I remember the day I realized I didn’t want my body to be the topic of conversation anymore. I was running a giveaway on my old blog, PastaQueen, for an IGIGI gift card. As part of the giveaway I’d gotten some dresses and was required to post photos of myself wearing them. I live alone, so I used a timer on my digital camera which resulted in some mediocre photos, but fulfilled the requirements. I posted them and asked people to enter the contest by stating what IGIGI dress they’d wear to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s upcoming wedding.
I did NOT ask for any comments on my appearance, either positive or negative, but I got them anyway. One person said, “I think they all look terrible on you.” I figured this was the internet and I was bound to get one jerk and dismissed it. Then someone else chimed in, “You are much too young and attractive to be wearing those dresses! The hemlines are much too long and the styles are frumpy!” which was a back-handed compliment at best. It didn’t seem right that I was being attacked for giving away something for free, so I wrote another post asking people to shut up about my looks already. There was an item in my FAQ letting people know I walk around this ugly on purpose, so my anger seemed justified, though I probably shouldn’t have dropped the eff bomb. Unfortunately, someone either didn’t read that post or didn’t care, so within 24 hours I got another comment that said, “Those dresses are terrible and they do not flatter your cute face and personality.” I don’t lose my shit that often on my blog, but I definitely lost my shit in that moment. I shut the contest down early and that was that.
Reading these comments six years later they don’t seem as harsh as I remembered, and I don’t think I’d react as explosively as I did then, partly because I’ve been working on expressing anger when I have it instead of bottling it up until it explodes all over whoever happens to be in my path. However, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that six weeks later I stopped posting on PastaQueen and started a new blog on a different domain to make it clear my body was no longer the topic of conversation.
Some of you might say, “Hey, you wrote a weight-loss memoir and blogged about your weight for several years and made money doing it. You brought this upon yourself!” That’s a valid point. I have two responses to that. First, the internet was a different place in 2005. When I started blogging regularly about my weight, social media wasn’t really a thing. Facebook was a little site just for college kids and Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat did not exist. Between the time I started blogging and the time my first book came out, those “Like This” and “Tweet This” buttons that are now ubiquitous on any article published on the internet were not on any of my posts. The way you found sites was through blogrolls. Every blogger kept a list of blogs they liked in their sidebar, so once you found one blog you liked you were able to find similar ones. This made weight-loss blogging seem like a small, safe community, sort of like a local bar that only the residents of a certain neighborhood knew about.
These days the internet seems like a much more misogynistic, judgmental place, like a flood of tourists have swarmed the local bar and you never know what asshole is going to show up, start a fight and then breeze off, never to be seen again. If I share a post on Twitter or Facebook, it’s not just going to be viewed by people in this community, but by their friends and family who might share it somewhere else. I don’t know where that post is going to travel or how many people will see it. If I had been born 10 years later, I’m not sure I would have chosen to blog about my weight loss given the current atmosphere of the internet. Blogging felt safer back then.
Second, people have the right to change. It helped me that blogging made me do some deep thinking about my body image problems. However, after I’d written about that for several years, I felt like I’d said what I had to say and was ready to move on. I didn’t expect all my readers to move on with me, and I don’t have any hard feelings towards anyone who decided they weren’t interested in following me anymore when that happened. I’m grateful that my book Half-Assed is still out there meeting new people for the first time almost 10 years after its publication and that it might help those people in some way. That said, there is a copyright date clearly printed in the front, so I don’t think it’s absurd to expect people to understand that I’m not the exact same person today that I was in 2008. That includes the fact that I don’t have interest in making my body the topic of public conversation anymore. Having a career that revolves around what your body looks like sounds like hell to me.
However, I can understand why people would want to know if I’ve maintained my weight loss, which might be why the phrase “jennette fulda weight gain” sometimes appears in my site analytics. I did post several Reason for Regain posts back in 2014, but otherwise I’ve dealt with my weight offline. I’ve thought about blogging about it over the past few years, but I wasn’t sure how to do that without making my body the topic of conversation again. Basically, the answer is I can’t. So I didn’t.
