Transcript: Brittany Gibbons on Courageous Beauty at TEDxBGSU

Brittany Gibbons, the author of New York Times Best Seller, Fat Girl Walking discusses Courageous Beauty at TEDxBGSU conference. Below is the full transcript of the TEDx Talk.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Courageous beauty by Brittany Gibbons at TEDxBGSU

TRANSCRIPT:

I get to follow two guys in a robot. This should be good. OK. Hello, I am a writer. I’m a storyteller. I’m really passionate about it, it’s in everything I do, unfortunately; because my dad really wants me to be a more productive member of society every month as he signs my student loan checks. But that is not the case.

I’m a humorist. I get to be funny for a living every single day. I get to be raw and uninhibited. I get to share my life and my stories with my readers. And I get to write about silly things like losing my virginity in the back of a 89 Hatchback to Tears for Fears or how much Xanax it takes to get me on an airplane or walking into the wrong room at a sperm bank. A lot of things.

So, for five years now I have been tapping away behind my computer screen eking out a living as a professional writer when the weirdest thing happened. I turned 30, and I became a swimsuit model. I know, I don’t look 30, but I am. And I’m also really a swimsuit model. It’s shocking, but I know what I look like. I’ve looked this way since I was 8, early puberty, and when you are curvy and overweight, everyone really likes to remind you of that. Kids at school, your parents, the fitting room girl at the GAP, just in case you had forgotten, all the reasons you’re supposed to be hating yourself.

Now I spent elementary school and high school being bullied. My first few years of college I spent bulimic. The last ten or so years, I’ve really been trying to come to terms with how I really look. And I’ve done that, give or take. I’ve learned to like my body overall. It just kind of seems that other people still have a problem with it. For example, I get comments like this. I write a humor blog, and I often get, “I have no idea how someone as obese as you managed to land a husband.”