I think that I’m a pretty funny person. I mean, my friends laugh at my jokes and call me ‘the funny one’. Which is both good and bad. I mean, usually in a movie, the funny one is the side kick friend to the ‘gorgeous one’. The funny one usually never gets the guy (or girl) and is usually ugly and / or fat.
See how that’s awkward now.
When I first started my (current, ha!) diet at the beginning of this year I thought that I was so hilarious when I came up with the following headline in my head. Do you ever do that, you know, make up newspaper headlines in your head?
Am I just making things awkward again?
Anywaaaaaay, here it is.
“Fat girl falls over. Tsunami wipes out half of China”.
Seriously, I’m hilarious.
I told my friends at work when we were gathered in the kitchen making coffee early one morning. We seriously giggled like school girls I when I told that joke. My friend, Roxanne, she laughed so hard that a little bit of wee came out.
I think that I make jokes about how fat am I to stop other people from making jokes about me. It’s the usual fat girl scenario. Make someone laugh about you first, so that they don’t laugh about you in a mean, behind-your-back-kind-of way. Isn’t that right, Fat Amy?
My work friends and I have so many fat jokes. For Roxanne’s birthday last year, I typed out about 50 someecard sayings and then cut them out into strips and put them into a jar that she kept on her desk. They were full of fat jokes. Whenever we were bored (most of the time) or wanted a laugh, she would reach into the jar, pull out a strip of paper and read it (almost whispering; because stuffy office environment) out to us. Even though we had heard them many times before, we would always laugh so hard that our eyes would water and a little wee would come out (two of us have had children, blame them).
Our favourite one was:
I liked this because it was honest – you are fat. I liked that when we read it to our boss, she looked at us like we had our tits out and our nipples were rubbing on our desks. Don’t laugh, that actually would happen if we weren’t wearing bras. Children and being fat have absolutely ruined our tits. I think that she was shocked that we were not hiding behind the shame of being fat. You know, how fat people shouldn’t joke about how fat they are. They should just go and eat a healthy breakfast, salad for lunch and then the entire contents of the fridge and pantry for dinner.
Our company has just gone through a merger and earlier this year we were gathered with the rest of the people from our Division. Probably a hundred or so people sitting in rows in a large meeting room. Our new Executive General Manager was up the front, giving the speech from the top of the mountain. It was crowded and hot and tbh, not very inspiring. But then, our new boss said something. She made a comment about something boring and corporate and then said “I’m not going to sugar coat it”.
Well that was it, my friend and I let out a little gasp of air and I pitched forward in my seat in an attempt to smother the laugh that escaped from my lips. I was practically convulsing while thinking to myself “do not let the new boss see you laughing, this is career suicide.” Every time I glanced over at my friend (and I tried not to), it would set off another round of hiccuping, red faced style laughing.
Ahh, see it’s funny to be fat.
Another friend from work who reads my blog told me that I should stop referring to myself as fat. I should call myself overweight or a ‘bigger girl’. I completely and utterly disagree. What is the shame in calling myself what I am? Calling myself something other than fat, to me, signals that I am ashamed of who I am. Now, that may well be the case, but I’m not going to shy away from being honest to myself (and others) about my weight. I’m not going to be embarrassed to admit that weight loss is hard. That sometimes I will fail. If I hide behind politically correct words, then I feel like I’m behaving like the shy, fat girl that hides in the corner at a party. I don’t want to be that girl.
Earlier, I thought that I had finished this blog post and I thought that I should impart some words of wisdom to my readers. So I made up a whole section, relating the fat girls falls over joke to still being fat today (but not as fat). Then I put in a few dot points about what my plan for the rest of the week was. And then, instantly, I was bored.
Bored of my own writing, bored of the ‘must put words into action’ bullshit that I hear so often. I hit the delete button and now this blog post has no ‘outcome’, or next steps or revelations.
Instead, it’s just a fat girl making fun of herself and having a laugh while she does it. Make yourself or someone else laugh 🙂