Hale Goetz writes for Jezebel:
Entitled “Empowered Feminist,” the post on Imgur (a photo-sharing site that serves as unofficial Reddit companion) went up 10 months ago and now has over 750,000 views, a number that goes up by the thousands each day. The picture on the left—me, as a skinny girl—is taken from my high school yearbook. It doesn’t exist on social media, or it didn’t until someone I went to school with took a grainy, washed-out cell phone pic to post on Imgur. It’s labeled “2009,” but it was actually taken in 2007. I had just turned 16 and was entering my junior year.
On the right, my hair is shorter, I now have glasses, and I am fat. Get the joke? I was skinny, and now I’m not. The likely cause of my weight gain, says the internet, is Tumblr and my (not actually) recent flirtation with social justice.
After a few apologies from my friend and some quiet thank yous from me, I hung up. My family rushed to my defense when I told them what had happened; they were livid, with raised voices and tears in their eyes. For a moment I was furious, too. I clicked the link my friend had texted me to Reddit. I looked at the image. I read the comments. And then, I laughed.
“Well, they’re not wrong?” I said, shrugging on that last word, my inflection suggesting a question. They’re not wrong that I was skinny, and now I’m not anymore. So what?
I think I look pretty good in that “after” picture, the one on the right where I am very fat. It’s from when my now-husband and I announced our engagement in June 2014, and it was taken on a MacBook near the best source of light in our shitty Chicago apartment. I think of my lipstick, dark red and painstakingly painted, as a moment of perfection frozen in time. If my husband’s face hadn’t been cropped out of the meme, you would see his bushy, red beard and thoughtfully closed eyes. We had spent all day calling our families, telling them the news, and then we took a round of pictures to send to our friends. This is the same picture that’s sitting on my husband’s dresser, printed and framed by my mother-in-law. This is us, happy and cute and in love.
Of course, 750,000 of my closest friends do not agree. Cross-posted between MRA sites and Reddit boards aimed at humor and fat-shaming, my 16-year-old self smiles on the left while my 23-year-old self smiles on the right. The comments debate my fuckability, posing inquiries like: How many dicks would I have gotten had I stayed thin? Didn’t I know the dangers of being obese and the medical conditions that could arise? And, was that really even the same person?