The only reason I’m writing about any of this now is that I’m appearing at the Unititled Town Book Festival in Green Bay, Wisconsin this Sunday and I don’t want anyone to show up there and think I’m hiding anything just because I haven’t blogged about it. Basically, I’ve regained most of the weight I lost, though not all of it. I updated the About page on my site to reflect that a while back, and the mini-bio in the footer of every page of this site has said “(former?) weight-loss inspiration” for years. I also updated the headshot on the About page a few months ago because I didn’t think I could get away with using a seven-year-old image anymore whether I’d gained weight or not. So, it’s been out there. Anything you put on the internet is public. I didn’t advertise it and point blinking red arrows at it, but I’ve never denied it either.
Obviously, I would rather have maintained my weight loss, but I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for nine years now which complicated things. I definitely turn to food to feel better, and if my weight is any indication, I’ve been feeling REALLY, REALLY, bad. I don’t know if I would have maintained my weight loss if I weren’t in chronic pain. It’s pretty common for people to regain weight. I don’t think I would have regained it as rapidly or as soon as I did without the constant pain acting as a trigger. Even with the pain though, there have been times I could have made a bigger effort to cook or go for a walk than I did.
Some of you might be thinking, “She preferred to blog about things when they were going her way and not when they weren’t.” You got me there. It was definitely more fun blogging about my successful attempt to lose weight than it was to talk about my unsuccessful attempt to keep it off. That said, I wrote an entire book about my chronic headache problem, which is the single worst thing to ever happen to me, so I haven’t shied away from writing about crappy times in my life.
I don’t like that I’ve gained weight, but I don’t feel like I owe the internet an apology about it. I’m writing this entry mostly so there isn’t a socially awkward situation where a reader comes to the panel with one expectation and comes face-to-face with another. I’m not ashamed of what I look like these days and I don’t think it makes me a hypocrite. If I’d written a book called, How to Lose 200 Pounds and Keep it Off Forever, then I’d be in trouble. But I wrote a memoir and the nice thing about a memoir is that it’s always a true representation of how you viewed your life at the time you wrote it. The book is a great record of what it was like to grow up fat, lose 200 pounds, and what I thought about it at the time. It always will be that regardless of whether I lose 200 pounds again or gain another 200 pounds in the future. I deliberately didn’t say what diet plan I used in the book because it’s not meant to be a how-to book. It’s a how-it-was book. Also, I made it pretty clear in the final chapter that I recognized I might get fat again, so it’s not like I thought this was impossible. If any of that makes you decide you don’t want to buy or read the book, or perhaps changes the way you interpret the book, I understand and I have no hard feelings toward anyone about it. You never promised me anything and I never promised you anything either.
When my friend Wendy invited me to the book festival, I did briefly consider saying no since I knew I’d have to make my body a topic of conversation again, but I don’t think I should live the rest of my life in hiding. (It makes a great Happy Rhodes song though.) And Wendy has worked really hard on the festival, so if you’re in the area you should come help make it a success. Most of the events are free. My panel is From blog to book: How bloggers turned their blog posts into publishing contracts which takes place on Sunday, April 30th at 12pm CT at the Brown County Library. Jen Larsen will be there too, and Wendy McClure is Skyping in. Kate Harding will be at the festival too, but her reading is on Saturday at 3:30pm CT. I’ll sign a book if you bring it with you, and I’ll have a few copies of Chocolate & Vicodin available to purchase, though I don’t have any copies of Half-Assed left. (I’d have to buy a case of 40 to get more, and I can’t afford to front the hundreds of dollars it would cost.)
Oh, Margaret Atwood will be there too. OMG, yes, I’m appearing at the same book festival as Margaret Atwood! Free tickets are long gone for that one, though I think there are some pricey VIP tickets left. By the way, if you’re like me and were wondering why anyone would name their festival “Untitled,” it turns out Green Bay is known as “TitleTown,” so it’s a play on words. It has something to do with the Green Bay Packers, and that’s all I know.
