150 Pounds
Authors: Kate Rockland
This book is dedicated to my husband, Joe, who loves me at any weight.
Contents
December: Shoshana and Alexis, Chicago
February: Shoshana, Hoboken, New Jersey
April: Shoshana, Hoboken and Chester, New Jersey
July: Shoshana, Chester, New Jersey
September: Alexis, New York and Greenwich, Connecticut
October: Shoshana, Chester, New Jersey
October: Alexis and Shoshana, Chicago
In person, Oprah had the clearest skin Shoshana had ever seen. Her eyes were a dark liquid brown (the same shade as her own!) and her smile was a flash of diamonds. She analyzed Oprah’s body unknowingly; thinking about the female form was what she did for a living. Shoshana was astounded at the recent tabloid headlines that called Oprah “fat” and “hefty.” The reality was she was at least four dress sizes smaller than Shoshana, and looked more like a curvaceous aunt who wanted to hold everyone to her bosom than someone with a serious weight problem.
Fucking media,
she thought.
Sitting backstage in
The Oprah Winfrey Show
’s green room on the West Side of Chicago, sipping a paper cup full of mint tea, Shoshana let out a deep sigh. It was a cliché to state that Hollywood, and by extension American culture, was shallow and held ridiculous standards for female beauty, but as she watched the American icon on the monitor, five minutes away from being on national television, the truth hit home.
She looked down at her own body and imagined her stats being shouted into the microphone at a boxing match:
And in this corner, weighing in at two hundred and fifteen pounds, standing five-foot-seven, with bouncy, achy, size-EE breasts … Shoshana Weiner!
And the crowd goes wild.
She ran a trembling hand over her midsection, smoothing down the cute purple polka-dot dress she had paired with silver leggings and the purple headband with a sparkly sequin bow (a splurge at J. Crew!). She was a sucker for any accessory and loved loud, wild patterns. (She liked to think her personality was so outrageous, the rest of her might as well match.)
Her own touch calmed her quaking nerves. Her body was solid, strong. She was proud of her large breasts, small waist, and curvy butt. All of the walking she’d been doing lately was giving her toned calves. She was willing to bet that was one place people never looked: her calves. They were too busy checking out her gigantic boobs, probably. Her “Twins of Doom,” as she referred to them on her blog.
Shoshana was nervous about being on television, her round face shown to millions of people. She threw back a sip of the tea like a tequila shot.
“First time on TV?”
A middle-aged, tall, and slender black man approached her holding a clipboard and wearing headphones. He’d had his eyebrows waxed, and smiled with the whitest teeth Shoshana had ever seen. He had three squiggly waves shaved into the left side of his head. His expression was kind, and she wondered if he was sent in to relax her, like the opening act in a comedy show. There were only three guests today, including her. The first was Kirstie Alley, who was seated on Oprah’s yellow couch in a plum-colored long dress, one leg crossed over the other. The theme of today’s show was women and their views on weight; Kirstie was laughing, her bleached-blond head of hair thrown back, wide pink lipsticked mouth open as she told a funny story about dating younger men in their twenties.
A smooth voice tickled her ear: “This might feel cold,” the stagehand told Shoshana in a gentle voice, his hands comfortably slipping down the back of her dress, attaching some kind of black box with a wire to her thick waist.
“Just remember, talk regularly when you’re up there; this baby mike will make you sound perfectly clear to the audience.” He sounded affectionate about his microphone, as if he were proud of what it could accomplish. Shoshana appreciated people who took pleasure in their jobs, who felt pride in their work. In Hoboken, New Jersey, where she lived, she liked talking to the garbage man who picked up the trash on her street and learning from him the different fabulous items people threw away. Once, he told her, he’d found an engagement ring that fell out of a Raisin Bran cereal box.
“Oh … okay. Thank you.” She pushed some thick flyaway locks of hair out of her eyes and set down her tea on a nearby high table. It was whisked away a second later by another stagehand, this one blond and petite. It was as if the woman had been trained to anticipate Shoshana’s every move.
“Don’t be nervous, honey. A lot of our guests whisper their secrets to Oprah,” the male stagehand said, his dark eyes twinkling. He squeezed her arm and she smiled at him. Hey! It was working. He was definitely making her feel calmer.
Palm tree waving in the wind on a tropical island, palm tree waving in the wind on a tropical island.
Her sister Emily had suggested earlier at lunch that she project a calm image behind her eyelids when she felt nervous.
Suddenly her phone rang. The sounds of Lucinda Williams’s “Are You Alright?” filled the room, causing the other guest to stare at her. The call was from Shoshana’s mother, and she’d programmed her phone with this ring because her mother was always calling Shoshana and asking if she was all right.
“Mom!” she hissed. “What are you doing calling me
now
? I’m about to go on.”
