Green Onions, Yellow Onions, Self-Esteem and Murder, by Lynne Murray

Filed under: Regular Contributors, Lynne Murray, Themes, The Skinny on Fat

Green Onions, Yellow Onions, Self-Esteem and Murder

by Lynne Murray

My new motto is Self-Esteem Through Murder, but I should explain that I’m a mystery writer, so the killing is theoretical. In fact, I’m the kind of wimp who keeps a glass jar and cardboard around to rescue bugs that wander into my bathtub.

I do write murder mysteries. (They don’t always get published, but that’s a whole different rant – don’t get me started.) My first mystery, Termination Interview, published in 1988, had a heroine who was, like most fictional female sleuths, very athletic. I modeled her appearance after a Wonder Woman type Aikido practitioner acquaintance (except for the nose ring). I figured a mystery heroine would have to be very muscular in order to fight off bad guys.

There was a fat character in that book and I had a hard time describing her. I spent literally hours on one sentence and never quite said what I wanted to say. What I ended up with was this:

“She wore the kind of fat fashion-boutique clothing that earnestly strives to make a yellow onion look like a green onion and succeeds in producing a stuffed pepper look.”

I couldn’t seem to keep my fat character from coming out self-hating, spineless, and actually kind of tragic.

Then I read a mystery by a favorite author of mine (I won’t name names). She had her private eye hesitate to get into a rickety elevator with a fat, old woman “who weighed more than 200 pounds” because the heroine was afraid the elevator couldn’t handle the weight. I tell you I threw that book against the wall. As a woman well over 200 pounds I was enraged. Logically, we know that even small elevators are tested to hold more than 1,000 pounds. But we’re not talking about objective pounds. We’re talking about prejudice.

The depth of my rage told me I needed to write about that very thing—a woman who admits to weighing more than 200 pounds and feeling good about herself. There was, however, a little problem. I was a long way from feeling good about myself and had trouble imagining someone like me who truly did. Even if I had met someone like that, it felt very taboo to talk about it. It was comparatively easy to project myself into the head of a crime-fighting Amazon. It was much more of a stretch to see a fat woman (like me) not as a sniveling victim but as a capable, beautiful, central figure who has life and death adventures.

I had to take time off from this artistic dilemma when my husband’s chronic illness put him in a coma, then out again, then back in. It became very clear that he would die soon. He was a thin person and very easygoing. During the early phases of his illness he had always been able to demonstrate that he was as smart as the doctors and they treated him with respect.

But once he couldn’t speak for himself it was up to me to make sure his wishes were carried out. I ended up doing a few months of hard time at the VA Hospital, dealing with doctors who were frequently unsympathetic and often manipulative. I noticed that doctors first expected to roll right over me like a tank. When I stood up, talked back and demonstrated that I had read the same literature they had, we would talk. When I still wouldn’t agree with what they wanted, they were shocked and unbelieving. Later I realized that middle-aged, fat, cheaply-dressed woman equaled pushover in their minds. Once they took me out of the pushover box, they put me squarely in the troublemaker box. I didn’t much care whether they ended up respecting me or not. I got what I wanted and what my husband needed so that he could die with friends nearby.

During the year after he died, I tried to understand some of what I had seen as it related to me and to other large people. It began to dawn on me that (a) a lot of people underestimate fat people, and (b) that doesn’t have to stop a fat person from getting what they want, no matter what anyone thinks, or does, or says.

With that in mind, I picked up my manuscript again.

I did decide that my fat heroine would be able to dress better than I can afford to. One friend suggested she should be successful at some career. This was also difficult for me to imagine. Not so much the fat woman being a success part—it was the success being okay and not obnoxious part. Okay, so I have this little problem with authority. Finally, I decided to envision a fat woman who was a success in an empowering way for both herself and others.

There were other roadblocks to imagining this character. I wish I could tell you I first became effective, successful, and well-dressed and then wrote about it. But hell, the fellow who created Superman probably never leaped a tall building in his life. Yet, I’d be willing to bet that he believed in truth, justice and the American Way. You do your best.