I was going to turn off comments on this post until I realized I can’t turn off comments on Facebook when I post the link there, and I can’t avoid any Twitter replies I get. See, the internet is a different place than it was 10 years ago! I’ll leave comments on, but please remember I prefer that my body not be a topic of conversation anymore, so please respect that. If you don’t, you shall be deleted, because the internet and I may be different, but some things stay the same.
Photo by Anthony Easton / CC 2.0
I’ve been reading your blog(s) for years and don’t care about your weight or appearance. I truly enjoy your writing and appreciate your observations on life. Keep it up in whatever form feels most comfortable for you.
I think you are wonderful.
I did just do a search of your old blog the other week. I couldn’t find where I put my copy of your excellent-but-not-set-in-stone-for-pity’s-sake-get-real-people memoir, and I wanted to refresh my memory of what you felt about Pilates. The words were good then, they’re good now. They’re not You.
You are not your blog. You are not your memoir.
But it is kinda cool to be able to say you were at a festival with Margaret Atwood 🙂
I will always admire your candor and tenacity, Jennette. Congrats on the book festival!
Amen to every single word of this. So beautifully said!
Hope you have a fab time at the book festival, it sounds incredible. That Wendy is magic!
I just love your writer’s “voice” keep it up and thank you for update. I hope you continue to write and speak. Gaining weight back is a b**th (I know) and your honesty about it is refreshing.
I agree, you are wonderful and also brave to write this. And I have no idea what chronic pain is like, but I do know about regaining weight and it’s very hard to avoid.
Margaret Atwood! I saw her speak once and she was amazing.
You are about to appear at a conference where Margaret Atwood is, and yet society makes you feel like you somehow need to apologize for your looks. You deserve to be seen.
I read your weight loss book, and I have been a fan since the Pasta Queen days. I think your writing stands for itself, it’s authentic, smart and funny!
All I want to say from one old timer weight loss blogger to another is… I totally get it.
I wish I was going to this festival just to catch up, buy you a drink and toast the good old (bloggin) days — oh and maybe get our hair done together again. 🙂
Welcome to Northeastern Wisconsin! If you like beer, check out the Stillmank taproom. I hope you have a great time (let me know if you need other free time tips). The Titletown nickname comes from Green Bay’s propensity to win sports titles (esp NFL championships) although it is the smallest NFL market and finances the team via shareholder rather than a single owner method.
I wish I’d known you were going to be there, but I’ll be in NYC this weekend. I followed Pasta Queen and I remember very well the incident / post to which you are referring and I remember being upset on your behalf. I thought you dealt with it really well, by the way, and in my own blogging life as a consequence I’ve felt free to tell people what they may or may not comment on in a particular post and/or sometimes to close comments on a post where I know my feelings are vulnerable.
@Servetus – Stillmank is like walking distance from my house! Agreed, it’s a good time and kind of a hidden gem.
@Servetus – It’s funny that both you and someone else in this thread remember the IGIGI dress incident. I thought I was the only one who’d remember that.
@Jennette Fulda – at the time, I really identified with your basic plea. I haven’t ever experienced a period of significant weight loss, but one thing that struck me about your blog at the time was that while the experience of weight loss was full of complexity of all kinds for you, in the end, weight loss reduces humans to merely to one aspect of our bodies — our appearance. And of course a weight loss blog attracts all kinds of readers who are preoccupied with precisely that issue. It’s paradoxical b/c appearance is one reason some people undertake weight loss, but I sympathized strongly with the desire not to initiate comments on one’s appearance. How one feels about one’s body doesn’t necessarily change due to weight loss.
Thinking about it now, after years of blogging and experiencing both bullying and trolling, and realizing that my own blog is not as open as it was seven years ago, it makes me realize how much these days the second one reveals (or even says something that hints at) any of one’s own vulnerabilities, how prepared one has to be to defend precisely the sore spot. It’s extremely frustrating and counterproductive to the actual purpose of blogging for me. Initially I felt like it was a place where I could be honest without penalty; nowadays I feel like the penalties for honesty in the blogosphere are almost worse insofar as there are all kinds of people out there who see commenting as blood sport without consequences to them (and of course, the bullies and the trolls).
