Mermaids Vs. whales

 I’m visiting my hometown this January, and it’ll be summer there. Summer in Mar del Plata, Argentina, only means one thing: the beach. It’s a time to get a tan and swim by the ocean (While a friend guards your property, of course. It’s Argentina). Sounds fantastic, right?

I wasn’t a big fan of the beach when I lived there, I admit. But now I live in a land of constant darkness and rain, a country where summer lasts a week, and the weather it’s never hot. No matter how many Brittons complain (and faint) those few days of 20-22*C, that’s not real heat. So, two weeks of temperatures close to 30*C sound like heaven. Except for one thing: society dictates I should have “a bikini body”.

What does “a bikini body” mean exactly? It means that only thin women, with beautiful bodies, should parade themselves wearing a bikini. The rest of us, if we dare go to the beach at all, should cover ourselves up.

An infamous gym advertisement shamed women into exercising by asking: this summer do you want to be a mermaid or a whale? Not a very cheerful thought for an overweight lady who’s planning to enjoy the beach.

When summer is near, women are expected to starve themselves or spend many hours at the gym in preparation. (Only the women. Men can prance around at the beach practically naked even if their bodies would make the late Hugo Chavez look like a male underwear model).   

This may be hard to believe now, but I spent most of my life without even thinking about weight. I was skinny without even trying. I always ate what I wanted, whenever I wanted. And when I really liked the food, I ate a lots of it: three servings of grandma’s pasta in one sitting, or enough French fries for three adults, or four empanadas, or a massive bag of popcorn and candies… I could eat a lot and still beg for more. Somehow, my body just dealt with it. I was the –Where does she put it?- girl.

Things changed somewhere in my early 20’s. Without even noticing, I put on a bit more than 30 pounds (15 kilos), without changing my habits at all.  30 pounds may not seem like a lot, but when you are 4’11 in height, even a few extra pounds make you look like a balloon. Also, sad truth, when it comes to being overweight… it’s all about distribution. A curvy body can be very sexy. Except I carry all my extra weight in my stomach, face and breast, while I have no fat where I need it: hips and butt. Definitely NOT what people call a “bikini body”.

A blood test confirmed that I have an underactive thyroid. I was properly medicated and went to the nutritionist, who put me on a very strict diet I followed rigorously. The diet was simply eating small portions of healthy food, with low-calorie soup as entrance and a no-fat no-calorie dessert. Also, healthy snacks at mid-morning and afternoon. I was never hungry, but I couldn’t eat ANYTHING I actually wanted to eat. Except once a week I was allowed to choose ONE thing I liked… I usually chose either one serving of pasta, pizza, a pastry, or a burger. (Once the extra weight is gone, the dieter graduates to three things a week).  

I also began exercising every day, using a stationary bike. I walked everywhere as well. As a result, I lost my extra weight, and a bit more, in three months. Every single one of my mom’s clients and friends asked for the number of my nutritionist. This was about the time I went to live to Colorado for five months.

During my time in the US I put on 10 pounds. Back home, I began feeling severely depressed. I felt like a felon who had been allowed out of prison for a little bit and now was back. I stopped following the nutritionist’s instructions and I stopped exercising. I put on 30 more pounds (in addition to the 10 I carried from the US).

After that, my weight fluctuated regularly from 130 pounds to 140. I never had my pre-USA body again.   

My mom and my aunt Betty fat-shamed me constantly. My mom never hid the fact that she finds my abdominal fat repulsive. One time, after I told her I wanted pork and fries for New Years’ eve dinner, she made pig noises and implied that I was a pig. Another day, we were out for lunch and she threatened to get up and leave me alone at the restaurant if I ordered a burger with fries. That controlling and manipulating attitude regarding my eating habits was constant. My aunt Betty also had, and has, a lot to say about what I eat.

Sadly, they are not the only fat-shamers.

I once had this chat while using a website to look for a date:

Me- I study social communications and work at my mom’s nail salon.

