Skinny Island: Part 5

Kelly

I’m starting to think that Val may have been right about this place, but I’m having trouble organizing my thoughts about it….Which is part of my issue.

None of us can remember exactly what we weighed when we got here. I remember I was fat, but not what it felt like or how I looked when I was. I know how long we’ve been here, but I also feel like I was super big before. That shouldn’t be possible because if I was super fat, as in “so fat that me being here is a form of protest”, then it wouldn’t make sense that I could drop as much weight as I have in 5 weeks. Even if I lost 5 pounds every week, I’d only be 20 pounds up from where I am now, which would make me obese, but not as super huge as I keep thinking.

That’s why I started getting suspicious. Val had been saying stuff like this since the beginning but we just sort of wrote her off. It makes me feel kinda shitty saying that, but it’s the truth. Val was always the kind of girl who would be dramatic for attention and catastrophize everything that happened so she could be upset about it. By the time we heard about the island, she was already spewing government conspiracies and how we were coming to burn the place to the ground. It seemed stupid at the time. Protesting a toxic standard of beauty, sure. Combating a skinny-only mindset? Totally. But I never actually thought that we needed to destroy the lives of the people who live or vacation here just because they were thin and we weren’t.

But how not-thin were we? Xiang can’t remember either, and asking Val just gets us weird looks and an excuse as to why she won’t tell us. Even when I try to remember what my life was like before coming here, it’s like I am suddenly high and forget the thought the moment I have it. If I try hard enough, I can kinda remember and envision what daily life was like, but the moment I stop focusing on it really hard it just goes away. I feel like I was really heavy at one point, but again, that doesn’t make sense given the time I’ve had to get to where I am now.

Getting weighed here is an everyday occurrence, so knowing your weight at any given time is pretty easy. I was 159 when I weighed in this morning when I signed in at my fitness club so if I calculate a VERY generous (if not impossible) 5 pounds per week, that would mean I’ve lost 25 pounds in just over a month. Even then, 25 more pounds would make me 184 and that’s like.... Not that big. I keep feeling like that can’t be right, but I don’t really have a way of proving it.

(1)

Except…. There is one thing.

A few days ago I was in the main resort building to check in and make sure we were still covered for our second month on the island. While I was there, I saw a pretty-looking Persian or Arab girl (I’m bad with guessing ethnicity. I thought she was Mexican before I saw her clothes and heard her accent) getting out of the sign-in line for new arrivals. She was curvy, not fat, but still had a good amount of pudge on her. Pretty, but still chubbier than most girls here except for me, Xiang, and Val. She caught me looking at her and our eyes met for a second before she walked off.

(2)

That should have been the end of it, but towards the end of our group run this morning, I ran into her again on the beach. She waved at me and said hi, so we talked for a second while I cooled down from the jog down the mountain. She said she remembered me and even congratulated me saying that I already looked like I’ve lost weight since she saw me in the lobby. Thing is though, when I saw her a week ago, she had chunky arms, a kinda big butt, and pudgy little fat rolls when she put her hands on her waist. Today, I could see her ribs. Her boobs had shrunk and even though her thighs were still kinda thick, they only touched a little bit when she walked around instead of constantly being mashed together. To be honest, she looked amazing, but it looked like she’d dropped more than 20 pounds in just the one week. She was happy to hear that she looked smaller, but when I asked how much weight she’d lost since arriving, she couldn’t exactly remember. I thought that was pretty weird for being in a place where you weigh yourself sometimes 3 times a day. Logically speaking, there should be no way she could have lost that much weight so quickly, and if she did, how could she not possibly remember?

(3)

The story is the same with everyone I ask, including my friends. Somehow, we’re losing weight way faster than should be possible but can never remember what it was like to be lighter than we are in the moment. But that leads me to my last issue:

….How do I feel about all of this?

I calculated my bmi in the club meeting room and I am right at the very tippy top of normal. Granted, that’s still practically obese for an islander, but for me, it was shockingly wonderful news. I remember thinking that I hadn’t been in a normal weight range since I was like 12 years old. I cried. A lot. I’ve never felt so energetic or fit, even if I can’t specifically recall when I wasn’t.

