I’ve always been overweight.
I can’t remember ever being skinny.
I’m pretty,
And I have beautiful hair,
And I have a nice personality,
But people are always telling me to lose weight,
So I’ll look prettier.
One time,
A friend of mine even told me,
“I’d propose to you tomorrow if you lost a bit of weight.
Everything about you is great.
It’s just the weight.”
At the time,
I didn’t understand what to do or say,
Especially since he was a really close friend at the time,
And I really liked the way he thought,
And I loved his personality.
But what he said,
Shattered the image I had of him.
I could no longer see him as the open-minded and cultured person I thought he was.

I got married to someone I fell in love with.
At the time,
I heard people say things like,
“Her husband loves skinny women,
But he married her because he loves her.
That’s why he overlooked her weight.”
It’s like being fat makes you deformed,
And unworthy of being looked at.

People also tell me things like,
“You need to lose weight,
So you can be able to give birth.
You’ll never be able to have kids with a body like yours.”
Even though I’ve given birth twice,
And both times were unplanned.
Then there are the sales assistants at clothes shops.
Whether cheap or expensive,
The first thing they tell you,
Before you even start looking is,
“Sorry, ma’am, we don’t have your size here.”
Like it’s wrong for shops to sell clothes to fat people.

I thank God that my weight has never impacted my health.
I’ve always been a very active person:
I dance, run, and jump around.
I used to act when I was in university,
But I never got any good roles,
Because of my weight,
Even if I was the best one for the role.
“If you could guarantee you’d lose the extra weight before opening night,
I’d give you the role,”
They always said.

I now have major self-confidence issues,
Because of people’s annoying and demotivating comments.