Tina Turner, Tina Turner
Sometimes I get lost in thinking about all of the possible titles for my weight loss memoir. I’ve spent a fair amount of time cataloging the words I’ve been called during this 45 year dance on earth; and I’ve decided that all of the insults (me and my body have confronted) would be hidden on page 53 — along with the running list of playground nicknames. I love lists.
1. Tina Corrado the size of an Eldorado
2. Thunder Thighs
3. Whaler
4. Beached Whale
5. Fatty Bumbalatty
Bumbalatty, not even a word, but rhymed with fatty – this was the level of insult I was dealing with from ages 7-20.
6. Orca
7. Shamu
8. Willy
Clearly the kids of Brooklyn, New York were really going for an underwater theme, but I didn’t mind it quite so much because I LOVED WHALES. When I was a kid, every opportunity there was to join the “adopt a whale program,” you guessed it, I joined. I wanted to save the whales and wanted to be a marine biologist at one point, even if it meant rocking my rolls in a wetsuit for all to see. Beautiful, large, glorious and elegant, I wanted to save them from becoming extinct and in them I saw myself – large and maybe even graceful at times. I still love whales even after losing 160 pounds, but, spoiler, I never became a marine biologist.
Finally, off theme and maybe the most unoriginal but most prized nickname:
9. TINA TURNER
I wasn’t a whale, I was a star — a singing sensation who was put through some shit and made it. So when the whale names were shouted on playground turf and in public pools alike, I closed my eyes and repeated “Tina Turner, Tina Turner, Tina Turner” and, somehow, I was able to drown out the noise. And even when I look in the mirror today, I close my eyes and repeat “Tina Turner, Tina Turner, Tina Turner” and I remember that everything will be ok.