Sally

I was a full on kid! Craved attention, very articulate, comfortable with adults and loved putting on shows. I was active, artistic, loved socializing, having friends. I liked singing, dancing, drama. I liked playing dress ups, climbing trees. I liked playing with ‘My little ponies’, Charmicans, Barbie, playing school, bouncing on the trampoline, playing board games, buying sweets, playing handball, riding my bike, going to the park.

 

When I got to high school I liked socializing, reading, art, cooking, politics, playing handball, card tournaments (500 and God).

 

I was quite an academic kid, I was good at school stuff and I enjoyed it (I was one of those strange kids who enjoyed math. I loved algebra because the ‘x’ was drawn like 2 c’s one back to front, how strange!)

 

I lived in my head a lot, loved trying new things.

 

My strongest childhood images involve my family! I love them so much! Playing monopoly in teams, family rounds of 500, camping together, stacks of arguments (stacks and stacks, but that’s what happens when you have 4 strong willed, articulate, noisy children in a family)

 

I just have a few images

 

.. we were building our house (I would have been 9 or 10) and I remember where my bedroom was going to be was about 4m off the ground, but I used wooden off cuts and created a path with a floor and used to hang out there, then I slipped and hurt my leg

 

… I remember being mad at my sister and pushing her, not realizing she was off balance and having her face hit the heater and push her plate into her gum

 

.. I remember leading a science experiment about magnetism, and to make people laugh I crushed a biscuit with the magnet (just one of those things)

 

.. opening one of the sliding windows and having it smash on the roof

 

.. sneaking out when I was 13 to meet up with my neighbor (a boy) who used to sneak into my room as well

 

.. at high school feeling fat, and uncomfortable for being fat

 

.. in year 7 one guy finding out I liked him … in year 9 a different guy finding out I liked him .. in year 11 asking one guy out on a date, and in year 12 another one to the formal – they all stopped talking to me! How bad is that!

 

… feeling uncomfortable going to parties, always worried about how I looked. Hating overnight excursions for that same reason

 

… watching lots and lots and lots and lots of cartoons (we had TV rules only 1hr a day, but I still seem to have watched more cartoons than anyone I know)

 

… fighting with my sisters, being really, really awful to one in particular (I still feel bad about that)

 

… wearing black for about 3 years in high school

I don’t know when I actually became fat. But I thought that I was fat from age 9 when I moved to a new school. I was the new kid and went in and on the first day topped the math test. Bad move. Another new girl came to the school 1 term later and was accepted straight away and then led the hatred campaign against me – in retrospect, and from talking to others I realize she was jealous. Sigh. But the reason I felt fat was because for 2½ years at this school I got called fat, ugly bitch, etc. I guess I started to believe it. It didn’t help that I was an early developer. By 13 I was wearing D-cup bras when many of the other girls were still extremely flat (actually many of them stayed small, so that’s genetics for you)

 

My parents, on the whole were good. I didn’t learn the word ‘diet’ at home – that was totally a school thing. My dad has a lot of size issues, which I put down to his mum. He would say things like – "surely you want to be strong and hard, not soft." Most of the wanting to lose weight stuff was purely internal (you know, except for all the school people)

On and off I did try to lose weight. I was never a yoyo dieter – I might restrict my food for 1 day, keep a food diary for 1 day, and then go off it. I think that I am lucky in that respect.

 

I sometimes started exercise regimes, which would last about the same amount of time. I had one friend who used to start these exercise things with me.

 

Why did I try to lose weight? Initially to stop the teasing (although I realize that they would have found something else). As I got older because I wanted to feel attractive, and most of the messages I got were you are fat, and fat is not attractive.

School was school – part of me loved it, part of me hated it. I hated getting teased. I hated being called fat. Parts of it I enjoyed, I liked classes, had some great friends etc. But there were awful people. In year 9 or 10 I had some naked woman pictures in my art diary (I had been to life drawing classes) and got told by one particularly awful girl that I must be a lesbian. But the fat taunts sort of haunt me. It’s that I can remember.

 

I went to new school when I was 8 and in year 4. On Day 1 topped the math test. In retrospect, it was perhaps not the smartest of moves. I didn’t really fit in from the start, That was hard, especially as I had been popular and happy at my previous school. I can’t really remember when the teasing started, but I think that it was the next term when the new girl came. She seemed to fit in right away. She also seemed to hate me from the start. Even back then, I think that I thought of myself as a nice person, so it was so strange to be nearly HATED by so mane people. It was most of the girls in my year, and given there were only 10 people in my whole year …

 

 

I always wanted a boyfriend, but could never believe that the boys that asked me out actually liked me! (Strangely enough these guys were the ones who were always getting suspended … interesting …)

 

I hated PE – partly because I had breasts, partly because I felt fat, and my image of myself was not as good as everyone else, so I didn’t even want to ‘compete’.

