Abandoned Self-Portrait no.156

Kind brown eyes 
           Massive thighs 
Shapely lips 
           Excessively-wide hips 

Right. Let’s start again… 

Flowing, glossy dark brown hair 
          Lumpy, saggy bits everywhere 
A smile that radiates love and care 
          Boobs a ridicul— 
Okay, enough, let’s not go there. 

Why can’t I write one nice verse, 
One line, one word about myself 
Without you butting in? 
          <snigger> 
          That depends on the word. 
How about ‘beautiful’? 
Surely it doesn’t only belong 
To the visually pleasing? 
What about the gorgeous-withins? 
          But what you are inside 
          Isn’t the subject of this portrait, 
          And supporting your claim to beauty 
          Would mean helping you to tell a… 
          Porky pie 
          <snigger> 

<Sigh> 

So what words am I allowed? 
          Ugly. Stupid. Lazy. Greedy. 
          Loser. Failure. Burden. 
          Disgusting. Slobby. Pig. 
          We can go on… 
Please don’t. 
These words you speak 
Like they’re so original, so clever, 
I’ve been hearing them forever. 
They have echoed in my ears 
For as long as I can remember. 
          Whale 
Words flung at me, 
Explicit, implied, 
From mouths all around me 
And countless pair of eyes. 
          Elephant 
Children, adults, in-betweens. 
Loved ones, strangers, in-betweens. 
Professionals with a duty of care. 
          Suet Dumpling 

Okay. Fine. I give up. 
I will choke down the ‘beautiful’ 
That dared creep onto my tongue. 
I can pretend for a second, 
Try to use the artist’s licence, 
But they are always there— 
The voices, the critics— 
Poised to remind me 
That I 
          Fatty 
Am not entitled to the B word, 
And that I 
          Fatty 
Am in a battle I cannot win. 

          Oh, but all is not lost. 
          You could be beautiful, you know. 
I could? 
          Oh yes. 
          So very beautiful. 
          If only you were thin.

The story behind the poem

I have struggled with my weight my entire life, so it is a subject that often shows up in my writing. This poem began as an attempt at a positive self-portrait many years ago but as soon as I drafted it, the internalised fat-hating voice piped up and started telling me what a joke it was to write nice things about myself. Confidence undermined, I ended up hacking away at the poem until it was in complete tatters. Rather than abandoning the poem altogether, however, I decided instead to have a go at capturing just how the portrait came to be shattered. I’m not sure if I’ve done it as well as I would have liked to, but when the essence of this poem is a cry against the tyranny of perfection, it seems only right to share it as it is, imperfections and all.