Dear Reader,
I am tired.
More tired than I’ve been in a while.
This afternoon, as I was cleaning my mother’s kitchen, I had a thought. And one that was highly unusual for me– What if I just give up? My friends and family would miss me, sure, but they’d heal. They’d get over it and move on. Wouldn’t that be easy? To just let go and move on to another plane? To release myself from worry and pain and fear? To stop the overwhelming anxiety coming at me from multiple directions. But it was a fleeting thought. And I’m going to tell you about how I got there, some lessons I’ve learned, and the next steps. Because sharing our struggles is important in the era of curated shows of our “best lives.”
Yesterday, I stitched a video on TikTok. It was a clip of Mary Poppins actor Emily Blunt making a comment about the enormous body size of a waitress who served her at a Chili’s in Thibodeaux, Louisiana. I didn’t know it at the time, because I’ve never heard of the movie Looper, but the clip is more than a decade old. It resurfaced on social media, and I happened to see it on my For You Page. She’s on a British chat show telling a relatively cute story about a Southern woman recognizing her and the funny exchange they had. The first things she says about her is that she is absolutely enormous and that she must get freebie meals from Chilis. Now, there is nothing wrong with being enormous. I, myself, am an enormous human. It wasn’t the adjective itself, it was how it was used. The tone was casually and unnecessarily cruel. Her facial expressions, her clear intention to belittle. and the audience reaction turned a word into something infinitely more sinister. Since I posted, and the video went live, it has been viewed over 240k times, has more than 4700 likes, and more than 800 comments. The video was picked up by both Glamour magazine and YahooNews! and I’ve been contacted by several news outlets, talk shows, and a newspaper asking for further comment.
But I’m not going to comment any further. Not on TikTok. And certainly not in the media who want to make me the main attraction in a circus.
Because this wasn’t about attention. Or going viral. Or 15 minutes of fame. This was about kindness. And the growing need for us to be more conscious of our intentions when we use words.
While many of the comments I received on the video are variations of “Atta Girl” and genuine responses from people who feel compelled to share an equally vile story of a thing that happened to them, many of them are unconscionably cruel responses about everything from my own body size to my choice of wardrobe to the pace at which I express myself. I have been called a pig. I have been told that I am a “skinny shamer.” I have been called stupid because, clearly, I think I know Emily Blunt and cannot tell the difference between the actor and her roles. I have been called dumb for not realizing that the British people, on whole, are blunt and unevolved world citizens who don’t understand that fat shaming is no longer acceptable in civilized society. And this morning? I received my first death threat, followed by a message telling me I “should really just go kill myself” rather than continue my “pitiful existence.”
None of these people actually know me.
Not a single one.
They don’t know that I, too, am a classically trained actor. And that I know the difference between an actor and their roles.
They don’t know that from June of 1999 until August of 2000, I lived in Great Britain, getting that conservatory theatre degree. And I learned that the British people are a lovely, welcoming, hilarious, and wonderful bunch. Did I experience fat bias there? Sure. But NOTHING like what I experience here in the United States.
And if they actually listened to what I had to say, they would understand that this is about body neutrality and not a hot take on fatphobia, all by itself. There is ZERO reason to comment to on ANYONE’S body, whether it’s fat or thin, tall or short, healthy or health challenged, black or white or whatever.
Not one of them knew that last night, I came out of Olive Garden after having a wonderful, laughter-filled birthday dinner with my beautiful nieces. And when I got into my car and turned on my phone, I had a panic attack from the hundreds of notifications, missed calls, and multiple voicemail messages that were waiting for me. Friends from high school and college were DMing me saying “Oh my God, is this you?? You’re on my FYP!” I had to pull over to the side of the road and call my best friend, shaking and in tears, because it was such an awful, overwhelming, experience. I wound up uninstalling TikTok from my phone after it drained my battery, and more importantly, my spirit. I have a small following on the app of less than 4000 people. If you scroll through my videos, you get a lot of content about my adorable cats, forays into which West Wing character I’m most like, silly lip synching, and much older content about my incredibly difficult, almost 3-year struggle to have Medicaid pay for gastric bypass surgery, which I’m still waiting on. I’m frankly more interested in watching videos of Travis Kelce worship at the altar of Taylor Swift and countdowns ‘til Christmas than people watching my own stuff. My videos are for me.
And the reason I made this particular video was because I’m sick and fucking tired of the human race doing PRECISELY what they did in the aftermath of a three-minute video filmed in the front seat of my Subaru. Making snap judgements based on faulty information and deeply ingrained bias. It’s exhausting to be part of a demographic of people who are consistently marginalized, stigmatized, and bullied on the basis of what, exactly? Taking up more space? Not being easy on the eyes? Fatphobia, fat shaming, fat discrimination, and fat hatred are very real things that I have experienced for as long as I can recall. In classrooms. On stages. In restaurants. And don’t even get me started on airplanes. I’ve stayed silent in awful situations for fear that the spotlight would be turned on me. I’ve spent 40 years squeezing my beautifully imperfect, ENORMOUS body into teensy spaces, willing myself into invisiblity because others don’t approve of my body. It’s CRIMINAL. And what does that say about the evolution of our race? If there is life outside of our existence on Earth, what the hell would they think of us? We are absolutely BRUTAL in our interactions with other people. And for what? A laugh? To make us feel stronger? Better? More vindicated? It’s a sad state of affairs and the truth is– we know better. We’re taught better. And every time we make a choice to neglect the chance to DO better, it makes us just a little less great.
So where do I go from here? Glad you asked. Cause I asked myself the same question and, ready or not, here it comes.
I’m not going anywhere. A few weeks ago, I made the conscious decision to choose happiness. To be conscious of kindness. To make the most of every crisp October morning and dinner date with my nieces. I choose to sing at the top of my lungs in a movie theater with my bestie and to take pictures with my friends, even when I wince at the double chin in the reflection that I’ve been taught to loathe for not being pretty. I choose to say no without shame when I don’t have the energy or inclination to do something. I choose not to be ashamed of the health setbacks I’ve experienced. I’m no less valuable because my hips and back are shot and my belly is big. I choose to smile at people and give as many non-body centric compliments as I possibly can. And I choose to fucking say something when I witness cruelty, bullying, and barbarity because I’ve been the target of it myself and it has made me afraid to speak up in the past. No more.
When I told Emily Blunt to do better, it wasn’t really about just her. It was about all of us.
We need to do better.
Life of Riley 