Designated Fat Girl by Jennifer Joyner Read Free Book Online

cloud nine.
    The moment didn’t last very long. I was paranoid from the moment I started working there, surrounded by gorgeous, skinny twentysomethings who, like me, were hungry to get their careers started, but didn’t face the physical challenges I did. My female coworkers wore cute tailored jackets and skirts; I struggled to find size-18 clothes that were suitable for me to wear on the air and didn’t make me look as though I was wearing a circus tent. We all had to shoot our own stories, and it was physically taxing to lug around all the camera equipment. I would return to the station, huffing, puffing, and sweating from an evening of gathering news, hoping no one noticed my ill-fitting clothes or red, slick-with-perspiration face. One of the interns in the station told me that a reporter from a competing station had stopped him to ask about me, referring to me as “the healthy new reporter.” I laughed it off, but boy did it sting, and I began to imagine that everyone was talking about the fat new girl, wondering how she’d landed the job. While my weight hadn’t kept me from getting hired, I just knew that it would eventually cost me my job. And the more I worried, the more I ate … and the cycle continued. I just couldn’t get a grip.
    My dream was to be a television reporter. But the reality of the dream was like living a nightmare—it was physically difficult to do the job, and the mental toll of carrying around suchanxiety was more than I could bear. Every day when I went to work, I expected to be called into the news director’s office and be fired. I honestly felt I was just as good as any reporter there, but my issues with my appearance undermined my confidence at every turn. In the end, convinced it was the only way to save a shred of dignity, I quit. I’d only worked the job for thirteen months, and it broke my heart to give it up, especially under those circumstances. I just felt I had no other choice. I told my news director I needed to concentrate on finishing school and on my new marriage. I didn’t mention my mounting weight, and thankfully, neither did he. He wished me well, and that was that. I left the job I had wanted more than anything.
    I was sad to leave and ashamed that I was unable to get my weight under control and keep the job. But I honestly felt like it was a temporary setback; I never once, at that time, thought my television career was over. I just needed to retool, refocus, and get my life together. I was not doing well in school, having spent so much time on the road to my out-of-town job. And my brand-new marriage needed some tending to, as well. I calmed my fears by telling myself that this was a temporary sabbatical from the pursuit of my dreams.
    As part of getting my school career back on track, I had to find an internship. I felt a little silly applying to a television station for a job; now that I had been paid to report, how could I go and work in an unpaid capacity, doing jobs that I thought were clearly below my skill level? Instead I decided to apply at a local radio station. Our broadcasting program had little in the way of hands-on radio training, and I thought it would be good to try my hand at it. Plus the station was only twenty minutesfrom my house, a far cry from the huge commute of the television station. In the end I thought it would be an easy way to earn my internship credits and possibly learn a bit as well.
    I ended up staying for five years.
    The station had an oldies format on its FM side, and a sister AM station played adult contemporary music. At first all I had to do was log commercial times and help answer phones, nothing at all to do with actual broadcasting. But it didn’t take long to meet and get to know all the nice people who worked there, most of whom were more than willing to show me around the soundboard. Once my bosses learned of my news experience, I was given the chance to give morning news reports on the AM station. I had to get up at