 

I took a lot of time off – not wagging, because my parents let me stay home/not go. Sometimes I really hated being there. I think that was one of the reasons I was such an awful teenager. Its weird, I had this cutting tongue, but I only used it on my family not on the people who were horrible to me. That is one of my big regrets from school, that I didn’t stick up for myself, make myself a non-easy target. My parents always said ignore it, but ignoring it doesn’t work!

 

I remember being uncomfortable going on camps, staying at friends places, always worried about how I was fat and everyone else was not.

My whole family was really loving and accepting of me. I am sure that there were many people who accepted me the way that I was – my friends never told me to lose weight, or anything, but when your self image is so terrible, it is very hard to take on board positive messages unless you are hit over the head.

I guess I wanted people to not judge me on my exterior – there was nothing wrong with it then, and there is nothing wrong with it now! I guess more than that though, I wanted people to know that it was ok to be me, to not judge me.

 

So I was about 9 when I started to get called FAT. And it happened regularly, I was fat, I was a bitch, I can’t actually remember all the insults. Some of the older boys joined in upon occasion (about 3 years up on me) but I told my dad, and they stopped after he had a word to their parents.

 

I wish I had told the parents of the girls who were mean to me.

 

I look at pictures of myself back then, and I was not fat. Strong, well built, quite skinny in fact! But not fat. And I came to believe that I was fat. I felt ugly. I was 9 years old and I felt ugly! Unfortunately I still had 2 years ahead of me at Clunes. So I got 3 years of abuse. It is only now that I am starting to wonder why they hated me so much, and also to wonder why being fat was (and is) such a crime.

 

Unfortunately my years of abuse were not at an end.

 

High School was awful. When I started high school I was still pretty skinny. I was starting to develop, so I had breasts, and I was actually a DD by year 8. Given that many of the girls in my year were very flat still, that was another thing that made me stand out.

 

But the boys became more awful in high school.

 

‘Cow’ ‘Fat Ugly Bitch’ ‘Juggernaut’ ‘Whale’ ‘Buddha’ etc. There are many, many more, but who wants to remember them! So I had another 6 years of abuse. Not that it was all bad. I had a group of friends. Although in retrospect friends that say I have short stumpy lashes, mousy brown hair and fat fingers aren’t doing much for my self esteem!

 

There were a couple of big guys in the year, but no way did they get as much crap!

 

My confidence in myself as a girl was further decimated when every time a guy found out I liked him (whether though the grapevine, or because I asked him out) they stopped talking to me! Hello! What exactly was I going to? It’s very hard to develop confidence in these sorts of situations.

 

One of the defining moments for me, was in Year 12, my final year of high school, when some year 11 boys had been picking on me for over a year. One time I was running after my friend to get my book back, all in play, when these snotty year 11s starting saying stuff like ‘the whales running, call Greenpeace, the grounds trembling etc’.

I generally didn’t tell anyone what had happened – people always knew, as I have an incredibly expressive face, and can’t hide my feelings to save my life.

 

However, one day when I was in Year 12 (the year 11 boys teasing me) I don’t know what happened, but I just snapped. I draw myself up, burst into tears, went, "Right, that’s it, I’m going to the principal!" I stomped towards his office, and then had to stomp back and put my shoes on (I didn’t want to get in trouble! It’s funny what goes through your mind!). One of my friends came with me, and I went to the deputies office, burst into tears and said ‘You have to do something about this situation’ (even back then I was a drama queen). Poor Mr Bills was trying to calm me down, and he called the girls supervisor.

 

She was absolutely awful! Me and two friends were in this room with her, she was pretty much ignoring me, asking my friends if I am overreacting because I have my period, and then she asks me if she thinks I might be overreacting and making it up because I am fat. I am so glad my friends were there! When we finally left the awful woman, we ran into one of my favourite teachers, who was not currently my teacher, who asked me what was wrong. My two friends told him. He cared enough to ring my parents, and tell them that if they personally followed it up, it would be taken more seriously. Thanks Mr. Weingarth!

 

So they followed it up. Four people got suspended (the deputy had a piece of paper with all these names on it and said who was it? I got flustered, but my fantastic friend Linda said it was him, him, her and her! Four people suspended!).

 

I of course was dealing with other issues of dobbing, but my whole year was so supportive, thought I did the right thing etc.

 

It almost ends there. A couple of months later, one of the boys who got suspended, called to me as I walking to class. I stopped, he came up and apologised! I was shocked, but I accepted his apology, and I was so pleased! I think that he probably grew up to be a nice guy!

 

So that was high school. I know that good stuff happened, but in my head it is overshadowed by a lot of horrible stuff as well. The funny thing is, I never even got fat until I was told day in, day out that I was fat and ugly. Even though I new how terrible it was to be fat, throughout it all, I never really dieted. I hated feeling hungry, so starvation diets were never my thing.