This week I gave my students an exercise they hate: to write about what they really don't want to write about. And since I wanted to support them, and because it's so good for a writer to be challenge herself, I decided I'd better do the exercise, too.

What I really don't want to write about is being fat. Specifically, that I weigh more than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Somehow, being a heroin addict or an alchoholic in this culture has a certain cachet, while being fat is just, well, gross. Think Keith Richards and Bonnie Raitt (both now in recovery, thank god) versus, say, late Elvis, Marlon Brando, Orson Welles. Or Kate Winslet gaining 20 lbs. to the horror of her publicist, and you'll see what I mean. Fat is ranked at the bottom of our culture's — pardon me — food chain, below wife-beaters, child molesters, and axe murderers. It's insane.

In addition to condoned national disgust, and putting my name in the same sentence with Arnold Schwarzenegger's, here's what else I dislike about being fat: the unexpectedly snug fit of airline seats; having to completely relearn my balance on cross country skis, ice skates, and bicycles; and the way I look.

But being fat — which for me has so far been a 10-year proposition — has taught me a lot that I'm glad to know. First of all, paradoxically and conveniently, becoming larger has made me invisible, particularly to construction workers, whose whistles and disgusting remarks plagued me a lot in my 20's and 30's. I've learned to be more deeply compassionate toward anyone else on the margins of our narrow-minded society, like people of color, gays and lesbians, the homeless, the chronically ill and mentally ill, the poor, Vietnam Vets, and anyone who doesn't speak English very well.

It's also boosted my political thinking enormously. Once you're outside the culture's target market, you can see more clearly how that massive advertising machine really works. I'm not suggesting that a few Oreo's for breakfast constitute political action — you are, after all, still supporting a brand — but to reject the carefully choreographed steps expected of American women in the way of beauty and standard sexiness is a great relief as well as a liberation. And it's good to discover that standard sexiness is not the only kind there is.

But the best part is that when you're fat, and the cultural norms of beauty leave you out, you are free to embrace a different sort of beauty, one that's lasting and nourishing and that we get to define for ourselves, based on infinite variety. One we bring forth whole and shimmering out of our open, elegant minds and our generous hearts.