1: I think it is awesome that you are appearing at the same event as Margaret Atwood!
2: I hate when people comment on bodies, I don’t care what they are saying. They should be told to f-off.
3: I have often thought of you, and wondered if you were doing okay. Mostly, if your headache ever went away. Chronic pain is a beast.
4: I have wondered about your pets. I am one of those crazy pet people, who worry about pets random internet people. I also mourned for your loss a couple years ago.
5: I hope you have a great time at Untitled.
Love a random woman on the internet, who thinks you are a great.
Thank you for this honest post. I became a fan of yours from your weight loss memoir (even though I don’t have weight struggles) and have followed you since. I also don’t have headache issues but still also enjoyed your headache book. I like your writing for your honesty and how likeable you are as a person. I just like you. You seem like a smart, open-minded, friendly, honest person – someone I would like to be and someone I would like to be friends with. So thank you for your honesty in ALL areas of your life, and thank you for posting your writing and being a great person. I appreciate you! I hope you have fun at the book festival (and don’t get any or at least many inquiries about your appearance or weight).
I’m sorry that this is a place where you feel like you have to post about stuff like that. You’re a cool chick no matter where you are on your life’s journey, and I also remember those days. I quit my weight loss blog a long time ago because it didn’t seem like it helped me very much.
I’m pretty sure I found you through a blogroll sometime before 2008 while I was doing grad work at Purdue! I still love keeping up with you even though I never leave comments! Sorry about all the jerks out there 🙁
You are amazing just the way you are!
Live your life in the grand way you have been. I’ve read for years and I love your witty wicked voice. People don’t like honest women–they need to deal. Write on!
Your blog has given me endless hours of entertainment and joy. I feel like I know you. Your body is YOURS. I’m glad it contains the wonderfulness that is you. I have struggled with my weight my entire life. My body is my business. Your body is your business. Rock on wit your bad self!❤️
I’ve read both your books and your blog over the years and I think you are amazing. You are an excellent writer and have maintained a sense of humour despite some awful and painful set backs in life. Congrats on appearing at the same festival as Margaret Atwood! Keep on being you and ignore the trolls.
Thank you for sharing slices of your life publicly. I love your sense of humor and your stories, and always look forward to your posts. Your body is yours, and you do not have to justify its appearance to anyone. I’m just grateful you have continued to blog. Of all the bloggers I started following a decade ago, you’re the only one still active. Write about whatever you want to write about; I’ll be happy to read it.
So well said, Jennette, per usual. You’ve captured the “good old days” of blogging well, too. Honestly, I will always miss those days. More and more it seems like we’re blogging in a vacuum with so little feedback. It’s lonely and doesn’t really inspire one to blog more often.
I agree with all the comments here thus far. It seems that when we go ahead and state how we feel in black and white (usually these are the posts that compel readers to comment!), almost everyone agrees with us and supports us! Happy to see that here for you as well, but I am not at all surprised. You get what you give and you have always given patently honest and thoughtful writing to your readers. Thank you for that! Keep being you. There are lots of other blogs/bloggers that have “perfect” presentations–whether they’re the perfect weight, perfect food bloggers, perfect moms, etc. They are not real. We are real people reading and we greatly appreciate the real you. Last, congrats on the book festival appearance! I’m sure that the folks attending your session will find the information you share very helpful.
Shirley
Thanks, everyone, for the kind, supportive comments. And if you were unsupportive, thanks for not commenting 🙂 And thank you to everyone who has been reading my blog for years, no matter what it happened to be called at that moment.
