This article was written by Karo from Riot Grrrl Europe.
Being A Fat Grrrl
So I’m fat. It started when my eating disorder, hyperorexia, and my clinical depression began to develop. I was four years old then. My father had hardly survived the nazis, my mother was an incest survivor. The three of us would have needed to undergo therapy when I still was a child. But nobody noticed I was ill. The adults labeled my depression as “lazy”.
I’m not able to put into words how I have been humilated all my life because of my fatness. And neither am I able to describe how much I have hated myself, and sometimes still do. When I was a teenager, I was so ashamed of myself I didn’t dare to leave the house for days. I didn’t even try to get cool clothes. What for? I was fat and ugly anyway. I wore my father’s shirts and my mother’s jeans. I never took those off, not even in the hottest summer and not even at a swimming pool. I was a good guitarist, but I would never have dared to join a band. Fat ugly me on a stage? Never! My girlfirends treated me like crap, and that was all I knew.
I started to become interested in men with the age of 11. I longed for a boyfriend, but at the same time I didn’t want one. I would have loved to touch men, but how could I? They would touch me too, and feel my fat. Impossible! With 16, I was in love for the first time. He didn’t love me back. Who would want a fat teenager with a clinical depression and the rage of a feminist? He wasn’t the only one who I fell in love with, and who rejected me. There came one after another, and I’ve never experienced a happy relationship.
When I moved into my own flat, I decided that I finally wanted to have a band and a boyfriend. To achieve that I had to be slim. So I starved myself to a normal weight, and abused drugs and alcohol to stay that way. I ignored the panic attacks that where the results of starving. Better slim and dead than fat and alive. It didn’t get me a boyfriend, but at least I had sex. It sucked. I didn’t love those alcoholics and drug addicts of the Metal scene. And I was an angry feminist who refused to be cute and submissive, so they didn’t love me either.
Today the starving, booze, drugs, abusive men and mean girlfriens are history. Thanks to Feminism, Riot Grrrl, 12 Steps, a lot of therapy and fluoxetine. I have no problem to enter a stage and scream my rage out. I’m not ashamed to go swimming any more. I love my body enough to work out. I care for my health, even if that means I have to see a gynaecologist or an urologist.
I still have body issues, like any other woman who lives in a patriachal system. I can’t go swimming, or wear shorts, before shaving. And since I’m quite hairy, shaving is rather time consuming. But if I don’t, I feel ashamed. You know – fat AND hairy….
I’m still afraid I could look square, even though I’m a freak in combat gear with piercings and a shaved head. I’m still paranoid my cunt may stink. But when I perfume my undies too much, I’m also afraid. What if anyone detected the origin of the perfume? What if they would think “She’s covering her undies in perfume cause her cunt stinks so bad”? And nobody must see the few white hairs on my head! I’ve made the experience that you are allowed ONE beauty flaw as a woman. You can be fat and considered good looking. But only if you are perfectly shaved, have a perfect tan, good make-up, shiny long hair, an interrsting hair-colour, and wear sexy dresses. And high heels. And long polished fingernails of course.
That’s why I style in a look that I call Grrrl Guerilla. To protest against this beauty terror. And when I stomp around in my steeltoe boots, I hope that I’ll manage to not give a shit about my appearence one day. Cause I’m so fucking beautiful the way I am.
