The rink where I learned to ice skate last year is the most Toronto thing ever. You exit the subway, walk through a wall of secondhand smoke, and down a set of crumbling cement stairs. On a nearby wall a swirly 1970s sign reads “Snack Bar.” (There is no snack bar. There is never a snack bar.) A guy in hockey skates falls forward on ice and saves himself with a push-up.
As a kid growing up in Portland, Oregon, I didn’t ice skate, but I roller-skated at a rink that functioned as a sort of preadolescent nightclub: black light, purple licorice, and Janet Jackson’s “Nasty Boys” at mind-numbing volume. I could skate in a circle and avoid collisions. I have a hazy memory of winning a “shoot the duck” contest, skating in a crouched position with one leg stuck out in front of me until everyone else fell over.
I was an average-size kid with a big butt. I wasn’t good at running a mile, doing push-ups, or any of the sports we played in gym class. I was a decent swimmer and a heavy lifter, but I didn’t recognize that my body could do anything athletic because I was too distressed that it wasn’t thin enough.
As a kid I moved because my body insisted on it, like a dog begging to play. Roller coasters and bicycles and trampolines were my whole life. But as I got older, play turned into work, a weird simulacrum of physical wage labor where you earned something called “fitness” instead of money. It wasn’t supposed to be fun, especially if you weren’t thin.
By the time I was 20, my body was no longer an animal in my care but an object to control and shape for other people’s viewing pleasure, and a reflection of my (poor) character and (lack of) discipline. So I lost weight. Then I did the usual thing and regained it all, plus more.
The only meaningful narrative your life can form from fatness onward, according to diet culture, is one where you end up thin. When you’re fat the whole world tells you to exercise. Presumably you’re fat because you don’t, and if you did, your body would correct itself.
However, when you’re fat, the implicit message in most spaces devoted to movement is: You don’t belong here. You don’t belong at a gym, in a spin class, at yoga, on a tennis court, in a weight room, a dance club, a beach, a pool, a figure skating club. Not in a store that sells leggings. Not even on a tranquil sidewalk in Cabbagetown, where one jogger loudly remarks to another that your body is her inspiration to keep running. You’re not supposed to show up publicly to exercise unless you’re already thin.
When you’re fat, you’re also told that your body is an emergency, like a five-alarm fire. There’s no room for getting comfortable, getting to know yourself, or goofing off. There’s no time for pleasure or gentle exploration. Just: Get out. Get a new body.
I wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to skate if I didn’t have at least one fat and self-accepting friend. By the way, this is advice I give to my clients (I’m a registered dietitian): Have that friend.
One night this friend invited me to an “open and inclusive” swim, where people in marginalized bodies are expressly made welcome.
My first thought, as a nearly 40-year-old adult was: But my couch, and Netflix.
My second thought was: What would 10-year-old me do? So I went.
Though I walk daily, I hadn’t gone swimming in a public pool in maybe 20 years—a favorite childhood activity I hadn’t even realized I was avoiding. When we arrived the smell of chlorine poured through the doors, evoking memories of underwater handstands and diving boards.
Once in the water, I was in for a shock: I could do everything I used to do. I climbed up the ladder, dove, touched the bottom of the deep end, walked on my hands underwater with my legs straight up in the air. I was mostly shocked by how shocked I was.
“You made that look easy,” my friend said as I surfaced from a dive.
Holy shit, I thought. What else can I still do?
It is no longer the 1980s, and roller discos are sadly uncommon (R.I.P.). But there are more than a hundred ice rinks in Toronto. The public skating sessions are free. You just show up with skates, walk in, and go.
One morning in early December 2018, I exited the subway station, walked past a bunch of smokers, and continued down the cement stairs to find a quiet little ice rink with a fence at one end. I found a warm changing room with benches where I put on my skates. Minutes later I was standing on the ice for the first time. I held the fence and took small, marching steps. Very slightly, my skates glided forward. About an inch.
It was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.
The guy in hockey skates called out, “Hey, you’re learning!” and told me he was a beginner himself. He looked pretty nimble on the ice, so this gave me hope. I’d signed up for skating lessons that would start in January. My goal was to, maybe, let go of the fence.
As it turns out, my body has some surprising advantages on ice. I’m short and bottom-heavy, giving me a low center of gravity. I gain speed quickly, thanks to my strong, thick legs, and I maintain momentum for a long time, thanks to my weight. My big feet require long blades, adding stability and glide to my skating. If I fall, my bones are well protected. (I do wear knee and head protection. Stay safe, kids.)
Contrary to what I saw on TV growing up, when my mom and I huddled together in her bed to watch Tonya Harding at the Olympics, figure skaters come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. There are tons of adult figure skating competition videos on YouTube to prove it, and even more plus-size adult skaters on Instagram with amazing videos of their jumps and spins.
Finding these images of adults who looked like me, doing the things I desperately wanted to do, helped dissolve the last layer of fear that maybe my body size just meant that I couldn’t.
I can. I do.
I can skate forward and backward, turn, spin, and hop on two feet, glide on one foot, cross one leg over the other, and stop dramatically in a spray of ice. I can crouch down and hug my knees while skating, but I’m still working on shoot the duck. Soon.
It’s just over a year since I first stepped on the ice, and I skate between two and five hours a week. I take lessons once or twice a week, and time off whenever I want to. Once I stayed home for two weeks, for the sheer novelty. Then I went back, because skating is the joy of my life. I’ve located two vending machines that take credit cards, but I have yet to find a functioning snack bar.
I still occasionally swim with a fat friend or two, and most days I get up early to go skating. It does not require any of the discipline I learned to associate with exercise, because it does not feel like work. It feels like play. It’s exploring and goofing off. I approach the rink, the ice like a sheet of frosted glass, and then I’m gliding, slaloming, sliding, the slice of my blades echoing under the arena dome.
My weight has not changed. Another diet-culture fairy tale says that if you become really active, your body will shrink to a predetermined, standard size. It’s not true, and research shows that while exercise can promote a more stable weight, it does not cause much, if any, weight loss.
What has changed is how well I sleep (better), how much stamina I have (a lot), how strong my knees feel (very), how regulated my mood is (mostly chill), and how far I can walk on my hands underwater (so incredibly far that I astonish small children).
Skating has revolutionized my relationship to movement, which, by the way, has been a work-in-progress for 20 years. I don’t think about weight or discipline or fitness when I skate, or when I dive into the deep end of a pool. I think about flying. I think about experiencing life through the only body I will ever have.
Ice skating is meditative and difficult and terrifying and beautiful, like knitting on a roller coaster.
You should try it sometime.
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