Jennette, I am sorry to learn you are still dealing with chronic pain. As someone who lost “All the weight” and gained it back, I can sympathize with the body image comments. More than anything, I loathe our aesthetic-focussed society and how we measure/evaluate people based on appearance. We are not who we appear to be. And I am sorry for the comments and the shame and all that goes with human cruelty. I have learned people do not temper their words as often as they should, but it reveals their character more than ours.
That said, your memior is an important piece of your life and story. We are all in process. You are a good writer and I appreciate your words. You are a hero of mine and will always be–regardless of if you were hit by a bus and disfigured, or paralyzed, or heavier or thinner than you were/are. Your memior helped me process my own food issues and helped me on my journey toward self-awareness. If I could travel this weekend, I would drive to Green Bay just to shake your hand and to tell you “thank you”. Let this post stand as a means to express my gratitude.
Please keep writing about your journey. Your story is important. I want to read what you have to say. As you well know, there are a tremendous amount of bad writers out there and we must dwarf them by writing well. Maybe this will choke them out like the weeds they are.
I remember that whole fiasco on your blog, probably for a different reason than a lot of people. I posted ” I would wear the blue dress!”. Facebook had just changed its settings so everything that one posted could be seen by friends. Two posts after mine, a friend of mine (someone I considered one of my best friends at the time) posted “Julie, you’d look like Papa Smurf in that!” I remember thinking “Ouch, that was totally uncalled for” and wondered how you were able to weather all the bad comments you were receiving. I’ve since decided that commenting on my or other people’s bodies in any form is totally unacceptable. Thanks for all your posts over the years!
@Julie – Oh my gosh, I’m sorry you were a victim of the IGIGI dress incident as well! 🙂
I’m so very sorry that you are still dealing with chronic pain. I deal with it as well. I wish I was near this book festival. You are one of my favorite authors.
I didn’t realize how long I’d been following your blog until now. Goodness, over a decade. I’m glad you’re still around, because I never really cared about the weight loss part as much as I connected with your voice and humor. I hope the festival is awesome. 🙂
This was so well said, Jennette. I’m one of those who started with you at PQ and continued when you moved here because of my enjoyment of your writing style and your observations. You’re a whole generation younger than me but I’ve always felt a tremendous kinship with you and your sense of humor. And I went through a similar Up/Down weight experience when I was your age, so my empathy is even stronger now.
And my only “body comment” based on your new “about” photo would be that I miss your curly hair, which I always thought was lovely. (Well, that plus I’m so awfully sorry about your broken arm.)
@MaggieToo – Normally my hair is still curly. I’d gotten it cut the day before I got the photo done and I was afraid to wash it in case it dried weird 🙂
I hear you loud and clear. I deal with chronic pain from rheumatoid arthritis (and can’t seem to find a medication that works.) Throughout my life my weight has gone up and down and up and down and….you get the picture.
When I was in my smaller, sizes, I gave the skinny me power. She was Super-Susan. The world was her oyster. But when I regained the weight, Super Susan disappeared. I became hermit Susan. Like now. I fear meeting people who I haven’t seen in awhile, thinking to myself that they will gasp when they see me. Playing in my brain all of the things that they MUST be thinking about me, even if they aren’t saying it out loud.
I’m learning (slowly and sometimes painfully) to recapture Super Susan no matter what size or shape I am. I work with a great therapist (and am not afraid to say that I’m in therapy) who specializes in body issues. She had me read Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating. (Personally, I also recommend Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life and Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living).
I’m learning to not get mad at myself for what I eat and to eat it if I want it. (I just had a Hardee’s biscuit this morning and I’m NOT SORRY). I realize that weight does not equal health (Bob the trainer from The Biggest Loser just had a massive heart attack!) nor does weight equal happiness.
Man, is it a hard row to hoe. I can’t change society – all’s I can do is change my own mindset. You sure sound like you’re there. Like you accept yourself and you don’t care what other think. Which is how you SHOULD live – how we ALL should live.
Thanks for your years of making me smile – and for your two awesome books that I read and re-read. (I even had a co-worker with a daughter who ended up with a chronic headache so I sent him a copy of your book for his daughter!)
