Skinny Island

Kelly

Today marks the very first entry into what I am calling my protest journal. First off, this place is ridiculous. Everyone is nice at a glance, but I can feel their eyes on me literally everywhere I go. I hope they like what they see at least because my goal is to take up as much space as I possibly can in spite of the UNAPOLOGETIC PROPAGANDA the resort has posted everywhere. Every wall has some kind of weight loss ad posted on it. Every bedroom is filled with calorie planners and meal plan brochures.

I get that the island is supposed to be a haven for thin people, but the fact of the matter is that they were never really persecuted to begin with. That's why we're here, really. Why should we allow a place to exist that preaches the idea that fat people are a bunch of hideous monsters out to destroy you and everything you stand for just because our bodies are larger and more wobbly than theirs? And even then, why is fat so horribly unattractive? Thinness as a beauty standard is a pretty modern invention as it is. I don't want to just shove my belly in their faces and say "Time to pork up, skinny!" It's to show them all that neither I nor my friends have any animosity towards them. We don't hate anyone for their size just like we don't want to be hated or outright demonized for ours.

It's a little nauseating to think about how much this place exists just to tell people that the last thing they should ever be in life is me. I knew that this would be the case though. All my life I had dealt with increasing scrutiny as I got bigger and bigger while society screamed at me that I was gross and ugly. Becoming body positive wasn’t just a way of loving myself or a convenient trend, it was a way of being able to not hate myself in a world where everyone told me that I was wrong just for existing. I have to admit, it did feel good to get to walk around the beach resort in my 6x bikini while all the scrawny girls and fit guys got to sit and watch me do everything I did. Better yet, the resort doesn’t have any rules on restriction despite preaching it everywhere you look. So even though they might not appreciate waiting hand and foot on a 380 pound woman, the staff and their legion of hot boys and scrawny models still have to serve me whatever I want for as long as I want.

Sigh. But that’s the other thing. I don’t know if it’s the food here, if I wasn’t as big as I thought before arriving, or if I’ve just somehow lost weight over a couple days but I’m apparently smaller. Not that I’m especially upset, but it’s a little weird to suddenly get on my resort-mandated, state-of-the-art bedroom scale and find myself weighing 20 pounds less than when I left.

Oh well. I guess I’m not going to complain about getting thinner on accident.

(1)

Xiang

Dear diary….

You know, it’s super funny because when I was little I actually kept a diary and really did start every entry by saying “dear diary.” When I got older it felt weird because I pretty much figured I’d never read it again, so the only thing having a diary did was create the possibility that someone might one day read my secret thoughts. I suppose even then I knew that because I always made sure to be a little cryptic about what I was writing just in case someone broke into it and read my personal thoughts and secrets.

This should be different anyways. I will be using this to document my new project: Fat Beauty on Skinny Island.

The difference between me and the islanders /resort goers is that I’m not actually trying to lose weight, but I remember what it was like to be thin. I remember dieting and going to cheer practice and being able to jump around and have all the energy in the world. Getting fat didn’t change who I was it just changed what I wore and how I decorated my body. When you’ve got 10x the tits and ass you used to have, your clothes kinda fit differently. While everyone else was freaking out about their weight, I just let myself enjoy who I was and how I grew. I mean it’s not like there was any shortage of guys into fat chicks, and even the ones who claimed they weren’t all ended up marrying plus size women in the end anyways. The rare few who married thin ended up with a fat wife after a few years anyways. They were all just afraid of the stigma of being or being around a fat person.

That’s why my Body Positivity clubs were so successful in school. All I had to do was teach people that we can all live our best lives while modeling happiness in my own skin. That’s why I’ll be dressing in pink and pretty the whole trip, showing off my size, my smile, and my femininity while I start a whole new BoPo club here on the island. I’m pretty sure that I’ll get some kind of pushback from the staff or like the more militant skinnies, but that’s just going to make the acceptance that I am demonstrating look all the better when they attack me for just not hating myself. Plus, I already got permission from resort HQ to do it, which was a surprise. I’m really excited to get started changing the tone of this place.

