WEBVTT

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You may have noticed by now

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that I'm really fat.

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And that's okay;

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you wouldn't be the first.

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Back in 1997, when I was in seventh grade,

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I heard a question posed about me
in the locker room of my middle school.

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I sat hidden in a bathroom stall,

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hunched over, not wanting
to give myself away,

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when I heard a girl ask,

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"When was the last time
Whitney saw 90210?"

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I was like more of
a Saved by the Bell girl myself,

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and I'd actually never seen
an episode of 90210.

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So I clenched my muscles and held my pee

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and waited with bated breath
for the answer.

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And when it came -

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"When she stepped on the scale" -

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the girls erupted into laughter,

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and I felt the familiar sting
of embarrassment seeping into my cheeks.

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It took me back to my fifth-grade year,
on the soccer field,

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where the boys had taken to singing
a song about me called "Baby Beluga"

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that ended with
"She's got a whale of a tail."

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You might be picturing now
how fat I probably was.

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It's easy to conjure up a mental image

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of an awkward girl
spilling out of her shorts,

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running up and down the sidelines
like, "Hey, I'm open!"

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But if you have that mental image,

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you would be wrong.

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Because in 1995, when I was 10 years old,

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I looked like this.

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When I look at that picture now,

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my heart aches

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because when I was just
becoming aware that I had a body

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and that other people
had opinions about my body,

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I became a statistic

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like eight out of ten 10-year-olds
who, today, are afraid of being fat.

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10-year-olds!

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That's a real statistic.

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I bought the lie that diet culture
sold me when I was 10 years old

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that told me if I am thin,
thinner, thin enough,

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then I will be happy.

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But at 10 years old,
I felt the furthest thing from happy.

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And so the emotion that I most connected
with my body was shame.

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After that,

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shame followed me like a shadow.

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And after the 90210 incident,

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I knew I had to take action.

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So I grabbed the handle
of my father's toothbrush

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and shoved it down my throat
until I vomited.

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And thus began my nearly lifelong battle
with eating disorders.

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I continued to excel in school,
to play sports, to dance.

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Shame and I won
lots of awards and trophies.

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Sometimes, shame was like
a really overbearing adult

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begging for a piggyback ride.

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And other times,

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shame trailed a few feet behind me,
dragging its leash

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like a faithful dog
never leaving my sight.

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By the time I was 18 years old, in 2002,
and becoming a young woman,

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shame had solidified itself
as my most faithful friend.

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It accompanied me
to every dance performance,

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to every soccer tournament;

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it was even there in the bathroom
with me at my prom

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as I hunched over a toilet
and threw up my dinner

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just minutes before being
crowned prom princess.

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When I moved to college that fall,

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I brought shame along into my dorm room,

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and I noticed that my body was changing.

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By the time I went home
for Christmas break,

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I'd gained 50 pounds.

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And I'm thinking, like,

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"Okay, I'm an overachiever,

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so clearly the "freshman 15"
is just not enough.

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(Laughter)

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I was getting mysterious bruises
all over my body, and I was like,

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"Why am I bumping
into doorways and furniture?

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When did I get so clumsy?"

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But then I realized I wasn't clumsy:

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my body was expanding so quickly

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that I had lost all
kinesthetic awareness of it.

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My body literally didn't know
how to fit in its physical space anymore,

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and similarly, I didn't know
where I fit in the world.

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To say that my weight gain was difficult
would be an understatement.

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By the time the second
semester was finished,

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I'd gained nearly 100 pounds.

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There was the sympathy
from the pretty girls

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who asked me if I'd, like,
ever had a boyfriend.

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And there was that one frat boy

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who'd taken me
on a dinner date in August -

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granted, it was to Ruby Tuesday,
but it was a dinner date.

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And when he saw me in March,

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he looked right through me
like I didn't even exist.

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It was like I'd been forced into
some social experiment against my will,

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to put on a fat suit
and parade about in public.

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The differences in the way

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that people treated "average Whitney"
and "fat Whitney" were striking.

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Suddenly, I was assumed to be lazy,
desperate, sloppy, stupid.

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And with every single pound that I gained,

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my self-worth continued
to shrink further and further.

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So I became a different person after that.