Random Guy- I think we already talked once. You are the fat girl.

Me- mmm… I think you are confusing me with somebody else.

Random Guy- No, I’m not. You sent me your pic, I know you’re fat.

Me- If you like girls who look like skeletons, that’s your problem.

Random Guy- I don’t like girls who look like skeletons, I like normal girls.

Me- I’m normal!

Random Guy- You are not.  

That’s when it really hit me: my weight was an obstacle. It didn’t just made it more difficult to get a date, it was keeping me unemployed. I noticed that most women who had the jobs I was qualified for had an ideal weight. I remembered when a classmate in highschool, a guy, told me that I’d have difficulties finding a job because no employer wants an unattractive girl, since that would put off the clients. Of course, he was a bully who was trying to hurt me. But, over the years, my battle with unemployment and having to settle for bad jobs didn’t prove him wrong.

By the way, I’m not one of those women who blames solely a medical condition for her weight. Yes, I have an underactive thyroid, and having Turner Syndrome makes it more difficult for the body to process carbs. Any average woman who ate exactly what I eat wouldn’t put on weight. However, it is also true that I enjoy eating. I eat pizza twice a week and order burger and fries when I go out. I regularly eat Mac and cheese. I try to make up for it by living mainly on weight watchers’ ready meals, yogurt, cereal bars or rice with tuna. This seems to be keeping me for putting on even more weight, but I won’t get my 2009 body unless I make even more sacrifices. I should eliminate the food I like from my diet, or limit it to once a week.

I also should exercise every day. But that seems like a boring chore. I already have a job I hate, I don’t wish to spend one hour of my life on a stationary bike, when I’d much rather write, or read.    

The cost of being ‘a Mermaid’ is so much more than I’m willing to pay.

I can hear people asking…. What about health? Oh, right… my health. Well, I have no cholesterol, no diabetes, no high blood-pressure and my heart is in perfect shape (I have an MRI as proof), so are my kidneys. I have my liver enzymes slightly elevated, but that seems to be because of my Turner Syndrome and the doctors are very unconcerned about it. I can fit perfectly in those tiny airplane seats. If any of that ever changes, we can talk about health.  

At this point, losing my extra weight would be just to look prettier, to satisfy society.

It's like a phrase I once heard: Either my life is beautiful, or I am. 

My aunt Sarita

Once a year I visited my aunt Sarita, my grandma and my cousins. They lived in the big city of Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, while I have always been a girl from a small town by the beach. Destiny placed my mom and I four hundred kilometers away from the rest of the family.  It was during Christmas times that we visited, a time when Buenos Aires turns into an oven with humans as roasted chickens. However, I enjoyed my time there.

As I grew older, I became a disappointment for the family. I took my sweet damn time to finish the university and spent my 20's with long periods of unemployment.    

She gave me the title of “Slothful”. 

I got my college degree late in life, I admit. Nobody is more ashamed of that than me. But at least I made an effort to finish my studies. My aunt Sarita has never set a foot in an university, but she thinks she’s a judge. She gives an opinion about everything and everybody. A filterless mouth that shoots poisoned darts. Such attitude is a family trait.  

I'm fluent in two languages, by the way. Did my aunt Sarita speak two languages when she was my age? She didn’t.

Those who listen to my aunt Sarita speak think wrongly that I never worked in my thirty years of life. Never mind that I sold cosmetics for over a decade. I worked in a clothes store for a summer. I walked almost the entire town polling people for a month. An entire summer I walked the beautiful beaches of Mar del Plata selling perfumes that were more fake than than a three pesos bill. I worked in the United States for four months. There I was an employee of a nursery and a hotel maid. I had to sweet floors and clean disgusting toilets for eight hours a day. Isn’t that work?    

My resume is short. Don’t I know that? But I’m no stranger to work. I’m not unfamiliar with the torments caused by a supervisor that makes Meryll Streep’s character in “The Devil Wears Prada” look like an angel.