…But is this right? What if something weird IS happening to all of us here on the island? Is it worth sticking around and losing more weight even if it’s someone’s sinister secret plan or something?

I don’t really know, and what’s scary is that I care less every day I spend here.

Xiang

Dear Diary,

I gotta say, I’m getting tired of pink. I came here with this idea that I was going to have my own all-pink swimsuit collection for plus-size girls, but since coming here I’m not really all that plus-sized anymore. I’m still trying to keep the line going by making new ones in my off time to wear, but I’m ready for a change. Just three more weeks to go until I can get some blue and black back in my life. Still, this is a good opportunity to promote some inclusion in my store as I used to be plus-size only.

I guess at the time I felt like I was making a difference in fat girls’ lives by marketing cut outfits to them, but after spending time on the island and feeling what it’s like to slim down a bit, I just feel like I’ve gotten some much-needed perspective. When I think about it now, I can see a flaw in my logic. Clothes were never the problem. Any seamstress can put together a bikini in a size 3X, but that doesn’t mean that the whale stuffing herself into it is going to look good. Having spilled out of some of my own work and seeing how few people actually liked my appearance, I can firmly say that the only people who can make a difference in how a plus-size girl feels and sees herself is her. It’s not about dressing a woman who is fifty pounds overweight in shapewear and telling her she’s beautiful when she’s not; it’s about helping her understand that she’s never going to feel good about herself until she isn’t fifty pounds overweight. I’m living proof of this concept.

Today I wore a two piece swimsuit that completely exposed my stomach without feeling insecure about my weight and appearance and I gotta say it was a literal weight off of my shoulders. Or my waist, so I guess not really literally. My point is that even though I still have weight to lose in my midsection and thighs before I’m totally confident, I was able to walk around without feeling like a flabby blobfish with a sagging belly apron wobbling around in front of me all the time. There is still more to do before I feel like I’m really ready to move into mainstream modeling full-time, but this is definitely a strong start. My thighs are still pretty fat and weirdly enough I feel like my boobs might be bigger than I want them? I dunno. It feels weird to say but the more focused on my fitness and modeling career I become, the more I feel like I’m a little too hourglassy and need to lose extra weight to compensate for my T&A.

(4)

I’m also at odds with how to handle my brand image. I do feel like a hypocrite for making a plus-size line and then immediately deciding that being fat is gross and unsexy. It reminds me of people like Adele and Meghan Trainor who were all about body positivity up until they got rich and turned into skinny weight loss advocates. Now I’m sitting here waiting for the day I see news articles talking about Lizzo stunning on the red carpet at 120 pounds. Thanks, Skinny Island!

But seriously, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Alienating the consumer base I currently have would cost me money in the short term, but I’m seriously tired of being surrounded by obese women all the time. Being in a place where everyone is skinny made me realize just how much your environment affects you. When you’re only hanging around fat people, it’s way too easy to get fat, but when all your friends and coworkers are thin, the pounds just start falling off as you pick up their habits unintentionally.

The other issue is that I can’t just expect everyone back on the mainland to behave the way people do here when I get home. Women aren’t going to start losing weight just because I did it. They’ll probably just be upset that I’m not making clothes just for them anymore once I start adding regular sizes to my repertoire now that I’ve lost enough weight to fit into something I didn’t have to specially order online from Torrid or whatever. Plus, shelling out the money for a new wardrobe is going to suck not only for me but for any of my customers who won’t really be my main focus anymore. Too bad there aren’t like…adjustable outfits designed for bigger girls trying to slim down. Kinda like a corset but for regular shirts and pants and stuff with markers to tell what size they are set to so girls can tell how much weight they’ve lost or how much they have to go.

…

Actually, you know what…… That’s a brilliant idea.

Good job, me.

Thanks, me.

Valentina

Day 37.

