Don't Big Women Go to the Beach?

My friends and I are going on the trip to the beach this weekend, and I have nothing to wear.

I'm the largest that I've ever been in a long time, and anyone who has been in this yoyo life will understand when I say with conviction that I really have nothing to wear.

I've always loved the beach, and it's one of those things I've tried my best not to let my size take away from me. I could be self-conscious everywhere else, but when there's sun, sea, and sand involved, I ironically lose all my qualms about my body. I'm going swimming in swim attire, and that's that.

Unfortunately, everyone else in Manila seems to think that fat women don't like going to the beach - or that we shouldn't even think of going to the beach.

Why do I say this? Because I cannot find anything to wear! There's nothing to be bought. Even in plus-size stores. Especially in plus-size stores! It's the height of summer, and not a pair of board shorts or cover up in sight.

Then again, what to expect from a country where clothings stores carry 2XS and hardly go above XL in sizing?

No, not all the big women are already mommies who are interested in big prints and capri pants. There are some of us here trying to live a normal life.

*sigh* I have nothing to wear.

In the Beginning

My love hate relationship with food and dieting was born when I was 10 years old.

My mother, alarmed at the way her little girl was ballooning into epic proportions, decided she would shink me back to my dress-size-for-age - something I hadn't been able to wear for years. With no medical consult whatsoever, she completely cut rice out of my diet and substituted it with a can of pineapple juice to go with whatever was in my lunch box at the time.

It worked, of course. Having had no allowance at that age, I couldn't cheat and buy my own rice or any of the other contraband items from the school canteen. Everyone at home was under strict instructions not to feed me.

There was always a long litany of affectionate name calling - "Taba," "Babs," "Balyena." Until that time, I had no idea it was wrong to be fat. I was a kid, and I loved food. Sure, it was always such a hassle to shop for new clothes and we were always getting "one size bigger," but the implications of that went over my head. In school, I'd often be picked for last by the athletic kids during PE class, but I always put it down to being a natural klutz rather than my size. Maybe it was... now I'll never know.

Because it was around that time I was issued the dire warning that if I didn't lose weight, I'd grow so fat and large and scary that no one would love me.

That really stuck in my head, big time. Despite my friends telling me the contrary (my family continues to spout the same gospel to this day), I grew up with the idea that my fat was central to my being unloved.

I know in my head that should not be true, but my gut continues to cling to that as true. Unfortunately, there has been no evidence to the contrary in my life. While friends my age are all getting married and settling down, I have never even had a boyfriend. I have been the Best Friend all my life, regardless of what end of the scale I tipped.

It's become so bad that the quest of finding love when I am still fat has become my Holy Grail. After all, if someone loves me when I am fat, he must really love me. Obviously, it has yet to happen.

Breaking Out

"Whale sighting!"

This is the voice I have to contend with in my head every time I look at myself in the mirror.

People often say that body image should never define how we see ourselves. We are more than the size of the clothes we wear or the number that flashes when we get on a scale.

The person who said that must have been a thin person. Or at the very least, someone who has never been fat.

I've been a yoyo dieter since I was 10 years old, when my mother first put me on her version of the South Beach diet because she felt I was growing too fat. Several cycles of weight loss and subsequent weight gain later, I am the heaviest I have ever been coming from the lightest I have ever been, and I am still reeling and wondering how I could have stumbled so far.

Because of inertia and an inner sense of hopelessness, I have been in denial about having to start another weight loss journey. It's hard to motivate myself when my experience constantly demonstrates that the quest is a futile one. I want to learn to be comfortable with myself as I am, fat rolls and back boobs be damned.

But I am not okay at all. Not by a long shot.