Another falsity forged by my aunt Sarita is the belief that I didn't work because it was not my wish.

I did everything someone looking for a job should do. I read the newspaper every day and I applied for those jobs for which I was qualified. I walked around the downtown leaving resumes in different stores (An exercise that turned out to be a complete futility). I went to job interviews. Time after time I suffered the deep deception of not receiving the fervently awaited call.    

My aunt Sarita worked her entire life without a break. She was never hit by the drama of unemployment. She can’t conceive that someone simply can’t find a suitable job. And she envies me. She envíed the fact that, even though I didn't work, my life was better than hers. It generates spite inside her the fact that I didn't need to work. I looked for work because I wanted to. I had everything I needed. Big house. Expensive clothes. And I even traveled every now and then.

My aunt Sarita, who worked her ass off her whole life, owns a tiny apartment. Was it the result of her hard work? No. She got it thanks to an inheritance, and a loan. Besides, in her hour of need, she got help from her sisters. However, she thought she had the right to criticize everything I got without effort.      

In the family table, she compared me with her daughter, My cousin Perfecta. 

Perfecta got a college degree while working hard, for my aunt Sarita never gave her anything, not even a subway pass. Aunt Sarita didn’t have the means to help her. It hurt her watching my mother take the burden off my back. It reminded her that she couldn’t do anything for Perfecta. And that must have hurt.

Behind a bully there is often insecurity, low self-esteem and pain. 

WELCOME TO WHEREVER YOU ARE

Mar del Plata, Argentina. On the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, four hours away by road from the country’s capital. Home of around 700.000 people. From December to March it becomes Argentina’s beach. The beautiful city gets invaded by tourists from all over the country. It helps most tourism-based businesses through the cold dead winter. Every single person that has ever run for mayor promised a city with jobs all year round, though I never saw it happen.

I loved the city and the beach when I was growing up. By the time I was near 30 I was sick of it. I hated the lack of job prospects. While I was still studying social communications at the university, I applied for the few internships available with no results. Nothing was happening. When I finally got an interview with one of the two newspapers in the city, they told me they had no budget for new hires. Indeed, they had to shut down two months after that. So, I applied for jobs I didn’t even want, just to get a decent steady income. It was fruitless. Meanwhile, I was perceived as a lazy parasite, even by my own family.

Suddenly, the beach became a boring place where people got skin cancer. The ocean was cold, and full of trash. The nosy people had small town mentality. The screaming matches with my mother became unbearable.

In sum, the city became a fishbowl, and I was a fish that was getting too big for it, itching to scape.  

I wanted to be a reporter. It was evident that it would never happen unless I moved to Buenos Aires. I begged and begged for the money I needed to move to the big city, but my family wouldn’t budge. They expected me to have a job offer before moving there. So, even though I knew it’d be futile, I searched for jobs in Buenos Aires online. All the jobs in journalism required at least two years of experience. I lowered my expectations and applied for jobs as store employee. Nobody answered. Only one person called to offer me an interview, and backed down when he found out I didn’t live in Buenos Aires yet.

Yet, my family insisted that I had to find a job before moving. I said that once I moved I would probably be able to support myself in a couple of months. They didn’t trust my ability of archiving that goal, underestimating me… as always. It was a catch-22 situation.

One fine day, I finally found a solution.

Surfing the internet, I found out about an agency that finds jobs for South Americans in the UK. All I needed was an EU passport (many Argentineans can get Italian or Spanish citizenship if they have Italian or Spanish grandparents), and a large sum of money for the fee and plane ticket. The program offered the chance to stay indefinitely protected by the EU (Good times!). I would never have to return to Argentina, ever, if I didn’t feel like it. I knew I’d get the money, since my family had promised to help me leave my city if I had a job offer somewhere else. My heart was pounding with excitement. There was a moment of panic when I read that the program was for people under 30. At 31, I was already too old. But I wrote an e-mail asking if they would make an exception. They readily allowed me into the program in spite of my age (anything for money, right?). For the first time, I felt God was smiling at me.

