On Strength

 I volunteered at an event some time ago. It was a tactic I learned from an overachiever friend of mine, so that I could get into an event for free, and also avoid the vast bulk of socialization, just volunteer to work on staff to get all of the advantages, and very few of the detriments. Staff sometimes even get perks general attendees don't, so that was a plus.

The event in question doesn't particularly matter, it was an amateur event by a local group, in a place I'd been to many times before, with people I largely knew, so really, none of that factored in, none of it really mattered. The event was interesting enough for me, especially as a staff member, and as someone who picked up some interesting things, but the duration of the event isn't what stands out most strongly.

What stands out most strongly are the beginning and end of the event. Because I was helping a friend, one who was something of an overachiever, we ended up having to bring forty metal folding chairs up from his basement, pack them in his car, then move them from his car to the event location. And there were only the two of us to move them. If you've ever moved folding chairs, you know how frustrating it is, the chairs are unexpectedly heavy, if they're different styles, you can't grasp them easily, so on and so forth.

Now, I'm fat. Not Bridget Jones pleasingly plump, but the kind of fat that gets pointed and laughed at on every sitcom, in every movie, the kind that gets shown in photos and video with face and head cut out of the shot to warn people of the dangers of obesity and to remind everyone how much they need to get on a diet, exercise, and lose weight. I'm black, on top of it, so I don't even get to be comedically funny, not that I haven't tried my hand at it, like everyone. I think I'm hilarious, and I still crack myself up, but I'm definitely not getting sitcom laughs.

But me, I get dragooned into every Medea-type character ever played by a black man in a fat suit: Mother, nurturer, sassy and bold. I would never say there's anything wrong with being that type of person, it's just not me. I have never wanted children or anyone else who might be dependent on me, because I can barely take care of myself, an introverted anime geek with anxiety and bad money management skills, I'd rather sit in a blanket-filled closet and read manga online than host any kind of gathering ever.

I have always known, always been shown, that as a fat person perceived as a woman, the best I can hope for is being disregarded, because otherwise, I would be subject to mockery, not just what I heard from my classmates, but the kinds of things said to and about fat women on television. But the plus side to being ignored was no danger of stalkers, rapists, and murderers coming after me. I was safe from all of that.

With that kind of background, I had to find my own way to be ok with myself, because I'm not exercising, not giving up the type or quantity of food I eat to lose weight. I've never had that kind of determination, and I don't want to learn. When I was a teen, an older woman, who was also black and fat, encouraged me by talking about how she couldn't be kidnapped, how her weight, and mine, was a strength we could use to protect us from the dangers people perceived as women face: assault, kidnapping, murder, rape.

I took that to heart. Fast forward to years later, when I was moving heavy chairs up and down stairs. As most fat people know, stairs are not friends on the best of days, and there were a lot that I had to be up and down all day, going down to retrieve chairs and carrying them back up. It was exhausting, but I was the only one to help my friend, who I've failed to mention, up to this point, was a man.

What really upset me was the fact that he could somehow carry two chairs under each arm. I tried. Even when the chairs were the same style, the weight and awkwardness of the chairs frustrated me, causing me to nearly drop multiple chairs, and making it difficult to get up the stairs or move anywhere. I just couldn't get my fingers under that many chairs at once. I tried moving three chairs at a time, and that was still frustrating and exhausting for me.

My friend, however, rather easily moved four chairs each trip. I know it was exhausting for him, because he was as fat as I, and stairs are draining when you have to travel them more than twice, but exhausting or not, he was able to do it, and I was not.

At the time, I was too busy being tired and rearranging chairs for easy access to the back door and the car to have an existential crisis, and I would have been fine, had another man had not helped my friend move the chairs back to the car after the event my friend and I were volunteering for.

See, my friend worked with moving office equipment, so in many ways, I mentally brushed off his ability to carry so many chairs as practice I didn't have, strength in action, familiarity with traversing stairs, really an enormous, ridiculous number of excuses for why him being stronger than me was a fluke.

Then another man helped my friend move chairs. He was tall and skinny, the kind of guy I would certainly never consider a threat to my safety, because I could very literally sit on him. I could break him and call it a day, or so I thought, until I realized he had four chairs, two in each hand.

I experienced a moment of very visceral terror. Not of this stranger at a public place full of people, but in general, my sense of safety was shattered, because I suddenly realized that this man, who I never would have judged as a threat, was physically stronger than I am. He could hurt me. I know this isn't a novel thought for most people raised as women, that a man could hurt them, overpower them, but it was one I'd never had before, safe behind my shield of invisible fatness and aggressively defensive blackness.

For a moment, I was stunned, unable to breathe, because how many men had I judged as not being a threat, who could have hid such deceptive strength? I am strong enough to move couches and dressers and armoires, heavy furniture that I've seen many men tap out of moving with help, I can move alone. And this man was stronger than me.

I was only stunned for a moment, because chairs needed to be moved, and I had to help carry and organize them, moving two chairs at a time, one in each hand, all that I could handle in my post-event exhaustion, or at all, and with the help of the other man, added to the fact that there were no stairs to accommodate for, the task was done in a quarter of the time, and I was happy to bury my thoughts in television and dinner, to sleep and let the thoughts go.

But it haunted me, and it still does. I've always “known” that I was the strongest person in any room, that I could protect myself. It was my consolation prize for not being beautiful, for not being able to find clothes that fit me, except in specialty stores for exorbitant prices, for only seeing people like me being portrayed by men in fat suits as a joke.

If I'm not physically strong, then what else do I have? Logically, I know that I have a lot going for me, but emotionally, I'm afraid that I will incorrectly guess a man's strength, and that mistake will end painfully for me. I'm afraid that without physical strength, I don't have anything else to make me worthwhile.

This article can also be found on Feminspire.