Eventually the character spoke to me. She told me how to start. “My name is Josephine Fuller and I’ve never weighed less than 200 pounds in my adult life – not counting the chip on my shoulder.” Once I knew who she was, she could have adventures. Also, I finally realized what I had wanted to say about onions was this: “A yellow onion is beautiful in its own round, tight skin. Why can’t we let it shine as it is, and not try to turn it into a green onion?”

It took several years to know how to write that sentence.

*This piece was originally published in FAT!SO?, the zine for people who don’t apologize for their size.

Whenever I have to account for my life I run up against the problem that “those who can, do. Those who can’t, write about those who can.” Reading, writing, and what we can charitably call an active fantasy life have been very central to who I am for as long as I can remember. My father was a scientist working for the military, so I grew up in Illinois, Texas, Alaska, Washington, and finally Southern California.

One of my earliest memories was being driven across the Golden Gate Bridge. My parents told me what it was called, and I protested that it was not gold. I know orange when I see it and that bridge was and is orange (okay, dark reddish orange). The idea that the bridge was across the Golden Gate, the opening into San Francisco Bay, was way too complicated for me at that age. But I never forgot the Bridge, the sun, the water, and that might have been why I always expected to move to San Francisco. I first visited on my own in the fall of 1967—just after the Summer of Love. From that point on there was no keeping me away. I enrolled in San Francisco State University in Spring 1968, just in time for the student strike to shut it down.

This didn’t bother me too much because I was doing independent research in sex and dope and rock and roll in Haight-Ashbury. I was still so shy and bookish, however, that it wasn’t until I started practicing Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism in March of 1968 that I came out of my shell enough for anyone to notice me. For awhile I tried to fancy myself as a wild woman like my idol, Janis Joplin. (No one else ever noticed the slightest resemblance, but at least I didn’t try to sing.)

After a few freewheeling months, I looked around to find that my new, exciting friends were all in jail except the Buddhists. I ended up at meetings almost every night. I was encouraged to go back to college and I got the Buddhist equivalent of officer training school—public speaking experience, writing and editing for Buddhist publications, and a smattering of Japanese etiquette. I’ve continued my daily Buddhist practice ever since. I moved from the brainwashed into the fluff-dried section, however, when my natural skepticism began to surface.

Fortunately the practice encompasses whatever mental posture you bring to it and it deserves most of the credit for keeping me reasonably sane, sober, and centered.

When I finally finished my B.A. in Psychology from San Francisco State, I immediately decided to dedicate my life to literature (graduate school ran a distant second and a serious business career wasn’t even in the running). This kind of decision can be hazardous to your financial and mental health. I supported myself by doing office temp work. After more soul searching than I care to remember, I completed a novel—a sensitive story of disillusioned youth. A few of my friends read it and were very impressed at how many pages there were. I tried to read it again a few years later and saw what they meant. Even I couldn’t finish it.

After examining what I was reading (80% mysteries) it made sense to try to write one. Termination Interview (St. Martin’s Press, 1988) introduced Ingrid Hunter, a freelance photographer who does office temp work to survive. I wrote two other books about Ingrid Hunter. The second one, Death Flower, was published in German in 1994 but so far not yet in English.

In 1980 I met Charles W. Powell, chess master, law student, and totally charming man from Richmond, Virginia. We were married in 1983. Within six months, to both our great surprise, he nearly died. For the next eight years he battled a chronic illness. He was very brave and good natured about being sick and all the things he was never able to do. He died in 1991. Charlie was still alive when I began to work on a series about a large-sized woman who solves mysteries. With his usual supportive attitude, he told me he would be proud if I wrote such a book.

In order to write about a self-accepting fat woman, I had to become one. This is a journey I’m still on.National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and International Size Acceptance Association are two places where I started.

In 1997, Orloff Press published Larger Than Death, first in the series featuring Josephine Fuller, a sleuth of size who doesn’t apologize. St. Martin’s Minotaur brought it out in paperback and also published Large Target, At Large, and A Ton of Trouble, which came out in 2002.

I’m now writing non-mystery books in the romantic comedy and paranormal vein, and having a great time doing that.

When I’m not writing fiction or essays, I spend a lot of time catering to the needs of a small group of very spoiled cats, and working at my day job—providing editing and office support services. My business doesn’t have a web page, although I work a lot with Tigerfish, which does.

Meet Lynne at http://www.lmurray.com.

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