Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage

Author:Dan Savage
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

I ate my Danish as I walked through the trade show in an adjacent ballroom, checking out the super-plus-size T-shirts, jeans, lingerie, and swimsuits. At one table I picked up some fat-activist political pamphlets: “Fat people are not unhealthy!” “Fat people do not eat too much!” “Fat is not unattractive!” Based on the condition of the buffet table after breakfast, I had to concede that fat people didn’t seem to eat too much—not in public, at any rate. But the first two propositions—fat wasn’t unhealthy, fat was attractive—still struck me as dubious. If you’re fat and happy, then you should be willing to accept the increased health risks and live your life. Pleasurable pursuits often carry some risk. Downhill skiing carries some risk, drinking and drugs can be dangerous, sleeping around is emotionally and physically risky. An adult who pursues happiness in booze, drugs, sex, or food has to accept the higher risks; indeed, most sinners will tell you that the happiness they derive is worth assuming whatever risks come along with their pleasures, and reasonable sinners take steps to minimize their risks. But there are always risks, and there are sometimes consequences. Sinners can’t really ask the Surgeon General to protect us from reality, and it’s not bigotry to point out the increased health risks of being heavy or drunk or high or promiscuous.

I was lost in thought in the trade show when Teresa tapped me on the shoulder. I was happy to see her because I wanted to ask her about something she said at breakfast. What did she mean by not fat enough for NAAFA anymore? Teresa told me we would have to leave the hotel if I wanted to talk about being too thin for NAAFA. Whatever it was she had to tell me, it wasn’t something she wanted other NAAFA members to overhear her discussing. We made plans to have lunch, outside the hotel.

“People in NAAFA were used to seeing me when I weighed four hundred pounds,” Teresa explained over sushi in a Japanese restaurant a mile or so from the Westin. “Women who get too skinny are looked down on at NAAFA. And God help you if you go from four hundred pounds to a normal weight. They treat you like a traitor.”

Born and raised in San Francisco, Teresa has two siblings, both heavy. While she had been fat since age five, her brother and sister didn’t get fat until middle age. Intelligent and quick-witted, Teresa never went to college because she feared not being able to fit into chairs with attached desktops common in classrooms and lecture halls. Teresa went to work as a bank teller after high school; she still works at the same bank, but now she’s a supervisor for the tele-banking department. She joined NAAFA in 1991 primarily to meet men who were attracted to fat women. Teresa was already something of a BBW celeb at that point—she’d had been spotted by a producer for the Donahue daytime talk show

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