Working It Out is a health/fitness column chronicling MadameNoire Manging Editor Brande Victorian’s journey to drop the pounds and get healthy. Follow more of her story on BrandeVictorian.com.
I had a lot of motivations for starting my weight loss journey last October. Primarily, I wanted to feel better about myself, which I knew meant looking better on the outside and basically working on my self-esteem from the outside in. But there were also some side perks, if you will, that I expected to come along with the deal, like more attention from the opposite sex. No, I don’t mean being street harassed by thirsty fools shouting, “Girl, you look good!” while I’m sweating on my way to work. I mean attraction on the part of a male that leads to intentional pursuit, meaningful interactions, substantial conversation…let me stop playing; I’m talking about a boyfriend, damn it.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest let me back up a bit. I touched on my state of semi-chronic singleness a few months ago when I confessed Being Mary Jane was starting to look like a foreshadowing of Being Brande Victorian. If you missed that piece, you can find it here. As personal and introspective as that article was, one thing I left out as I talked about the process of questioning “What’s wrong with me?” that men don’t want to date me was the fact that I already felt I knew what the problem was: my weight.
I literally remember a time about four years ago or so that I had to stop reading blogs because every site’s comment sections were filled with remarks about how all Black women are fat, and nobody wants a fat Black woman. That just wasn’t what the doctor ordered for my self-esteem. I also vividly remember this piece by Britni Danielle asking Black women to examine whether their weight was holding them back in the love department. All things considered, I’d determined that mine was. So, naturally, I also decided that if I removed what was holding me back love would then be as abundant as my midsection used to be. Well, that’s not exactly what’s happened. Okay, that’s actually not what’s happened at all.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know I’m still very much in the plus-size category. I will not stop this process until another 55 pounds are gone, and I’m the appropriate weight for my height. But y’all gone act like you don’t see I dropped 78 pounds?! Not y’all, the readers, I’m talking about y’all men who see me on the street and pay me as little attention as you did almost 80 pounds ago. While I certainly didn’t expect men to come out of the woodwork offering insurance policies and diamond rings because I started looking a little better, I just find it funny (and by funny I mean frustrating) that when I was doing this whole weight loss rodeo years back, men were checking for me more then, and I was actually still heavier than I am now. Go figure.
The other day my mind drifted back to a piece written by Erica Nicole Kendall of a Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss in which she said, “Losing weight increases the dating pool exponentially – lots of men simply don’t see you if you’re at a certain weight; and once you start being ‘seen,’ you start getting attention.” Believe me when I tell you I was sitting at home in the bed alone like:
Clearly, I ain’t got the answers.
That’s why when people ask me how my weight loss and dating are going and assume my life is now a sea of “Good morning” texts and late-night rendezvous, I be like, “Ooh, girl it looks like it’s gonna rain. You got an umbrella? Let’s check the forecast. I don’t want your hair to get wet. Here, Ima pull up my Weather app on my phone. Let’s look together.”
Nosy ass question I don’t feel like giving the same “Ain’t nobody checking for me” answer to diverted.
But in all seriousness, though men weren’t my motivation for losing weight and they won’t be going forward, they were something I thought would come along naturally at some point, kind of like shopping in straight size department stores and not having to ask flight attendants for seat belt extenders. Two out of three isn’t so bad though, right?
More than anything, I think I’m perplexed by the fact that the so-called laws of physical attraction that I felt held me back before aren’t working in my favor now. I guess this would be the time to question whether my weight was ever a factor at all.