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I quit my dance classes;

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I failed a lot of my academic classes;

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and in a world where it felt like
being a fat woman was the biggest taboo,

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I didn't have anyone to talk to.

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Sure, there were times
where I pulled myself up by the bootstraps

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and I said, "I'm going to go to the gym

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or I'm going to venture
out to this party."

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But there was always a whisper,
a dirty look, an insult

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to remind me why I didn't deserve
to be in those spaces.

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So I would come back home to my apartment

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to the only friend
that had never deserted me:

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shame.

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We would stay up late
into the night commiserating,

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getting drunk to numb our pain.

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I'd order takeout for us both

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and do anything to avoid going out
in a world that didn't want me.

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And of course, all the things
that I had done to cope

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only compounded the problem,

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and I continued gaining weight.

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In 2005, I weighed 280 pounds.

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And my nurse practitioner
swiveled her stool

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from in between my legs in the stirrups,


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checking her chart

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and announcing a little too cheerfully

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that she thought I had PCOS.

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Well!

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My mind started reeling

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because I did not remember
learning about this STD

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in my seventh-grade sex ed class.

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(Laughter)

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But the more I learned

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as I pored over the brochures
and the pamphlets -

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PCOS wasn't an STD.

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It was a syndrome,

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a grouping of symptoms with no cure

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that affects one out of every ten
women in America

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and is the leading cause of infertility.

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And then, like putting together a puzzle,
other stuff started to make sense.

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The handfuls of hair
that had come out in the shower,

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the coarse dark hairs all over my face,

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my period that had visited me only twice
when I was 15 and never again,

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and, of course,

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my sudden and severe weight gain
in my freshman year of college.

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I didn't have an explanation for it then,
but I had an explanation for it now:

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I was insulin resistant.

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So would life with PCOS
make it impossible to lose weight?

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Absolutely not.

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Would it be even harder?

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Absolutely yes.

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And for a woman who wanted
anything but to be fat,

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this felt like a death sentence.

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And then I got pissed off.

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I wondered,

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"Why have I never heard of this thing?"

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I wanted to know

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why I'd always been dismissed
when I went to the doctors,

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told that I was "young and irregular"
or I was drinking or I was on Prozac.

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But out of all those emotions that I felt,

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the one I felt the most of was shame.

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So after college,

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I packed two suitcases -

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my clothes and shame -

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and I set off for Korea to teach English.

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I got promotion after promotion,

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and I traveled the world.

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Shame and I made it all the way
to the top of the Great Wall of China;

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we ate sushi together in Tokyo;

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we vacationed in Malaysia and Vietnam;

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we even sunbathed in Bali.

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But all of these experiences
that should have been so wonderful

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were tinged with that
disgusting, insidious shame

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that sucked the life and the color
out of my memories

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and left me nothing but black and white

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and a never-ending wish to be thin
so that I could really start my life.

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Now, living abroad wasn't all bad -

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I had some of the best experiences there.

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But the discrimination I faced

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was so much more overt
than anything I'd had at home.

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I got laughed at, pointed at,
and called a pig every single day

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in the street, in the store,
in the nightclub.

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I'll never forget when I got in a taxi

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and the driver snorted
at me for every mile

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until we reached our destination.

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There was the guy that swerved his bicycle
dangerously close to me on the street,

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stopped pedaling,

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looked at me, said "pig,"

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and then spit.

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I chased him,

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which was a futile effort
because he was on a bike,

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and I hurled every Korean insult
that I could remember

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until I saw him vanish in the dark.

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And then I headed back
to my apartment to cry.

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But it wasn't until ...

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I was assaulted in a bar -

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a man raced up behind me

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to start punching me
in the back of the head -

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that I realized,

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"Hold up.

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I don't deserve this."

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It took such an aggressive, abusive action

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to jolt me into the realization
that I was a fat human,

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but I was human.

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And I told myself,

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"I'm going to go back home to the States,

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and I'm going to prevent this
from ever happening to me again.

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I'm going to lose weight."

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So I moved back home in 2011.

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In 2011,

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I weighed 329 pounds.

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And I lost 100 pounds in eight months.

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I worked out for 12
to 15 hours every week;

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I counted my calories;

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I obsessed;

00:10:06.898 --> 00:10:09.688
and I hid my shame
from my personal trainer

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and from my family and from my friends,

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even from strangers who said,

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"You're remarkable.

