I’ve always been fat. I was a chubby baby, a porky kid, an overweight teenager, and as an adult, I am what Lesley Kinzel refers to as a death-fat. As a teenager, this left me out of countless normal teenage activities. I secretly would have loved to be a cheerleader, I had many a crush on cute boys, dance classes always looked like the most fun anyone could ever have. But my fat-related insecurities always held me back from enjoying these activities. Instead, I geeked out in yearbook and honed my funny-fat-girl skills.
When I was 14, my Christmas gift was my very own computer. Four months later, some friends and I won a website-making contest and the prize was one year of free dialup internet access. Suddenly, the world was new. I began chatting online like it was my job. I could be who I wanted to be. I could describe myself as the tall, blonde haired blue eyed girl that I was but leave out the undesirable part – the biggest part – the FAT. I was never not myself, my personality was always exactly who I was. I was the opinionated, sarcastic but optimistic smarty pants that boys all across the country (and in Canada!) adored.
It was so easy, y’all. This was long before the proliferation of digital cameras, iPhone pics and myspace. If you had a picture to share, you were the exception and not the rule. For a fat girl who longed for attention from the opposite sex, longed to be accepted for her awesome personality and wit and not immediately discounted for her looks, the internet was a godsend.
So 14 year old me created an online life. I made friends, I made internet boyfriends. At 16 I fell truly in love with someone who fell truly in love with me back (okay, as truly in love as a 16 year old can be). Things got complicated. I made up excuses and lies when he wanted to see pictures. The anxiety killed me. I wanted to come clean but I didn’t know how. Aside from him, I had countless internet friends that I talked to daily and shared my life with, but continued to keep my fat hidden from them.
Nowadays, this phenomenon is as cliché as the Internet Tough Guy. We hear about “icebergs” and “myspace angles” and vilify these girls for not representing themselves accurately. It’s now been 15 years since I started my online life. I am still friends and still keep in touch with a few of the people that I met online when I was 14 years old. I have never managed to tell them the truth. At 29 years old, I have come to accept who I am – I live my life, I do the things that I want to do. I do yoga regularly and have an active social and dating life. I’m not ashamed of me anymore. But how do you come clean about a lie you’ve been perpetuating for the last 15 years? How do you tell one of your dearest friends that you’ve never met that the reason you’ve never met them is because you’ve essentially been lying to them this whole time? How do you make them understand that you’re not a dishonest person, that you were just at one time an insecure 14 year old?