141 Pounds

Daily Calories: 1200

So it’s time that I admit an embarrassing truth. Or maybe not embarrassing per se, but I’ve been sorta dancing around it for a while now and it’s time to just come clean.

I’m trying to lose weight.

I know that my whole thing from the start was about exposing the evils of Skinny Island and their horrible brainwashing radio waves broadcast from a secret bunker in the woods, but in the past week I have been all up and down that mountain with the Women Of Color group and I haven’t seen even any secret bunkers, sinister broadcasting stations, or even ONE evil lair.

What’s more is I’ve been dealing with new compulsions that I keep trying to justify to myself. I’ve been getting into exercise more with my group, but in a way that’s more than normal, average attendance. I’m doing cardio twice a day both in and out of the gym and I’ve even gotten a step counter that also calculates the number of calories I’ve burned. I also look at that thing more often than I probably should.

I’m eating less and religiously counting my calories. I’m doing mental math constantly in order to know how much of a calorie deficit I’m creating and how long I would have to keep that pace up in order to lose another pound of fat. Or muscle. I don’t really care much anymore.

What’s stupid is that I KNOW I am not actually losing weight at those normal rates. I’ve lost 36 pounds in a week according to this journal, even if I can’t remember the process entirely or that I was even that big to begin with. Technically speaking, I’m the lightest one of my friends now having beat out Xiang by 4 pounds, though since I’m also 4 inches shorter, I still look chubbier than her. Still, once I saw her weighing herself after I did I have to say I was jumping for joy about it. I’m still technically overweight according to Kelly, but I’m not really focused so much on BMI as I am on appearance. Or maybe I just wish I was in the normal category like her and Xiang.

Even worse is that I KNOW that this is exactly the kind of culty acceptance corruption shit that brainwashed people say. The problem is that….brainwashing is brainwashing. It works.

I’ve been trying not to admit to myself that I’ve been sipping the Kool-Aid for a while, but I’m starting to crave it and if I’m being honest, I’m starting to love it. I have tried to push the thought from my mind all week in an attempt to resist the island’s…whatever it does, but it’s getting harder and harder to see a reason to fight it.

So….that leads me to today. I was so happy that I was the thinnest of my friends that I went and told the WOC group about it and they all treated me like a hero. They told me how pretty I was and that I was such an inspiration. I’d never felt so pretty or fulfilled in my life. It was then that I realized that this feeling that I had was the result of the island’s “brainwashing.” I realized that I had been fighting tooth and nail to remain a version of myself that I never liked being and that it didn’t make sense. Here I am, feeling pretty and SO close to thin while 42 beautiful, skinny, non-white women all cheer for me and tell me I inspire them and that I am beautiful.

Why was I fighting this?

Why am I trying to force myself to remember being a “Super Morbidly Obese” girl who spends all her time hiding herself away and complaining about everything she can’t control? Why would I fight to not hear the words of my friends or to not feel as beautiful as I do when I am out on the beach doing real photoshoots with professional photographers? Because that’s what I do now. I dress up, work out, count calories, and then go do some modeling with my friends.

(5)

I feel cute, fun, and happy this way. So why am I resisting it so hard? All this place seems to be doing to me is turning me into someone I love being, yet I have been trying to destroy it since day one. Why?

It doesn’t make any sense.

…Doesn’t it?

I’m going to wait an hour before continuing this entry, just in case. If anyone wants to give me a sign that I need to go back to trying to stay a fat, ugly loser, now’s your chance.

-

So…I didn’t receive a sign.

More importantly, I’ve thought it over again and I’m sure. I’m only writing this part out so that I can say that I did what I set out to do and kept my journal, even though it’s kind of a waste writing this since I’m going to burn this notebook tonight and get a new one tomorrow. I don’t want to remember being fat anymore or have this book to remind me of how much I hated my life. I’m ready to give it up and live my life the way I want it to be.

Come tomorrow, Valentina’s Conspiracy Journal will be gone for good, and I will be writing the very first entry in My Weight Loss Diary <3.