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This is the hardest thing
that anybody could ever do,

00:10:18.459 --> 00:10:19.868
and look at you doing it.

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I've never been more proud of you
since the day you were born!"

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Pretty soon, I was eating
500 to 1,000 calories a day,

00:10:31.519 --> 00:10:35.570
and I was throwing up everything
I ate on Friday, which was my "cheat day,"

00:10:35.570 --> 00:10:39.091
and my eating disorder
had returned in full force.

00:10:40.231 --> 00:10:43.701
One day, I walked out of the gym,
having run a few miles on the treadmill,

00:10:43.701 --> 00:10:47.131
and a car drove by slowly
and lowered the windows,

00:10:47.131 --> 00:10:48.811
and they yelled at me,

00:10:49.421 --> 00:10:50.722
"Fat ass!"

00:10:52.222 --> 00:10:55.392
When I climbed into my own car,
dripping with sweat,

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what happened next was nothing
short of a nervous breakdown.

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I had literally been working my ass off

00:11:00.173 --> 00:11:03.262
to do the one thing
that everybody told me would fix it,

00:11:03.262 --> 00:11:06.942
the one thing that everybody told me
would make me worthy.

00:11:06.942 --> 00:11:08.993
But that guy in
the parking lot didn't care;

00:11:08.993 --> 00:11:12.763
he didn't know who, why, where I was
or what I had done to change.

00:11:12.763 --> 00:11:15.674
And I fantasized about losing
the rest of my hundred pounds

00:11:15.674 --> 00:11:17.294
and thinking about my goal weight.

00:11:17.294 --> 00:11:20.735
But then all I could see
were sagging breasts and loose skin

00:11:20.735 --> 00:11:23.335
and crow's feet around my eyes.

00:11:23.335 --> 00:11:24.625
And I knew, intellectually,

00:11:24.625 --> 00:11:28.932
that as long as I let my self-worth
be determined in the eyes of others,

00:11:28.932 --> 00:11:31.174
I would never be content.

00:11:31.174 --> 00:11:36.756
But I could not disengage from the belief
that I had to be thin to be happy.

00:11:36.756 --> 00:11:41.306
And so in that moment,
all of my hope was extinguished.

00:11:41.956 --> 00:11:45.267
I had grown tired of the calorie counting,

00:11:45.267 --> 00:11:46.537
of the weight loss,

00:11:46.537 --> 00:11:50.428
of the obsession with everything
food and exercise.

00:11:50.428 --> 00:11:53.357
I wanted something more to live for.

00:11:53.947 --> 00:11:55.988
So, naturally, I got a job in radio

00:11:55.988 --> 00:11:59.558
where I had to wake up at four
in the morning every day for minimum wage.

00:11:59.558 --> 00:12:00.838
(Laughter)

00:12:01.638 --> 00:12:03.988
And like the vast majority of people

00:12:03.988 --> 00:12:06.508
who lose a substantial amount
of weight in their life,

00:12:06.508 --> 00:12:07.748
I started to gain it back.

00:12:07.748 --> 00:12:11.159
And within a year and a half,
I was the heaviest I'd ever been.

00:12:11.159 --> 00:12:13.468
I was 350 pounds

00:12:13.468 --> 00:12:16.798
and in the deepest place
of depression I'd ever known.

00:12:17.590 --> 00:12:19.610
I didn't have any money
to pay my own rent,

00:12:19.610 --> 00:12:21.380
so I'd moved back in with my parents.

00:12:21.380 --> 00:12:25.750
And on my 29th birthday,
I found myself sobbing in my mother's lap,

00:12:26.388 --> 00:12:30.691
lamenting about the dismal direction
of both my professional and personal life.

00:12:30.691 --> 00:12:31.691
And I asked her,

00:12:31.691 --> 00:12:35.251
"Mom, how can anything ever change?"

00:12:35.801 --> 00:12:38.262
And my mother produced a pendant,

00:12:38.462 --> 00:12:40.227
and on it were the words

00:12:40.227 --> 00:12:42.962
"Something good is going to happen."

00:12:42.962 --> 00:12:48.166
But in my misery, I was hyperfocused
on one detail and one detail only:

00:12:48.972 --> 00:12:50.233
when?

