Food Fight Part 8: Fat ≠ Unhappy

Myth #15: If you are fat, you must be ashamed of your body, and hide it

Myth #16: If you are fat, you cannot enjoy your body

Lisa Laney was one of the most beautiful souls I ever had the privilege of knowing. She radiated positivity and light. She was a constant beaming smile. As a high school food tech teacher, she inspired a great many students in her classes, and with her brilliant cooking, but more with her zest for life, positivity, guidance, and counsel. 

In 2012, when I was living in Palmerston North, beavering my way through Teacher’s College, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 33. 

They thought they caught it early, took all the correct steps. She was recommended a double mastectomy, to remove the cancerous growths.

As a young, single woman it was a difficult choice, but one she thought would give her the best chance to live.

The Saturday night before the surgery, she hosted a Bye bye Boobies party. 

The Saturday afternoon before the party, she came over to my house and we did a Calendar Girls style photoshoot so we could, at very least, remember the boobies that were in all of their voluptuous glory, and celebrate her womanhood, before they were unceremoniously lopped off. 

We set about creating the most hilarious photo settings: her spinning my red polka dot beach umbrella in front of her, her wearing an apron (and nothing else) and posing at the barbecue, my grandmother’s ornate coffee jugs in front of her… jugs, some strategically placed daffodils, bottles of coke… it was sexy, scandalous, and side-splittingly funny.

I even coaxed her into wearing some of my lingerie and climbing into a pile of tyres in the garage. This one did not at all pan out like the car mag middle page I envisioned. Instead, Lisa got stuck in the tyres, and then the tyre pile of Lisa tipped over, and she rolled about the garage for a bit while I collected myself – I was laughing too hard to be of much use.

I did eventually free her. 

We romped about the house, avoiding my male flatmates, Lisa in various states of undress in various locations – pink cowboy hat and pink feather boa adorned her as she rode the bannister – having the laugh of our lives.

Bums, boobs, and various other bits, all pale, pasty, hairy and lumpy, snuck out in nearly every shot, and in between. Yet somehow her joie de vivre covered everything with a layer of captivating beauty.

Her ease in her own skin, size be damned, should be the envy of every person that possesses a body.

There is a particular quite indelible beauty that comes with accepting yourself, thoroughly embracing the skin you’re in. It becomes harder for others to criticise, judge, shun or insult you when you have so thoroughly made peace with yourself. 

This peace, this acceptance, is the birthplace of body confidence. When you are comfortable with the skin you are in, and you’ve stopped fault finding and making war with yourself, you not only give yourself the gift of peace, but allow others around you the same beautiful balm to all the comparison, concern, conceit, and care that comes with having a body in our modern age: Pure, utter gratitude for the wonder that is your body.

When you’ve accepted yourself, and love your body for all it is, and all it is not, you make it so much easier for those around you to do the same.

I have laughed a lot, but I have never laughed so much as I did that day taking photos with Lisa. Some from embarrassment, some from awkwardness, mostly just from Lisa’s contagious joy, and inventing hilarious pictures to capture.

I am sorry to say that the hard drive that I had those photos on got corrupted and I lost them all, so I cannot share them with you. I can only admire them in my internal photo slideshow, but suffice to say her winning smile and ample curves made for some brilliant pics!

Lisa actually self-published a book called ‘How to Look Flabulous’, which you can read here. I highly recommend it for anyone who has a body that is a little bit bigger than they’d like it to be. It is a hilarious look at how to live large, as it were, and have a roar of a time in the process. 

Unfortunately, only a year later, Lisa was to succumb to the cancer that she thought she’d kicked. It was fiendish and fast. She was taken from this life far, far too soon. She dealt with it all with an amazing charisma and positivity, as she met everything in her life.

I am so very glad we got to spend that afternoon together, celebrating boobies, celebrating womanhood, celebrating life.

Lisa taught me so much about how to live your best life, how to unapologetically be joyful, to get out of your comfort zone to serve others, and how to see the very best in yourself, and in everyone.

You can read more about Lisa’s battle with cancer here. She has had the new Hospitality Suite at Longburn Adventist College named in her honour, her proud Dad says on Twitter.

I count myself blessed to have known such a truly beautiful human.

I will leave you with these words from Donna Ashworth:

There are many choices available to us women in this life – but when it comes to your body, there are only two:

Accept it

Or don’t.

You see, if you choose to accept your body, you will soon start to love it, admire it, look after it. These things all follow in the wake of your acceptance.

When you realise that this vessel for your soul, for your spirit, is an instrument of such high design and fine tuning that it boggles the mind to even think about, you will enter into a phase which I like to call ‘peace, at last’.

You will care nothing of spare fat, grey hairs, loose skin.

You will realise, eventually, that the body’s purpose is not to look good, to attract friends, partners, successes – that it is, in fact, your spirit which does all of those things.

If you would only allow it to shine through and work its magic.

Your body, my friends, has but one job, to see you safely through this adventure of life, to allow your spirit to reach its potential.

That is it.

If you are on the path of not accepting your body – you are in for a very long battle – against an enemy you have no power to defeat. Nature, time, biology, fate…

You don’t have the weapons to fight those powers.

Wave the white flag.
Give in.

Accept.

It is then that your life will truly begin.