Before and After by Andrew Shanahan

Author:Andrew Shanahan [Shanahan, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrew Shanahan
Published: 2020-01-10T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

11th September 2018

1 year, 10 months, 24 days before

570 lbs (259 kg)

Ben had one profile photo which had been taken by his mum. He was 19 years old and he was already well into his adventures in obesity. In the photo he was stood on the balcony wearing a black ruffled shirt, which clung tightly to his chest and contrasted against the light grey sky behind him. Looking at it, Ben was amazed by how much weight he’d gained in the following years. He felt like he was twice the width now. Yet he found he could flashback to that point in his memory and he knew that he’d felt fat then. But here he was now much, much heavier and it was impossible to avoid the thought of whether he would look back at this time in the future and think about how thin he looked right now. And yet right now he felt incontrovertibly fat. He was fat.

Fat doesn’t play well on dating websites. Ben had learned this after nearly three months of swiping right without a match. He logged onto Tinder twice a day as part of his digital routine and gamely approved the majority of women whose pictures appeared in front of him. This in itself was an interesting experiment as he realised he had a type. Age, race or height didn’t bother him, but he noted, somewhat ashamed, that he tended not to choose plus-size women or very thin women. This wasn’t an aesthetic choice, but he was conscious that he might just have a few eating issues himself and more than anything he didn’t want someone like him. He felt that comfortably healthy-sized women who looked like they could eat a cake without a crisis, but who didn’t put icing on their toothbrush, might be an appealing middle ground.

Primarily, he liked women with interesting faces. The ones who he rejected tended to be heavily made up, to the extent that their faces didn’t seem to register any expression at all. He wondered if there was an app that airbrushed profile photos to this extent because it was a popular look. The women who used these images seemed artificially young, but also because there was no emotion of their own on display, it invited you to superimpose your own feelings and for Ben that was never a good thing. He found himself worrying for these women. If they were prepared to offer potential partners a blank space that they could fill however they liked, then what did it say about their self-esteem within the relationship – would they ensure that they were equal partners? Would they protect themselves emotionally, physically and sexually? Ben would have loved to discuss this concept with a woman and to get their views, but no one ever swiped right on him because he was incredibly fat.

He knew his profile was an important piece of text - if you don’t have the looks then you have to give them the old razzle-dazzle with the words.

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