B.I.G. A.S.S.

Basic Internal Gratification through an After School Special

BY: NOAH FARBERMAN

Art by Daniel Gomes // THE UNDERGROUND

I want to see the episode of Recess where they bully TJ for being fat. (Disney’s Recess is a long standing cartoon series that lasted from 1997-2001. The show focused on a group of third and fourth graders as they survive the mock society that exists before the lunch bell. For me the show has stayed relevant both its ability to explore more serious topics and homages to classic genres while also being completely accessible and full of great messages.) A TJ body weight episode would have been a very relatable plot line for me. Maybe it’s a kindergartener who starts it, just some thoughtless comment on how TJ has a bigger build than the rest of his friends. Or maybe it’s no different than the episode where TJ got offended because just one kid didn’t like him. The episode could explore TJ’s struggle to understand the insult, because he wasn’t fat, and also his probable desire to point out that Mikey was bigger. The only thing stopping me from writing this spec script is the lesson. I can’t seem to find it. What is the lesson to be learned when a normal-sized kid is told he’s fat? When a normal-sized boy is told he’s fat? When a normal-sized boy starts to believe he’s fat?

I was in the fifth grade, the first time I was told I was bigger. Early September, it was the year of the swine flu and also the first summer I had ever spent at a sleepover camp. At camp, I loved swimming, sailing, hated biking, and felt uncomfortable at all the stories the counsellors would tell us. But most of all I ate. I ate everything, every meal, every snack, every bite a new love. I didn’t realize how depraved I must have been, we were never even close to hungry at home (though I would always crave sugar). I put on the pounds and swine-flew home from camp a bigger boy. Not much bigger, just broader, tubbier. Noticeable.

I was told I was bigger at recess. I was, it was hard to accept and surprising to be told that, but it was true.

Of course pictures of me from that year would prove that my biggest concern should have been my long and poorly parted hair, but because of that thoughtless comment at a recess over a decade ago, I believed I was fat. Although it didn’t become a problem until high-school, from that point forward it was never far from the front of my mind. 

I started to grow breasts around the sixth grade. I’ll later call them, accurately, pecs. Back then it was all fat though, and every time someone flipped my burgers I would be forced to remember the true nature of my chest bumps: evil bulbous leeches only sucking my will to love my body. 

When I started swimming in the seventh and eighth grade, I would often ask the older boys if my breasts would shrink. Your body is going to stretch, don’t worry, buddy. I also asked my coach when I would start losing weight. She didn’t have an answer I liked, but I was very grateful that three years later, when I started to consistently lose weight, it was that same coach who complimented me. 

At school, in a much less vulnerable spot than when I donned my jammers for swim practice, I felt much more vulnerable. Clothes never looked good on me and my fashion sense shifted constantly between dress shirts, graphic tees paired with backwards hats, and dirty clothes all week. Only the dress shirts felt comfortable, but even when I took the time to do my hair and tuck the back, I felt distant and far from even the mannequin, whose slender chest never made pokies out of every shirt.

Photo courtesy of Disney

Despite my constant feeling that nothing looked good on me, I had actually stopped obsessing about my body, especially when I started swimming. I recognized that even though I wasn’t looking how I wanted to look, I was working towards it. I was improving. 

In the tenth grade I made a new friend, a transfer student from a private school. We’ll call him C. C, myself, and another new friend, T, were instantly close. All of us were entitled and thought we were too smart or funny for school in our own ways. I was still swimming at the time, through that whole year. I was still losing more weight than I was gaining. I was still, if you see those pictures of me, thin. I was called the round-faced friend, while they were the long-faced friends. It didn’t seem like an insult. Compared to stuff others even closer to me have said over the years. It shouldn’t have felt like such a dig. But when the tree has been growing for long, the roots were unbeatable, thirsty, and they latched hard onto the water of that dry humour. I was the fat friend. I knew it to be true. I saw it in the mirror.

I quit swimming in the middle of the eleventh grade, no reason except that I wasn’t enjoying it enough to spend ten hours a week in the water. It took me until college to start gaining weight again. 

Over the years I’ve been called fat, I’ve been poked and tickled, made to jiggle. I was never fat, and even at my biggest I was average. I just happened to be in a skinny group. But looking back, with my ultimate goal of finding the lesson, I noticed a pattern. All those instances of my weight being called into question, the two main ones I’ve listed and any others that have stuck, were all comments made by people close to me.. 

One day, long after high school, I saw a video of myself in the tenth grade. I was a stick. My head looked huge; my arms, shoulders, everything looked disgustingly small. I looked in the mirror and thought to myself, “This, right now, is this not what I looked like then.”

It was then that I started to question my self-perception. Not my memory, because my memory, for those instances, was and is solid. I remember looking in the mirror. I remember seeing someone large. In the mirror my broad shoulders were round and my arm muscles flapped. My neck reached out to my chin. My stomach was permanently being sucked in. My thighs told the story of a boy who thought walking to and from school was no different than an hour long run. I was never extremely large in my eyes, but I believed that I was too big. I saw myself as just over the line, like if I ran for a week straight I’d fit in. To shirts and school.

Photo courtesy of Disney

It was shocking, terrifying, to accept that I had seen myself incorrectly. That my own vision of my body was capable of being morphed by some idea accidentally incepted into my 12-year-old head. And I still didn’t understand what that meant. Or what it was meant to mean. Why I felt fat when I wasn’t. 

If I’m being honest I don’t have an answer for myself. And I’m really having trouble with the frustration and guilt I have for having felt so bad about a problem that I feel could have never existed or lasted as long as it did. I never had that lesson at the end of the episode, the reason for all the bad feelings. And I’m still not too certain about what that lesson could have been. 

I’m still waiting for TJ to say something like: “Detwiler, it's your body. The only people whose opinions on it you should take are those of paid medical professionals, and only ones that you’ve asked for help from. I know it seems like doctors aren’t present at school when it gets really tough, but you gotta remember that the reason doctors aren’t at school is because they’ve already learned how to talk to people properly. You have the power to choose who you want to listen to. Not everyone who says they have your best interests at heart do. And the ones who do aren’t in your head. I hope, TJ, you can start to trust me again. I’m your reflection, I don’t show you what other people see, I only show you what you see. All I’m trying to say is take it easy. Stop comparing yourself to everyone else. It’s never healthy. And stay in school, either the third or fourth grade, forever, I really like that syndication money.” 

I don’t know if those words would even be close, or how helpful they actually are, other than to me. But I do know that the lesson at the end of the episode would be internal. Something that TJ chooses to accept and understand on his own. Alone. Without the guidance of others. And ideally, to avoid being hack, he wouldn’t say it to the mirror.