Meet William Matross

Size kept most people away.  While many are concerned about homophobia, I’ve never felt its sting. Instead, I’ve felt the heart crushing effects of obesophobia. We grow up in a culture where fast food and pre-prepared meals are cheaper than the healthy alternative, yet we shame people whose BMI puts them in the obese category. I was the typical fat kid, picked last for nearly any activity, invited to social events only as another body or out of some press from parents to make sure I was included. Once there, I was left to talk with the adults while the kids played. When I was with my “friends” I made fun of myself, cutting myself down to lessen the hurt when other people did it, which only invited them to try harder to hurt me.  

Unlike most of my peers, I was extremely young when puberty set in. I had a nice “treasure trail” by the time I was ten. My precocious body provided kids a new way to tease and new terms like man-boy were thrown at me with so much vile hatred that I feared going to places like the public pool. When I did go, I would wear my trunks there and kept a shirt on. I’d even went so far as to shave everything wispy strand off in order to fit what I felt was normal. I tried to keep everything smooth from my face to my toes, but eventually it was too difficult to upkeep and I eventually gave up.

My desperate attempts to fit in didn’t stop at keeping my body hair at bay. Not understanding anything about how metabolism works, I started eating less. Not in a healthy sense of cutting back my portions, but going whole days without food. I was happy if I could get a few days on a meal or two. I was certain that by denying myself food, the thing that I blamed for my size, I could get thin. And if I was thin then I deserved to be liked. I deserved to be loved. Unfortunately, when I starved myself, I damaged my already genetically poor metabolism. When starving didn’t work, I tried every fad diet my parents went on. Every time one failed, I treated myself like a failure. I hated my body and there were nights I would cry myself to sleep wishing I would die in my sleep and not waste any more space.

I spent so much of my life trying to be what I thought everyone else wanted me to be, that somewhere along the line I forgot who I was. It has taken thirty-five years, but I am finally coming out of the biggest closet of my life—coming out as me. The last year has been filled with little coming outs, opening up about my past and the events that shaped who I am today and being comfortable in my own skin. I have felt enough hate in my life and I am done fueling the flames. This project has given me another way that I can be me, by removing the most mundane way to hide myself. We all wear masks, but sometimes we have to put the mask away and be proud of who we are.

I put on faces to hide from the pain

I put on faces to keep me sane

I put on masks

For anyone who asks

the Truth