“Honey, I know that. That’s why Em and I are calling. We snuck into the bathroom when Kirstie went on stage. She’s looking good, isn’t she? The woman is over sixty, you know.”
“I thought she looked just as pretty when she was a chunker.”
She heard a little chuckle come from the stagehand, but he quickly covered his mouth to hide it.
“Are people allowed to talk on the phone in here? Isn’t there some rule against it?” The other guest was standing nearby, with her arms crossed against her bird-thin chest. Shoshana saw the stagehand offer her a chocolate-chip cookie from the goodies on the table. The woman declined it by shaking her head so hard Shoshana feared it might slip right off her neck.
“Mom, I have to go. Just have that bottle of scotch ready for when I totally make an ass out of myself.”
“Shoshana Jane Weiner! That is why your sister and I called you. We wanted to let you know what a talented, beautiful, and smart woman you are. You’re going to knock their socks off out there. Just remember how many girls at home are watching and looking up to you. This one’s for the Fatties.”
Her mother always knew how to make her feel better.
“I love you, sis!” her sister yelled in the background. “Knock ’em dead!” Emily worked in a tattoo shop on the Lower East Side, had pink-and-black-striped hair, and (at last count) thirteen pierced holes in her body. She’d even had her belly button done, which impressed Shoshana to no end because Emily was a big girl like herself and didn’t exactly have washboard abs. Emily was also her best friend and lifelong confidante.
Shoshana had never told her this, but Emily was the reason she’d started the
Fat and Fabulous
blog. At 315 pounds, she’d had shit shoveled at her by people her entire life. Elementary school, high school, neighbors, cousins … everyone seemed to think they were the first one to mention that maybe, they didn’t mean to pry, just worried about her health, of course, don’t take this the wrong way … but did Emily know she could stand to lose a couple of pounds? Sure, Emily was tough as nails and as a child would beat the living daylights out of anyone who teased her about her weight, but Shoshana couldn’t help feeling overprotective of her. Kids could be so mean. Shoshana remembered Emily being poked with a pencil in the third grade by Steven Myers, because, he said, “She probably can’t feel it.” Emily subsequently was suspended for two weeks, after breaking the pencil in half and stabbing Steven in the arm with it. (It had left a scar, which he still showed them. It was ironic because Emily would later date him briefly in high school, and soon grow bored and dump him.)
Shoshana watched her younger sister try every diet under the moon and stars. At one point she’d gotten down to 125 pounds, but it was the toxic result from a liquid diet that caused her to faint at work and have bright blue, Avatar-like poop. Then there was Atkins, which called for drinking straight whiskey, to avoid the calories in beer. After one particular night of too much fun in a West Village cowgirl bar, Shoshana rode with her sister to the emergency room to have her stomach pumped. In the end, the result was always the same: Emily put the weight back on, then hit a downward spiral of depression as a result of the shame and guilt.
This finally led Shoshana to start
Fat and Fabulous,
a blog that began as a simple battle cry and went on to pick up millions of loyal readers. Its popularity was the reason she was here today—Oprah’s producer had called two weeks ago to ask Shoshana to speak about the experiences she’d faced as a larger woman, as well as what her readers had gone through. Shoshana called her fans “Fatties,” affectionately, of course.
Her mother, Pam, had also been on yo-yo diets her entire life, starting in her teens when her bell-bottoms began getting more and more snug. She was the heaviest now since Shoshana’s father died several years ago, and she was a compulsive overeater. Today, her weight hovered close to three hundred pounds. Because Shoshana was always the smallest Weiner girl, her mother and sister tried to protect her from becoming large. She’d still been skinny up until she hit puberty at fourteen; Pam and Emily would dive at her if she opened the freezer on a quest for Häagen-Dazs, emitting that slowed-down, Hollywood freeze-frame “Nooooooooo…” when she’d select ice cream from the freezer.
Pam felt her own fat reflected poorly on who she was as a person—that she was weak somehow. Shoshana remembered one frigidly cold day last winter when her mother discovered she’d gained too much weight to fit into her winter jacket; and yet she refused to buy a new one. Shoshana and Emily had tried everything in their power to get her a new coat, even getting her a gift certificate from Bloomingdale’s for Hanukkah. Only Pam used the money to buy matching purses for her daughters.
They brought home catalogs from the few plus-size stores that existed. “So let me get this straight. You are going to freeze instead of buy a larger coat?” Shoshana had asked her mother, who only shook her head, the glitter of tears in her eyes. “Pick out something for yourself, girls. I don’t deserve to buy any new clothing until I lose this weight.” It was such a vicious cycle, because she never would lose it, and instead went around town with an open jacket, freezing. It broke Shoshana’s heart. She knitted Pam four scarves last winter, trying to keep her warm.