00:12:50.813 --> 00:12:52.482
So I started to reevaluate my life.

00:12:52.482 --> 00:12:55.603
I thought back to when I was
10 years old and 90 pounds,

00:12:55.603 --> 00:12:57.733
and now I'm almost 30 and over 300,

00:12:57.733 --> 00:12:59.493
and it hadn't mattered.

00:12:59.493 --> 00:13:00.663
I'd never been happy;

00:13:00.663 --> 00:13:02.214
I'd never loved myself;

00:13:02.214 --> 00:13:05.104
I'd always carry the weight of shame.

00:13:05.104 --> 00:13:07.734
So I decided to try an experiment,
and I made a promise.

00:13:07.734 --> 00:13:11.975
I said, "Whitney, if there is something
that you get asked to do

00:13:11.975 --> 00:13:14.435
and your only reason
for declining is to say,

00:13:14.435 --> 00:13:16.385
'because I'm fat,'

00:13:16.385 --> 00:13:18.885
then you are going to do
that thing anyway."

00:13:19.965 --> 00:13:21.675
The universe was listening

00:13:21.675 --> 00:13:23.105
because you'd better believe -

00:13:23.105 --> 00:13:24.745
three days later,

00:13:24.745 --> 00:13:26.696
I got a message from a local photographer

00:13:26.696 --> 00:13:30.866
who told me she wanted to take
some boudoir photographs of me for free.

00:13:32.356 --> 00:13:33.877
I wrote back to her immediately:

00:13:33.877 --> 00:13:39.137
"Sister, I would never in a million years
take my clothes off in front of a camera.

00:13:39.137 --> 00:13:40.958
So when should I meet you?"

00:13:40.958 --> 00:13:42.338
(Laughter)

00:13:43.658 --> 00:13:46.918
A bottle of wine
and a designated driver later,

00:13:46.918 --> 00:13:48.118
(Laughter)

00:13:48.118 --> 00:13:50.888
I got an unexpected result.

00:13:50.888 --> 00:13:53.018
When I looked at this picture,

00:13:56.708 --> 00:13:59.370
for the first time in my entire life,

00:13:59.370 --> 00:14:01.720
I didn't dissect every flaw,

00:14:01.720 --> 00:14:02.720
I didn't cringe,

00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:05.960
and in fact, I thought I was beautiful.

00:14:06.540 --> 00:14:09.480
So I decided to keep the experiment going.

00:14:10.071 --> 00:14:14.251
My co-workers at the radio station
were trying to ask me to do a dance video

00:14:14.251 --> 00:14:15.775
and call it "A Fat Girl Dancing"

00:14:15.775 --> 00:14:17.010
and put it on YouTube.

00:14:17.010 --> 00:14:19.881
And at first, my reaction
was "absolutely not"

00:14:19.881 --> 00:14:22.242
because no one has seen me
dance since I was 18 -

00:14:22.242 --> 00:14:23.982
fat girls don't get to do that -

00:14:23.982 --> 00:14:26.582
and I'm still balking at the word "fat."

00:14:27.002 --> 00:14:28.362
And I had to ask myself,

00:14:28.362 --> 00:14:30.603
"Whitney, of anyone on the planet,

00:14:30.603 --> 00:14:33.123
don't you know that being fat

00:14:33.123 --> 00:14:37.123
isn't synonymous with worthless,
lazy, stupid, undeserving?"

00:14:37.773 --> 00:14:40.158
I wasn't sure that I knew,

00:14:40.158 --> 00:14:41.923
but I wanted to find out if I did,

00:14:41.923 --> 00:14:43.464
so I said yes.

00:14:43.774 --> 00:14:48.694
And I posted this video onto the internet,

00:14:49.614 --> 00:14:53.265
and a few days later,
I started getting a lot of phone calls.

00:14:53.705 --> 00:14:55.090
But they weren't normal calls

00:14:55.090 --> 00:14:57.855
like from my dad asking me
if I had toilet paper and stuff.

00:14:58.535 --> 00:15:03.455
It was like Steve Harvey and CNN,
Good Morning America, and the Today Show,

00:15:03.455 --> 00:15:06.605
and they all told me they wanted me
to come on their programs,

00:15:06.605 --> 00:15:08.165
talk about my dance video,

00:15:08.165 --> 00:15:09.886
and explain this new lifestyle,

00:15:09.886 --> 00:15:13.247
this new "body positive" lifestyle
that I was leading.

