This is Meagan Kerr

We’re starting our “metabolism” module at med school this week, and I’m dreading it with every fibre of my being. You see, I am going to be a doctor, and I am fat.

I’m not the type of fat you feel after you’ve had a big lunch, and your usually flat belly is protesting against the waistband of your jeans. I’m the real kind. My BMI hovers a couple of points below “morbidly obese”.

I worry a lot about what people will think of me as a fat doctor. For the smartarses among you, of course I’ve tried to be non-fat, it goes without saying. The thing is though, bodies don’t really like weighing less all of a sudden and are pretty good at reversing things in the long run. Mostly my body settles back to the same size 18 shape eventually.

I am always aware of my fatness, but perhaps more so here at medical school. We are training to work with bodies, and mine is a type of body we warn our patients not to have. It is the first thing described in every list of ‘modifiable risk factors’. A colleague suggests “just don’t let yourself get too fat” as we talk about preventing a certain type of cancer. A final exam question asks us to list four poor health outcomes associated with obesity. I sit through lectures with slides that have sniggering titles like “how BIG is the problem?”

Roses, Bel Air, take me there, I’ve been waiting to meet you.

Gabourey Sidibe - Portrait by Sam Spratt

A while back, I asked Gabby to come to my studio. Work immediately began and the beginnings of several sketches and pieces started to come together, but I didn’t want to rush the main painting so I shelved it while the usual pattern of clients interrupting personal work took over. Many paintings never get finished or see the light of day, both personal and professional, but Gabby was special. I wrote these notes back during her visit:

Her time in my studio was mostly light, filled with her bubbly energy as we cracked open some beers, exchanged embarrassing drinking stories, taking group photos as if we’d known each other for more than the actual hour we had, and her trying to convince me that she has an actual medical condition where she finds everything adorable. You’d be fooled too if you were lied to by an Oscar-nominated actress with her talent. But when I asked her, stripped of any pretension, that if I were to paint her, how she’d like to be portrayed, she said “I don’t really care about how I’m portrayed” and then she paused and continued “I guess … did you ever watch the show Community? Ya know how the school’s mascot is the human being? I mean, I don’t want to be a grey faceless spandex blob like that, but I’d like to just be a human being. Not someone’s message or idea of what I stand for because of what I look like, just a human, how you’d paint me if I were anyone else".

african witch ·

Went on vacation to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic! It was beyond beautiful there 😍🌴🐠

Which swimsuit is your fave??