So let me be perfectly clear here........I am NOT writing this blog for all of you to coddle me and tell me how beautiful I am and pat me on the back and say it's ok.....LOL. I am writing this blog because I think most people relate and might get something from my experience and maybe a few laughs.
Me, circa 1989, balloon tits and all. Photo credit Kurt Reese :)Hi, my name is Mike and I have a fat face.
Yes, yes I do. I always have and probably always will. I am a 51 year old man who has a beautiful wife and family and none of this should really matter in the big picture of life. BUT.....it bothers me, always. My mother was short and beautiful and a little chubby let's say, not obese at all. My father was usually in pretty good shape his whole life being in the military and working all of the time. They were both short people. My mother's face was very round.....my face is round as well. We lived in a 5 room apartment in a 4 family flat and were not wealthy to say the least. My parents were much older than me and they grew up more poor than we ever imagined, especially my mother. My mother was raised in Ashland, Missouri and they had a dirt floor. They had cardboard on the ground or old linoleum but underneath was dirt....they were dirt poor. The most important thing to my parents was that we had food and that we ate everyday, that is literally all that mattered. We ate the worst everyday 70's style food there was - processed white bread, soda, ice cream, miracle whip, sugar, bologna, hot dogs, headcheese, potato chips....all the good shit! Of course my mother cooked and we had good meals in the evenings and on the weekends she would make a big Italian dinner with spaghetti and.....meatballs, neck bones, pigs feet - any meat would do. Pigs feet and spaghetti was my absolute favorite meal when I was a kid, I loved it!
My mother constantly fed me - peanut butter and sugar sandwiches, miracle whip sandwiches, salami and cheese on wonderbread.....it tasted great, but not the most nutritious of foods. My dad would always take me to the Italian Import store on Saturdays and we would get olives, Volpi salami, pepperoni, cheese and really good Italian bakery bread.......this was and still is my all time favorite foods. My parents were older and I was like a grandchild with grandparents. We ate ALL the time. It's no surprise that I was a big kid. I was born 10 pounds and never stopped growing. I was bigger than most of the kids in the neighborhood and in school. I went to Catholic school my entire life and from 1st to 8th grade I had to wear a uniform. The uniform was a light blue button down short sleeve shirt and dark blue trousers. They sold these uniforms at Sears on Grand ave in south St. Louis. I was too big to fit into the normal size uniforms. SO...Sears had a lovely section in the boys department called "HUSKY"......thats where I got my school uniform. I had to wear HUSKY for 8 years straight. When I was a kid I didn't really care at first until I started getting called "Fat" and "Chubby" and "Big Boy" and "Tubby"......then I realized that the Sears section "HUSKY" was just another word for FAT Boys LOL!!!
Look, I won't bore you with all of the details of my fairly boring Catholic Italian South St. Louis life, let's just say I ate WAY too much, I ate a lot of SHIT food, and I was always the Fat Funny kid in school. It took me years into my 20's to develop an exercise routine and learn to eat better foods. Getting out of the house and around others made a big difference. But no matter what I did or how hard I worked at it, I always had a FAT Face. A big round, chubby cheeked, Dago Fat Face.
Throughout the years I have developed what I would call a fairly normal eating disorder. I eat whatever I want until I hate myself so much that I will do something about it, then I don't eat anything for a period of time and lose some weight....enough weight to get to the point where I feel like I can eat anything I want and put all the weight back on again in a few months. Sound familiar? I know this is true, so over the years I have really tried hard to break this cycle. I have really learned to just eat moderately and stay away from most shit food when I can, it works and it's less of a roller coaster. Into my 40's and now 50's I am much more stable in my diet and exercise and really kind of stay in a ballpark weight range. But as I continue to get older, losing 5 or 10 pounds is NOT easy at all. It requires more and more exercise and eating less and less food. Most people don't really notice 5 pounds on me, my wife can never tell....but I can. It's in my BIG FAT FACE! I have made my way into a musical career which is awesome, but in the 21st century everyone and their brother LOVES to take pictures and videos of everything we do onstage - (which is awesome btw) but also a bit of a nightmare the next day when all of the pics are posted online. My first reaction is always "JESUS....that is a fucking fat face". I try and make it a joke and laugh or just let it go and realize it's nothing important........but I would be lying if I told you that it didn't bother me. It does bother me. It gets under my skin. I get this underlying feeling of dread and disgust. I see those pictures and think "thats not what I feel like inside" - I feel good inside and strong and excited, but seeing those pictures start to take that feeling away. I start to feel miserable and dull and not happy. Yuck. Why would anyone pay to come see that fat face play music? Disgusting!! (said in a Silvio Dante accent).
Obviously, I do my best to get over myself and be grateful I am healthy and very very blessed. I remind myself that the camera adds 50 pounds and the angle of the photographs are from 20 feet below and thats why I have 4 chins. But sometimes I get a little bummed about it all. So I tell my wife and she reassures me I look fine and I should give myself a break. So I do. I start to watch what I eat a little more and work harder in the gym. But the bottom line is - I think I look fat when I weigh 175 pounds and I think I look fat when I weigh 200 pounds. I think Sears might have traumatized me in the HUSKY section.
so, to recap - PLEASE do NOT write comments telling me I am NOT fat and that I should love myself and how wonderful I am - That is NOT what I am looking for here. I wanted to share with you how I feel sometimes and I am pretty sure a lot of my friends and maybe fellow entertainers understand. It's a touchy subject and I think I need to remind myself that how I feel inside is the most important feeling. I have to say, most of the time I feel real good inside. Maybe, I need to stop looking at all of the pictures and videos of myself and lose some of the narcissism. That's probably the best thing we could all do. I also need to just accept the fact that I have a FAT FACE.....always have, always will. It's the face God made for Italian Aunts to grab both cheeks and squeeze the bejeezus out of!
I hope you had a good laugh and maybe you'll feel better today about yourself, we're all in this together.
Peace, Love...Zito