Designated Fat Girl by Jennifer Joyner

not just at the oldies station, but here for the big station, too.Why was I scared? But as the commercials wrapped up and the music started to play for my intro, my heart was pounding and my palms were sweating. I went to speak, and I barely had any breath. I sounded truly rattled on the air—it was clear something was wrong. I finished as fast as I could, and the phone immediately rang. It was the morning show crew from their studio across town wanting to know if I was okay. I didn’t know what to tell them—I myself couldn’t explain what had happened. I just made something up—told them I lost track of time and had to run to the booth and was out of breath. They bought the excuse just fine and said they’d “see” me at my next cut-in, which was in thirty minutes.
    I tried to calm myself down, but nothing worked. As the next newsbreak approached, I thought I would pass out from the lack of oxygen; I was that scared. The commercials ended, the music cued … and I froze. I couldn’t say anything. I turned off my mike and listened to the few seconds of horrible silence in my headphones before the radio crew dumped out and went to commercial. I was stunned. I could not believe what had happened—and worse, I couldn’t figure out what to tell them. The phone rang again, and I didn’t have to fake a feeble voice when I answered. I lied, saying I’d thrown up right before airtime and couldn’t make it back. They sympathized and said they hoped I felt better. I was so relieved there were no more scheduled cut-ins for that morning; there was no way I could face that fear again.
    I struggled with that stage fright for the next several months. Sometimes I filled in and was perfectly fine; other times, without any real explanation, I was scared out of my mind. No oneever said anything to me, but I finally couldn’t take it anymore. The stress and the fear were too much, and I told my boss that the extra hours were just too hard. I no longer wanted to fill in. Once again my on-air career was over.
    It was around this time that I seriously started to realize I would never make it back on the air. I was heavier than ever, now approaching three hundred pounds. I was also getting close to thirty years old, and I should have been getting street-reporting experience for a good ten years by now. And with the unexplained stage fright, I started to consider that this dream just wasn’t going to happen. It made me incredibly sad.
    I still loved journalism, though, and I excelled at my job on the assignment desk. I was promoted to assignment manager, and I developed real leadership skills that were noticed by my superiors. I started to consider a career in news management, possibly becoming a news director one day. It was a lofty goal, but I felt I had the skills and drive to pull it off. Plus my weight didn’t matter.
    Or did it?
    As I made my way in the corporate world, I was more self-conscious about my size than ever. It undermined my self-confidence, and I believe it kept me from pursuing opportunities. Again, when you have a weight problem, you are screaming to the world that you have issues. There is no hiding the fact that you have a problem. I constantly wondered and worried about what others thought about me, and I was very paranoid. That worry kept me from doing as well as I could have. So much of making it in business and management is political. You have to know the right people and makegood impressions. You’re constantly thrust into situations where you have to be “on” … where you have to exude confidence, even when you don’t necessarily feel it. As I slowly moved up the ranks, I found myself invited out to lunch with the head honchos, and I can’t tell you how incredibly self-conscious I was. First, I never knew what to order. I felt if I ate modestly, I would draw more attention to myself, like whom was I kidding? A chef salad? Yeah, right! And I always worried about the seating arrangements—just