Luvmyvulvaxoxo said, " Puberty is singularly the WORST time in any woman’s life. Suddenly at 12 (sometimes earlier) all these GROWN ass men start leering at you and making you uncomfortable. It doesn’t stop for another 2 decades and then suddenly we’re invisible."

My story first, then I want to hear from FDS queens.

I had my first period when I was 9 years old. My mother barely explained what it was, due to her own body shame, which I unconsciously internalized, although I already had a fair bit going on from being an overweight girl. This didn't help. Having a period was in no way at all whatsoever celebrated, although my mother did do one very weird thing: she displayed my soiled panties for my father to see! I didn't see where she put them at first, another room we didn't use much, but as soon as I did, I swiped them and ran to put them in the dirty clothes hamper. Freaked me out. I should add too that I was raised Southern Baptist, which was all about denying the flesh, flesh is bad/sinful, develop your inner person, attend to your soul first and foremost. In some ways good, because it puts emphasis on developing one's mind and personality and being a truly good person, but really harmful in that it encourages people to care a lot less about the only body we have for this life.

The whole experience of puberty was a freak-out. I knew, as a middle schooler, that I could possibly get pregnant as a child. I had always known from single digits I very much wanted to be married and happy, and had never wanted kids, and getting my period in single digits went a long, long way toward cementing my childfree status forever. I've always had toxophobia, and knew down deep in my bones I had zero vocation, talent, desire for kids, and would be a bad mother. Just thinking of having kids filled me with dread, disgust, despair; I'd feel trapped just thinking of it. I grew up in rural north Louisiana, back in the 70s, so there were no school counselors or girls only groups to discuss issues with. I suffered in silence. I had no desire to date anyway, having grown up with the same group from kindergarten, so I waited til my dad was going to remarry, then started dating as a junior in high school in my new city. And I was ADAMANT and careful about birth control every single time even through the hormonal haze of late teens to late 20s.

Eventually what I did was pile on weight, in a childish way to avoid being too visible. I saw what prettier girls were going through, and I "thought" (except it wasn't actual thinking, more like just operating on childish instinct and lizard-brain) that if I put on weight, men wouldn't see me or comment or harass. And mostly it worked. I didn't realize I was genetically prone to weight gain, so after college, around age 25 when metabolism drops again, I really started to put on weight and it spiraled out of control. Also, growing up in 70s and 80s in the Deep South, absolutely nothing was taught about nutrition, so I was what my sister and I called an "unreconstructed eater" -- if it tastes good, eat it! I also have subluxing knees, diagnosed in my 20s, so I couldn't trust my body. I've had some PTSD from my knees, so that also contributed to body image issues, not working out, not knowing what was going on with my body.

Fast forward to 2003, I was diagnosed with syndrome X, which is type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure. I got on meds and changed my lifestyle that week: joined a gym (all I could do at 425 lbs was swim and walk, so I started where I was), stopped all full-sugar sodas, and started improving my diet. Now I weigh around 250, with a little less than 90 lbs to go. I've lost 175 lbs so far. Somewhere around my mid-30s, I decided to give up the body hate talk, and I learned to like and mostly accept my body. With every pound I lost, life got easier. It's been years since I've been given the "fat hate" look. I'm treated better, now that I'm basically average sized. Down here in the South, I'm not at all the heaviest woman in a room anymore.

I've never been all that visible, and now at 53, I'm invisible and glad because of the freedom it gives me out in public, BUT it feels safe, finally, to take the weight off, given that I'm tougher, stronger, more experienced, and have experienced that middle age shift of take no shit ever, which was pretty much always there anyway from childhood. I just now have the gravitas of age to back me up instead of youthful bravada.

I'd be interested to hear what puberty is like from women who are conventionally attractive. What did you go through? How did you deal? How have things changed in your dealings with yourself, with men, with society? For older FDS queens, what has been your experience?