Bobby Hill and Fat Confidence
As I've mentioned a few times, I've been watching a lot of King of the Hill lately. We're watching the revival in the discord right now and it's also great, too! I have sort of dim memories of some episodes from when I was a kid, but I can tell you very specifically that the fire ant episode really turned me off the show for a while. Bobby getting mesmerized or whatever by the queen ant was bonkers and I didn't like it.
But, coming back to the show now as an adult, I wish I'd watched it more. I wish I had sort of internalized it better. See, one of my favorite aspects of the show is Bobby. Early on, there's a lot of "that boy ain't right" and Hank is concerned that his son isn't interested in sports or physically gifted. And Hank is right, Bobby isn't a physical force to be reckoned with or anything. But, he's never the butt of the joke. Or, when he is, he tends to play into it or turn it around. It's almost never the case that Bobby is just simply made fun of for being fat. And when people try to, he kind of rolls it off. Bobby's sort of defining ambition is that he wants to be a comedian. Specifically, early on he wants to be a prop comic, but as things go on, it becomes more sort general comedy. And while we learn from the revival that he doesn't end up there, his good humor and desire to just be a friendly dude wins out more than it doesn't.
And where that really ends up being most intriguing, or heartening for me, is that that good-humored nature attracts the attention of girls. Bobby, in the first 6 seasons has three different girls who are interested in him at one point or another. In the finale of season 6, a Japanese girl is so impressed by his ability to play DDR that they dance together and she kisses him in one of those photobooths! That's wild! And he woos his next door neighbor to the point it's one of the most memorable relationships in the show! Hell, in one of their earlier moments, he catches Connie changing and they talk about seeing each other naked and she asks him to take his shirt off and then cheers him in her own way and he's pretty open about it. It's super cool!
Rose, why are you talking about this? Well, as I've mentioned before, I'm fat. I always have been. At no point in my life have I been thin. And I've rarely considered myself to be attractive or even understood why someone would be interested in me. That's still something I struggle with. But I'm also at heart a romantic. I want to spend time with someone special, just holding hands, cuddling, laughing together. That's always been something I've wanted, in spite of myself. But, particularly as I entered high school and I was surrounded by a mass of people I'd never met before, which was counter to my experience in grade school, spending 8 years with most of the same people. Here, that familiarity was gone and even if I knew how to approach a girl, I didn't have the confidence to do so. Let's be truly honest, I still don't.
That confidence that Bobby displays is something I am jealous about. And I think if I had watched that show more, I might've been able to internalize that being fat doesn't make me less than or undesirable; it's just a feature of who I am. Maybe. And I say this because I unconsciously internalized those things from other media in my life. I was extremely lucky in that I was basically never bullied as a kid, except my brother teasing me, but that just comes with the territory of being a sibling, even when you're significantly younger. But, I still learned and thought of being fat as aberrant, abnormal, and undesirable. How could anyone love a fat person like me? Why would anyone want my company? These are questions I still struggle with in a variety of ways. But what if I had understood that there's another way to be in the world? That I don't need to be ashamed of my body in this way?
I think no small amount about the life I've led up to this point and the life I could've led. How I wish I were a bit more adventurous, in general. How I wish I took more and bigger risks. What would I have been like, how would things have turned out for me if I had learned that kind of confidence at a young age? How would high school and college have been different? It's pointless to spend too much time pondering those things, but ya know, like Huey Freeman said "it's fun to dream."