated relationship with musicals (with performing, with enjoying)
You try out for shows (and are rejected).
You crave attention (spotlight, speaking role, significant). You crave validation and a stage whereupon you are important, you are valued (because of? in spite of?) your ability to fill a role.
( you certainly do fill space )
You love to sing. You love singing. You fantasize about becoming a famous singer (complete with cliché talent-scouting trope). You do not hear music by Adele or Mary Lambert or Lizzo until after you have given up on (the idea of) becoming a singer.
You try out for shows (at school and are cast as an extra)
You think you would still be chasing such pursuits if only you had been encouraged.
You think you would not have given up if you had gotten roles (speaking, singing).
You wish your castmates invited you to the cast parties.
You wish you could’ve filled the one role that was (for once) tailored to fit you.
You wish your high school performed Hairspray.
You see yourself, your fat body, in Tracy Turnblad unlike how you see yourself in a mirror.
She wakes up singing and you latch onto her charisma wondering how she does it; how she can so unabashedly love herself because of (not in spite of) all the things for which she is so viciously scrutinized. Big. Fat. Loud. Desired. Passionate. Driven. Optimistic. Confident. Proud, in a way you are not allowed to be (by your mother, by a fatphobic society whose standards have permeated your perception of your own body).
You crave a proud fat existence.
You see yourself in Tracy Turnblad—but not herself in you—when your mother makes you try on clothes that don’t fit
(size, gender)
because (you know) she wishes you were thinner
You look at yourself
in fitting room mirrors
in bathroom mirrors
in window reflections
Adrian Sandersfeld for Fools Magazine
You see yourself,
not Tracy Turnblad.
She pulls it off, somehow, in the fantasy world of Hairspray:
Tracy Turnblad is cast on a TV show
Tracy Turnblad makes people think differently about fatness, about fat bodies.
Tracy Turnblad is endorsed by a plus-sized clothing line
You wonder, again, how she does it.
You wish you were thinner.
You wish you were easier to clothe (love).
You feel like a burden (and you wish you were not so heavy).
You enter 7th grade in 2009 and start binding your body (first with belts, then with a girdle). Your mother gets one for you from Walmart (where she bought her own) and encourages you to wear it to make your clothes look nicer when they adorn your body.
You feel like a doll; dressed by others, for the consumption and entertainment of others.
You wish you could open yourself up, remove the excess stuffing, and sew yourself closed.
You are performing femininity and (you still assume yourself to be a cis girl) you wish your mother was like Edna Turnblad; you wish your mother was as queer as you (if not queerer), as big as you (if not bigger), played by Divine the drag queen.
You wish, so desperately, that your mother could be like Edna Turnblad. You wish she didn’t assign a moral judgment to every crumb you ate or the amount of exercise you partook in. Edna Turnblad, the supportive and full-figured mother, never let anyone disrespect Tracy. Edna protected her daughter and opened her mind to the possibility of change. Compared to your mother, Edna was more accepting. Why can’t your mother be like that?
Why isn’t Tracy Turnblad enough?
Why are you not empowered by virtue of her existence?
and where is your “(hey mama) Welcome to the ‘60s” moment;
if only to convince your average-sized mother to accept your plus-sized body?
(stop micromanaging, stop portion-controlling her ex-daughter)
You wish your mother were like Edna Turnblad.
You wish she didn’t call you “pig” when you ate (once)
(and once is all it takes)
“You could stand to lose some weight.”
Stand. Keep standing, keep standing until you lose it.
Walk, run, try harder in gym class. “Get off your fat, lazy ass and
keep standing until you lose it.”
You don’t lose the weight, you lose something else entirely.
You enter 11th grade in 2013 and start binding your chest. Your mother remarks on how much thinner you look when you do. You (and your fat body) have a complicated relationship with gender. You wore men’s clothes when women’s clothes didn’t fit you (and you liked them better). Men’s Big & Tall was always cheaper than Women’s Plus Sizes.
You grow into queer identity so comfortably before you learn just how inescapable fatphobia is. The only pictures of trans bodies you see online, being lauded, praised, or supported, are thin; their trans bodies don’t pucker at the armpits when they bind their chests. You compare your trans body to theirs many times before you are able to talk yourself down from self-hatred.
You find that it is very hard to be queer and fat.
You find that it is difficult to be proud of yourself in general.
Adrian Sandersfeld for Fools Magazine
You start taking testosterone in the fall of 2017.
You have mixed feelings about taking it. Your hips and breasts shrink a little; the endocrinologist tells you to expect your body fat to ‘shift’ (which it does) from your hips and breasts to your gut. You learn that many other trans people find it easier to lose weight once they’ve started taking testosterone (their metabolic rate increases, they find it easier to gain muscle mass, and they are already thin to begin with). You hope the same happens for you.
You start working out, a little at first, and then to excess. You diet (restrict, restrain) yourself and, when the weight just won’t come off, you think it may be time to try accepting your body the way it is. You try and succeed, somewhat, in gaining a feeling of body neutrality. You almost begin to love yourself.
You take testosterone for two years before pursuing top surgery. You go to your consultation and your surgeon says “you might benefit from dropping a few pounds” and you say “I don’t care about my size.” You were telling only half of the truth. You keep your mind occupied and steer it away from the impulse to restrict your food intake, to regiment your exercise. You bide your time until your surgery date. You know it will only be a matter of time before you feel euphoric in your body, before you can wear all the clothes in your closet that have never looked good with your breasts still attached. You are so excited.
You are admitted for top surgery on January 2nd, 2020.
You love how your clothes fit you (after you recover enough to try them on). In celebrating the new shape of your body, you wonder if you are betraying your desires for a proudly fat existence. On January 3rd, 2020, your surgeon diagnoses you with morbid obesity and you only find out because you are looking through your patient information online.
You wish he hadn’t done that.
You feel proud of how tolerable your fat body has become. It is easier to be body-neutral (as opposed to body positive) now that your boobs are no longer staring back at you in the mirror each time you gaze at your reflection. You still suck in your gut for hours and hours at a time in a fruitless attempt to lose weight. You still believe the lies your mother used to tell you about how it would “burn calories” to breathe from your stomach.
You look at yourself wearing button-down shirts, you and your flat-chested body, and each time you feel at ease inside your skin, it only makes you feel like it could be better;
You could be so much thinner, so much thinner and you can’t stop the yearning, you can’t stop yourself from desiring thinness.
You cannot escape the confines of mirrors.