I spoke to the representative of the agency in Mar del Plata. Because nobody lives 31 years looking different than everyone else without learning anything, I begged her to tell my future employer that I’m abnormally short and overweight. I was 1,52 m (4,11 feet) and about 65 Kg (130 pounds). I was afraid someone would hire me, made me go all the way to England, and regret hiring me once they saw me. She laughed, insisting that she didn’t have to tell them my height and weight because I look normal. I had a very bad feeling about it. She was tall, thin and beautiful. What could she know about bias against the non-attractive? But I ignored my instincts and made the suitcases.

I finally arrived to the UK on November 8^th, with two big suitcases weighing 25 kilos each (50 pounds). The agency sent me to work for a hotel a few miles away from Scarborough. Nothing but fields and sheep for miles. No public transport to the city, unless I walked 40 minutes to the nearest bus stop, or paid 13 pounds for a cab.

They employed me as a waitress in the hotel’s restaurant/bar, paying me less than minimum wage. The worst part is that I’d have to share a tiny bedroom with another employee. I had been informed of all that, and I had accepted it out of desperation. At least I was out of my fishbowl.

I tried to make the best of it. But three weeks later, the ordeal of my lifetime truly began.

I had to work at a wedding that took place at the hotel. Part of the job was to dismantle the restaurant to turn it into the ceremony room, and then assemble it back again. This involved carrying 20 tables, with their chairs, taking them upstairs for storage, and then back to the restaurant. No lift available. I somewhat managed to do it with the help of my co-workers. But it became clear that I wasn’t strong enough. Other employees could carry more tables and chairs at the time, and faster.

The following day I was summoned to the manager’s office. He pointed out the fact that two of my co-workers would go back to their home country (They were from Bulgaria) soon, and I would have to dismantle the restaurant all by myself… in 20 minutes, and then reassemble it just as rapidly. I explained I’m too small, not that physically strong, so I couldn’t do that. I could do it either with help, or taking more time. He didn’t accept that. The Bulgarians would leave, but somebody else was coming. Perhaps that person could do the tasks I couldn’t? Not like I would be the only employee in the hotel. He didn’t accept that either. He also said that during wedding season I would be often expected to work 72 hours straight, getting only a couple of hours of sleep. He didn’t think I had the stamina for that. His only solution was to make me a maid, otherwise he’d ask the agency to send me to a different hotel.

I wrote the agency explaining the situation. I pointed out that they should have asked me before finding me a job that involved moving furniture by myself, quickly, without a lift. Also, had they told the employer my size, he might have figured out I wasn’t capable of such task. So, I asked them to find me an employer with more reasonable demands.

That’s what they did, for a small fee.       

So, I packed all my belongings, again. I would work and live in The Lamb Inn, located somewhere between Cheltenham and Bourton-on-the-Water, in a purely residential area. To get to the nearest supermarket without a car, I had to take a bus that passed once per hour, or walk 40 minutes. To make matters worse, my roommate was an uptight girl who complained about smells and wouldn’t allow food in our room. (If I wanted to put up with things like that, I would have stayed with my mom). Most co-workers were unhelpful and rude. The hotel in Scarborough, at least, had a friendly, kind-of diverse, environment. But the staff in The Lamb Inn was 100% white, 98% British. In retrospective, I should have known instantly it would not work out.

When I had been leaving there for a week and working for two days, I was fired.

During my third day of work, I was ordered to iron the sheets of beds. (My job title was “hotel assistant, which meant I was maid/waitress/bartender). Needleless to say, my experience ironing anything was very limited, close to null. I was left unsupervised without much explanation. While I was folding the sheets, I accidently knocked over the hot iron, which fell on the carpet, burning it. There was a smaller carpet in the room, so I covered the burn, so the room looked good for the guests. When a co-worker finally showed up to see how I was doing, I explained what happened.

