Warning: Personal Stuff

Last March a woman sat on a bench on the boardwalk in New Jersey eating french fries and enjoying a book. Three teenage girls began harassing her. The woman was obese; these girls couldn't seem to tolerate what they were seeing, a woman who was apparently out of control, stupid and weak. Out of the more than 60 people who passed by and heard the terrible insults, only five stopped and said something.

That was an experiment carried out by ABC News this past spring and there were hidden cameras placed up and down the boardwalk monitoring what was happening. So many people just walked by and let it happen - young, thin girls spewing insults at an overweight woman who was pleading to be left alone.

Although these were all actors taking part in an experiment and no one meant anyone any real harm, this story upset me. This scenario is all too real, my own life included. Except for the eating french fries on the boardwalk part, this is just what has happened to me. I had been the victim of cruel remarks about my weight until I was 16 years old.

I'd had insults yelled at me from across a field, in the halls at school, to my face by the very people I thought liked me. And for this fact alone: fatness.

When people see a person out of the range of what they consider to be acceptable, it is easy to make a judgment about her, about her whole life, based on just that one observation. In my case, I overate because I had no idea how to deal with the death of my father. The worst had happened and I was confused, heartbroken, and feeling completely alone. I think that when people have no understanding of what to do with their emotions, they grapple with what to do with their whole selves. Sometimes that results in stuffing those foreign, scary feelings deep down with food. Food is good; it helps to ease the pain, at least while it's going down.

It's a shame that none of the people who made fun of me ever thought, "Hmm. I wonder what's going on in Alisa's life that's making her fat. I wonder if I can show some support and be her friend? Maybe that would help her." 'Cause guess what? When you feel unloved, you just want to eat more!

At 16, after losing a significant amount of weight, there were girls at school who suddenly wanted to be my friend. I guess they saw something fundamentally changed in me. But really, nothing except the absence of 20 pounds was any different. I was still the same exact person, a bit more confident, yes, but still saddled with the same things I was saddled with prior to my weight loss. But I became so much more attractive to everyone. Too bad.

Fat is an easy target. It's something obvious, and mostly avoidable. It says, and sometimes wrongly, to people that your eating is out of control, that you are a weakling. But who is not a weakling in some way? The people who hold themselves up against fat people - is there nothing in their life that puts them at its mercy? Perhaps they shop, smoke, drink, gamble, play video games too much? I have never seen anyone jeer at a person overloaded with shopping bags, and, while we are all aware of the dangers of cigarettes and how very addictive they are, I've never heard anyone actually ridicule a smoker.

So, how do I end this without a lecture, a foot on a soapbox, a moral? I'm not sure. I guess just to say that I am still me, 40 pounds heavier or 40 pounds lighter. A hackneyed statement? Sure. But the absolute truth.