….But I gotta say there is one thing about this place that sucks. It’s not being stared at or the heat or even the attempts at weight loss brainwashing everywhere you look. It’s the food. We have full access to as much food as we want but omfg there is literally nothing to eat here that isn’t the tiniest portion of non-fat 0-carb, gluten free, vegan-everything. I can already tell that I’m wasting away just by how my clothes fit and it’s only been a few days. The other girls have mentioned it too, so I’m starting to think that it’s not just me, but then again, we’re two ssbbw and a 300 pound Asian amongst a (literal) sea of anorexics, so we’re bound to have a little dysmorphia here and there.

Not that it matters too much. I am fully confident that once we get a little group going where we can all enjoy our bodies and feel loved, beautiful, and valid, they'll all see that being bigger doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, I hope they start seeing it as at least a little sexy. I don't know about the other girls, but I think the dudes here are kinda smoking hot and I'm not looking to spend the entire trip not finding someone to bring back to my room from time to time.

(2)

Valentina

This place is evil. Ever since we touched down I felt like something was wrong and it took me a while to figure out what it was. First off, everyone is nice. Too nice. We’re a bunch of fat fucks coming to shove our fat, dimpled asses in everyone’s face just to piss them off and ruin their skinny-only environment, but so far no one has done anything but smile and applaud us. I’ve gotten offer after offer to come join this yoga studio or this gym. Girls keep asking if I wanna try different diets with them. All the buff gym guys want to work out with me. It doesn’t matter how much of a bitch I am to them, they never get upset. They just go “Oh, okay,” and then fuck off into the aether.

That’s when I noticed something else. This is supposed to be a weight loss resort. It’s advertised as a skinny-only community, but there’s fucking Kate Moss quotes in the cafeteria and diet magazines and weight loss infomercials in every room, on every screen, in EVERY area of the island. Even the fucking local fruit trees have nutrition information signs next to them. So why is everyone thin already?

Why are me and my friends the ONLY people who are even remotely fat on this island? EVERYONE is skinny. From the oldest old lady to the youngest little girl. I would know.

The second morning I was here I decided that I didn’t want to go down to the beach, so I grabbed a chair down by the pool. Not only were the chairs there way too small for me, as expected, but I ended sitting next to this little old lady. She was sweet, but wouldn’t stop talking about how she wished there was a place like this when she was young and how it’s so great that girls like me are taking an interest in our health. It was wild. I was stuck in grandma jail for at least an hour while this 85 year old woman in a size 2 bikini went on and on about how she wants to get down below 100 pounds before she goes back to the mainland. I couldn’t take it.

(3)

Eventually, I just pretended my phone was ringing and said I had to go meet my friends on the beach after talking into it with no one on the line just to get away. So I go down to the beach to just kinda chill and all the sudden there’s these two girls giggling at me from over by a little wooded cove. It annoyed me so I was like “hey, what the fuck are you laughing at?” and they were just like “Omg did you get here a few days ago?”

Both of these girls had to be like 12 years old but were already just skin and bones. Someone, in fact SEVERAL people actually brought their preteen daughters to a fucking weight loss paradise full of anorexia promoting imagery and messaging. I didn’t know what to do. They just sat there asking what diets I’m on and if I look at thinspo while my jaw is on the fucking floor. What really fucked me up was when the shorter one told me that I was looking thinner already and that I should be proud of myself. All smiles, both of them.

(4)

I left. I just came back here to my room and locked myself in. But the fucked up thing is that when I got on the scale, it read 362.51 pounds. Last I checked I was almost 20 pounds heavier than that. Ignoring the fact that every single room is equipped with the nicest, most precise, fanciest fucking scale I’ve ever seen, there’s no way I should have lost this much weight already. There has to be something in the water or the food or something. I don’t know if they’re dosing us with Ozempic in our sleep or what, but I’ve noticed that Kelly and Xiang both look thinner too. Kelly less so, but that’s probably because she’s so big that it takes more to notice. Or she’s just not lost as much, if any. But still…

It doesn’t matter if this is the first time I’ve actually been able to lose any weight since I was just a kid, something is wrong here, and I’m going to find out what it is no matter what. Whatever they’re doing can’t be legal, and when I find out what and how they’re doing it, I’m going to blow the shit out of that whistle when I get home.

Skinny Island is going down in flames.

(5)