00:15:14.107 --> 00:15:15.396
And I couldn't understand -

00:15:15.396 --> 00:15:19.686
like what is so special or subversive
about a fat woman dancing?

00:15:19.686 --> 00:15:21.281
But I went on the shows,

00:15:21.281 --> 00:15:23.377
and I did my little dance.

00:15:23.867 --> 00:15:26.237
And then the letters started coming in.

00:15:26.237 --> 00:15:29.878
I got an email from a boy,
a teenage boy in Lebanon, and he said,

00:15:29.878 --> 00:15:32.173
"Whitney, it's illegal to be gay here,

00:15:32.173 --> 00:15:33.759
and I'm gay.

00:15:33.759 --> 00:15:38.410
But when I watch your videos,
I feel like my life is going to be okay."

00:15:39.019 --> 00:15:40.479
And I said,

00:15:42.439 --> 00:15:43.436
"Okay."

00:15:43.436 --> 00:15:44.746
(Laughs)

00:15:46.029 --> 00:15:48.550
Then after that, some more letters
started pouring in.

00:15:48.550 --> 00:15:52.400
This one was from TLC, and they asked me
if I would consider doing a reality show.

00:15:52.400 --> 00:15:55.917
I mulled it over and thought about how
it could ruin my life and reputation

00:15:55.917 --> 00:15:57.591
and all the ways it still might.

00:15:58.241 --> 00:16:01.551
But then I thought
about that boy in Lebanon,

00:16:01.551 --> 00:16:02.841
and for every other person

00:16:02.841 --> 00:16:05.981
who had never turned on a TV
and seen someone who looked like them,

00:16:05.981 --> 00:16:07.441
who struggled like them,

00:16:07.441 --> 00:16:09.582
and so I said yes.

00:16:11.722 --> 00:16:15.862
It wasn't before long
that even more letters started pouring in.

00:16:15.862 --> 00:16:19.363
And many of them were from fat women,
but just as many of them weren't.

00:16:19.363 --> 00:16:20.903
I was talking to little girls,

00:16:20.903 --> 00:16:21.903
anorexic women,

00:16:21.903 --> 00:16:23.443
people with different abilities,

00:16:23.443 --> 00:16:26.364
grandfathers that had always
hated their noses.

00:16:27.483 --> 00:16:31.223
And then I realized, like,
it's not about the fact that I'm fat;

00:16:31.223 --> 00:16:33.834
it's about the fact
that I am living a shame-free life

00:16:33.834 --> 00:16:37.164
in spite of a society
that tells me I don't deserve to.

00:16:38.114 --> 00:16:42.715
We all have something that society
tells us we should feel shame about.

00:16:42.715 --> 00:16:44.560
For me, it's visible

00:16:44.560 --> 00:16:48.226
in a world where thinness
is championed above all else,

00:16:48.226 --> 00:16:50.465
where we tell women in no uncertain terms,

00:16:50.465 --> 00:16:53.336
"If you are not young enough,
thin enough, and pretty enough,

00:16:53.336 --> 00:16:55.726
you're disposable"

00:16:56.156 --> 00:16:58.026
Living in that world,

00:16:58.506 --> 00:17:03.387
deciding to love my body
had become a radical act.

00:17:03.387 --> 00:17:07.247
And doing what I loved in that body
had become powerful.

00:17:07.877 --> 00:17:11.297
And then came the inevitable
questions from everybody:

00:17:11.297 --> 00:17:13.687
"How is this doable?"

00:17:13.687 --> 00:17:15.977
I never used to know
how to answer this question,

00:17:15.977 --> 00:17:19.128
because I didn't know
how to tell someone to be like me.

00:17:19.528 --> 00:17:23.257
But now I think I know how to tell people
to be more like them.

00:17:23.257 --> 00:17:26.949
We think that we have to magically
have confidence before we do something,

00:17:26.949 --> 00:17:28.930
but this is backwards.

00:17:29.569 --> 00:17:32.548
Confidence is a product of action,
not the other way around.

