Designated Fat Girl by Jennifer Joyner Page A

I’ve had to keep my legs and thighs exactly together all day. Wanna know why? I have a hole in my pants in the inner thigh area. Now I guess you want to know why I wore these pants when I knew they had a hole in them. BECAUSE I CAN’T FIND ANY PANTSTO FIT ME! I’ve been shopping at least five times in the last ten days, and I’ve come up empty. Yes, I have black pants … yes, I have gray pants. (Gray! Doesn’t that by itself sound terribly depressing?!) But I can’t find cream pants or khaki pants … and I can’t wear the same black pants over and over. In fact I already feel as though I’m doing that, and I am terribly self-conscious about it. So that’s why I knowingly wore a pair of pants with a hole in them. And I am now paying the price in backaches.

    I wish I could say that kind of thing was rare, but sadly, it wasn’t. I was so determined not to confront my appearance issues that I let things like that slide all the time. I can remember blouses with permanent stains on them that I convinced myself weren’t that bad and wore them anyway. They
were
that bad. I can also remember taking a shirt out of a dry cleaner’s bag and discovering that one of the buttons had been broken in half. I was running late and didn’t have anything else clean, so I wore the blouse to work anyway. When you only have three or four blouses to choose from, it really puts you in a bind if something goes wrong. So I told everyone I didn’t notice it until I got all the way to work. I tried to laugh it off, but I knew how pathetic I was being.
    Being obese makes clothing emergencies all the more difficult. When we went out of town to visit family, I couldn’t simply borrow a jacket if I forgot to bring one. No one had anything that fit me, not even the men. When I volunteered in the church kitchen, I couldn’t wear one of the standard aprons emblazoned with the church logo because they were too small.But perhaps the most embarrassing problems occurred when I was faced with unplanned clothing situations at work.
    Winters in North Carolina tend to be pretty mild; if we get a good dusting of snow once a year, we’re doing pretty well. But in 2002 we had one big snowfall after another, and this meant extra-long hours of work because I was employed by a television news station more than an hour away from my home. Once I was caught off guard; I was still at work when the ice started to build up on the roads, and the forecasters were predicting widespread power outages and road delays. I would have to spend the night, perhaps several nights, in a local hotel so that I could make it into work. Normally this would only be mildly inconvenient, but for someone with a big weight problem, it seemed catastrophic. What was I going to wear? I hadn’t packed any clothes, and it looked as though I’d be stuck for several days. Finding clothes to fit me was difficult under the best of circumstances, when I had several stores to choose from; now, I had to go to Kmart, the only store that was open and just down the street, hoping and praying to find something I could wear.
    I went first to the women’s section, picking out a few simple tops and bottoms in the largest sizes they had—24. I took the clothes to the dressing room and confirmed what I already knew in my heart: The clothes didn’t fit. They were too small. Fighting tears, I hung them back on the rack and made my way to the men’s section. They had some husky-size sweatshirts and sweatpants in men’s 3X. I swallowed hard and took the men’s clothes back to the women’s dressing room, hoping no one would notice. The clothes fit, but not entirely well. Still though, I had a problem. These were sweat clothes, and the only shoesI had with me were dress flats. I had to go over to the shoe section and pick out sneakers. I knew I would look ridiculous in these clothes, and I felt so much worse. But what choice did I have? I was stuck, with nowhere else to turn. I got through the next