You keep being you, Jeanette, because you’re awesome!
I would read anything you write. No matter the topic. And you are a website genius. 🙂
Please add me to the list of people who enjoy your writing, plain and simple! You bring a smart, humorous, and compassionate voice to everyday life no matter the topic.
2006 Me was glad to find your writings on weight loss and 2017 Me is glad to still be tuning in to hear your thoughts on everything from the ACA to addressing anger to dealing with other people’s expectations. Thank you for this thoughtful post that resonated with me a lot.
Jennette — I met you years ago at a BlogHer conference, and I was intimidated by you because you had a popular blog and you’d already published your first book. I was relieved to meet and spend time with a normal, well-spoken, and smart woman. I’ve continued to read your blog over the years, and I always enjoy your bluntness and humor. It’s super cool that you get to be involved with this conference and I hope you have an amazing time!
I’ve had this open on a browser tab for a few days now because I screamed a hundred “YASSSS”es during my first read and wanted to go back through when I had a moment. You don’t owe anyone an explanation but I’m so thankful you said these things. I have a lot of the same thoughts swirling in my head and you nailed it. Thank you for your words, whether about your weight or about shitty neighbors.
Your writing reminds me of Erma Bombeck, whose books I love. “Half-Assed” was successful because you wrote honestly about your feelings, not because of your weight loss. I love that you write honestly about the struggles in your life, whatever they might be. You’re a writer, not just a weight-loss (or chronic headache) writer. So just keep writing. You have many more books inside of you, waiting to be written.
Thanks again for all the support and kind comments, guys. I really do appreciate it.
Okay just have to echo what’s already been said. I really like your writer’s voice and I think you’re the coolest. I wish I could write with your candor and humor and I also appreciate that you organize your blog posts thoughtfully so that the reader is walking through a little journey inside your mind. That’s why I read your blog…
I never read your original blog but I did read your book a few years ago. It was amazing and really helped me when I was losing weight as well. I even wrote you an e-mail to thank you for your book, which is something I have never ever done. (Also, you responded, which made my day!)
But I read this blog now because I think you’re an interesting, witty, and intelligent person. I get very excited when I see you post something new. Whether or not you’ve regained your weight or not is really not my business.
I remember that dress incident too. It was messy. It shouldn’t surprise any one that a person who grew up with weight issues would be, perhaps, a little more sensitive about feeling critiqued.
Perhaps because you were critiquing the dresses and the way they fit on you, it opened up the flood gates where other people felt they could chime in. And you were always very open about not being fashion savvy (I remember when you bought the same cotton t-shirt from Target in 8 different colours) so I think some people thought they were being helpful. Some things do not translate well into text!
As someone who read your blog from the very beginning, it was obvious to your most hardcore readers that weightloss blogging had become tedious to you. It came as no surprise to me when you switched it up. And here we are years later and I’m still reading!
I read your book during my own weight loss journey. I recognized myself in some of your book, and also recognized that neither one of us was going to keep the weight off at that time. If that seems rude, it’s not meant to be. I just saw things “we” were doing/saying that seemed like giant, flashing neon sings of not-there-yet.
Perhaps I was just projecting. Who knows – that’s just what I recall thinking at the time.
I’ve dealt with similar questions and “concerns” from people about my weight gain – and since I interact with people daily, I wasn’t able to hide anything.
But nothing – absolutely nothing – makes me more rage-y than the comments I am getting now that I am able to lose weight. It’s un-effing-believable. People pay my company a fortune for our work and they want to kibbitz about what I weigh/eat. As if my body is not off-limits as a topic of conversation. It’s all I can do to bite my tongue and not “inspect” them in return (with a few probing questions).
It took me a long time to be able to take care of myself properly and it takes vigilance to keep the comments from derailing me. Take huge, noise-canceling headphones to the conference and *relentlessly* steer the conversation back to your work if it veers off into weight/body.
Good luck and congratulations on your success.
@Jes – Yes, commenting on someone’s body on a post about how they don’t want people commenting on their body is rude.