Soon, the owner himself, called Paul, summoned to have a talk. He told me it would cost so much money to replace the carpet so he had to let me go. He also said the agency didn’t inform me that I was bad of hearing (as I specifically asked them to), and they told him my English was stellar, which he felt was a lie. He said I was simply not good enough to work for him. I was in shock, but not too shocked to notice he was all full of sh… The truth is: he decided to fire me as soon as he looked at me. All he needed was an excuse.  

The more I thought about it, the more I realized he fired me for not being good-looking enough. Suddenly I noticed, he had male employees working in the kitchen, but all the employees who had contact with customers happened to be young women, and they were all “an 8” (as some would say), or above. (Except his chubby middle-aged wife) Even the one girl who was slightly overweight, had her weight distributed in the right way to make her body attractive, was tall, pretty face and pretty eyes. On the other hand, I’m abnormally short, 30 pounds above my ideal weight, and very unappealing to look in general. I also noticed that the women’s job was to work at the hotel’s bar, frequented by the local drunks (A.K.A. the owner’s best friends), mostly male. And men expect “eye candy” in bars.

Why else would he fire me on my third day of work over one accident?  That’s not normal. Everybody is allowed little mistakes when you are just starting a new job. In fact, the work & travel program I signed up for was supposed to be a training program, which was why I got paid less than minimum wage. But Paul seemed too eager to get rid of me.

I should also mention that, on my second day of work, a couple order a bottle of wine and I took the wine to the table without giving them glasses, because I assumed there were already glasses at the table. Paul went ballistic, and said I had no common sense. Why would he make such a big deal out of it if he wasn’t biased against me? Meanwhile, one of his waitresses, who had been working there for three weeks, didn’t even know how to hold a trail or serve. She held the trail like a child taking breakfast to his mother on mother’s day. Once she had to serve several cups of tea to a table. Instead of holding the trail with one hand and serving with the other, she made me hold the trail while she served. In three weeks, nobody bothered to teach her how to hold a trail, and Paul didn’t get angry that she didn’t know. He didn’t care. But she was a 10, and I’m a 5, or a 6, at best. By the way, I know how to hold the trail and serve at the same time.  

I explained to the agency that I was a victim of discrimination, a victim of lookism. I told the whole story and how better looking employees were allowed mistakes while I wasn’t. I also pointed out that they didn’t disclose my hearing issues, or my abnormal height, as I specifically asked them to. I told them Paul It brought up my bad hearing when he sacked me, which is downright illegal, and how he lied about my English not being good enough. Nothing mattered to the agency. They refused to send me to a different hotel. I was on my own. Without he job at The Lamb in, I was about to become homeless as well as unemployed.   

Just when I thought my life was over, God sent assistance… quite literally. My mom contacted the bishop of my Methodist church in Argentina, who called his British friends from a Methodist church in Cumbria. Those friends contacted the Methodist church nearest to me, which happened to be in Straud. One amazing pastor took me in. I was a guest in his house for a few days, until he found the perfect place for me in Birmingham. It was a room in an international student home, but they allowed me to rent even though I was no student. The Cumbria church also paid the first month of rent.

Very soon, I found a job. It turned out that I didn’t like it, but I found a more suitable one pretty quick, working for Burger King. Good enough to support myself. A few months later, I had to leave that job, and I was on the verge of homelessness… again. (That’s a story for another article). As before, it was the church to the rescue. It took only a few weeks for me to find another job and a flat I love.

So, with the help of some of Jesus’s best soldiers, I found my place. Now I live in a proper city, the second most important city in the UK, and I have NO roommate!! I’m not crazy about my job at a supermarket, but I make a salary that’s enough for all the bills. It was also enough to spend a week in Tenerife, six days in Paris and three in Amsterdam. Besides, I found a great elocution teacher to work on my strong accent. In sum, my life is much better than it would have ever been in some isolated hotel, surrounded by nothing.   

There’s a lesson I learned from all this. A lesson I try to remember during every crisis:     

Sometimes when you lose, you are actually winning.