00:17:32.548 --> 00:17:36.540
If I had to wait to have the confidence,
I'd never get out of bed to do anything.

00:17:37.720 --> 00:17:39.275
I had to do the hard stuff -

00:17:39.275 --> 00:17:42.370
in my case, posing
half-naked and dancing -

00:17:42.370 --> 00:17:44.960
and then the confidence came as a reward,

00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:47.611
and the confidence
came as a building block.

00:17:48.181 --> 00:17:52.361
But living authentically shame-free
is not sunshine and roses.

00:17:52.361 --> 00:17:54.501
Every day on the internet
and in my real life,

00:17:54.501 --> 00:17:57.673
I'm told that I am disgusting, delusional,

00:17:57.673 --> 00:18:00.672
and should hurry up and have
that heart attack I'm bound to have

00:18:00.672 --> 00:18:02.332
so the world will be rid of me.

00:18:03.332 --> 00:18:04.622
But living shame-free

00:18:04.622 --> 00:18:10.463
has also brought more joy into my life
than I ever could believe existed.

00:18:10.463 --> 00:18:11.465
It has connected me

00:18:11.465 --> 00:18:14.033
with millions of people
I'd have never met face-to-face

00:18:14.033 --> 00:18:17.503
and injected the color
and happiness back into my life.

00:18:18.003 --> 00:18:20.474
Now, I often think
of one of my favorite quotes

00:18:20.474 --> 00:18:22.554
from my favorite feminist, Audre Lorde.

00:18:22.554 --> 00:18:26.964
She said, "I am deliberate
and afraid of nothing."

00:18:26.964 --> 00:18:30.954
And then I think
back to this picture - 1989.

00:18:31.725 --> 00:18:33.865
Five years old,
before my first dance recital,

00:18:33.865 --> 00:18:36.384
this little girl was deliberate
and afraid of nothing,

00:18:36.384 --> 00:18:39.875
serving up all the face
and sass in the world,

00:18:39.875 --> 00:18:43.726
completely unapologetic about what
she knew she was put on this earth to do.

00:18:44.286 --> 00:18:47.378
I think we get discouraged
because we've all been that little girl

00:18:47.378 --> 00:18:50.246
but then the world
beats and breaks us down.

00:18:50.246 --> 00:18:52.916
We think that being confident, being happy

00:18:52.916 --> 00:18:55.707
should be as easy as putting
on a light switch, right?

00:18:55.707 --> 00:18:59.457
Just do it, just be happy,
just love yourself.

00:18:59.457 --> 00:19:02.588
But it isn't that easy, and I know that.

00:19:02.588 --> 00:19:04.128
It's not like a light switch.

00:19:04.128 --> 00:19:05.839
Living authentically free of shame

00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:10.186
is more like stumbling toward
a motion sensor light in the dark.

00:19:11.088 --> 00:19:15.478
You have to advance forward
to a target that you can't see

00:19:15.478 --> 00:19:17.599
but trust that you'll
ultimately get there.

00:19:17.599 --> 00:19:18.789
And the universe is funny

00:19:18.789 --> 00:19:21.169
because the only thing
that will turn that light on

00:19:21.169 --> 00:19:24.060
is your movement and your action.

00:19:24.060 --> 00:19:25.425
And if you live this way -

00:19:25.425 --> 00:19:29.470
if you know that every time you're
stumbling and spinning and scrambling,

00:19:29.470 --> 00:19:31.630
you are actually doing the hard part,

00:19:31.630 --> 00:19:35.761
you are actually doing the work
even if you can't pinpoint your progress -

00:19:35.761 --> 00:19:38.441
if you make a commitment
to live a shame-free life

00:19:38.441 --> 00:19:41.771
and know that it's an undertaking
that you have to do every single day,

00:19:41.771 --> 00:19:43.091
day in and day out,

00:19:43.091 --> 00:19:46.922
and you are deliberate
about choosing that life -

00:19:46.922 --> 00:19:49.792
you will find yourself illuminated.

00:19:49.792 --> 00:19:51.472
And if you're like me,

00:19:51.472 --> 00:19:54.344
it'll probably be
when you least expect it.

00:19:54.344 --> 00:19:55.344
Thank you.

00:19:55.344 --> 00:19:57.743
(Applause)