I'm So Grateful I Was A Fat Teenager
It taught me a lesson that takes some people decades to learn.
Viraj Updahyay | Unsplash The first time a boy asked me on a date, I laughed out loud.
“Good one,” I said, determined to save face, beat him to the punchline, and make it seem like I was in on the joke.
“Why is that a good one? I just told you I like you.”
“You can’t like me. I’m not skinny.”
As if that were the sole measure of my worth as a human being — but as a 12-year-old girl, I genuinely believed it was.
I grew up in Y2K, a decade that flaunted girl power and hypersexuality, though primarily for men’s benefit and only for women who looked a certain way. Body positivity didn’t exist.
Every model and actress was “heroin chic.” Tabloids called Jessica Simpson “Jumbo Jessica” for showing up to her concert looking like a normal adult woman in high-rise jeans. And I internalized all of it.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been hyperaware of my body.
The Christmas before I turned seven, my grandparents bought my cousin and me My Size Barbies. Her plastic figure stood 36 inches tall, and she wore a pink tutu dress large enough to share with a human child … in theory.
In actuality, the ballerina outfit hung off my cousin’s slender frame, while my body ballooned out of it. I’d scrutinize everything about it on the VHS tape my father recorded of us dancing: the strained satin, the unbuttoned back, the lace sleeves that cut into my arms.
It was concrete proof that My Size was not The Right Size, and if I wanted to be lovable, I’d better do something about it. Nothing worked.
My diet wasn’t any different from the kids around me, though two metabolism-stifling secrets kept me clinging to every ounce: An autoimmune thyroid disorder I wouldn’t fix for decades, and the childhood abuse I kept hidden from everyone around me.
After puberty, I gained even more, and by the end of high school, I was almost 80 pounds overweight. (When you’re 4-foot-11 and haven’t grown vertically since the fourth grade, trust me, it’s noticeable.) Back then, I hated everything about my appearance.
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I wore guys’ clothing to cover my arms and stomach. Seared my curly hair into submission with a scorching-hot flat iron. Darkened my brown eyes with jet-black liner. Slipped out of sight every time someone pulled out a camera and untagged myself from every Facebook photo that caught me off guard.
Somewhere along the line, my shame evolved into a dissociative disorder, which stopped me from feeling anything, emotionally or physically. But this psychological distance was, in some ways, a blessing. It helped me realize:
We are not the vessels that carry our minds, hearts, and souls
Because my outer self would not cooperate, I threw all of my effort into my inner self. Because most boys didn’t give me a second glance in school, I put my head down and focused on my grades.
Because my appearance didn’t fit the mold, I learned to compensate with humor and humility. Because I felt safer at a laptop keyboard than at parties, I developed the writing skills that would eventually become the foundation of my career and my purpose.
Because I couldn’t rely on my looks to get me where I needed to go, I read books about psychology, success, spirituality, relationships, emotional intelligence, and healing. Because I knew how shallow people could be, I learned how to decipher who loved me because of who I was, and who loved me because of how I could serve them.
Because I felt like a stranger inside my skin, I realized I had no right to judge other human beings by the vessels they were unwillingly born into.
Spoiler: Losing the weight did not change who I am
I’m 33 years old now. While I’ll always have curves, I’m no longer considered fat by our culture’s standards. After studying nutrition, learning to enjoy movement, implementing a GLP-1, and undergoing years of trauma therapy, I’m finally at a weight that doctors deem “healthy” for my height.
People are nicer to me. Men hit on me in public. My body fits into the denim miniskirts, spaghetti-strap tank tops, low-rise jeans, and satin slip dresses I never would’ve dreamed of wearing the first time they were in style.
And yet I don’t feel any more worthy of love because of it. I feel worthy of love because I worked hard to heal the parts of me no one could see, and I would not have done that had I always been skinny.
I can finally see all the things my body has done for me.
It kept me safe and sane throughout the worst parts of my life. It gave me extra padding — both literally and figuratively — which served as a buffer against pain, abuse, and heartache.
It continued to move, breathe, think, pump, filter, circulate, and regenerate every single minute of every single day, despite the hatred I had hurled at it for years on end.
In 2025, curves are no longer considered public enemy number one, but our culture has demonized other things: thin lips, large noses, flat asses, natural teeth, saggy skin, wrinkled foreheads.
Aging is particularly taboo, even though it’s an inevitability for everyone who lives long enough and an unrealized privilege for anyone who doesn’t. I watch as the women around me scramble to reverse it — injecting themselves with filler and botox because they’ve always been young and pretty, and they don’t know who they’d be without those things.
No shade to those women. I, too, once measured my worth using the reflection in the mirror. How could we not? From childhood on, we’re taught to believe that beauty is our biggest commodity.
But I’m not afraid of getting old.
I’m not afraid of becoming undesirable and invisible to the people and systems who value me for the wrong reasons. I’ve already been there, and to be honest, I’m looking forward to experiencing it again.
It’ll be a relief. A rebirth. Another catalyst for transformation.
I’ve already been a stranger in my skin, and I know that when the outside doesn’t match the inside, you have no choice but to nurture the parts of yourself that actually matter.
Maria Cassano is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared on NBC, Bustle, CNN, The Daily Beast, Food & Wine, and Allure, among others. She's in the process of publishing her memoir, which you can learn more about here.
