Suburban Sprawl

Tune-Yards “Fiya”

What if my own skin makes my skin crawl?
What if my own flesh is suburban sprawl?
What happened between us makes sense
If I am nothing, you’re all
If I’m nothing at all

Those lyrics resonate with me so deeply that it can be hard for me to listen when Merrill Garbus sings it. I know so many songs, and almost none of them express this feeling, and it’s a feeling that is so common. For a long time, I just figured “Fiya” was a rare and special song. But now it seems more like a song that should be common but is not because the music industry has done such a great job of keeping anyone remotely fat out of the spotlight. The few fat people who do make it through are either the type of people who possess a superhuman level of confidence – not exactly common among fat people – or are like me, and do everything they possibly can in life to misdirect your attention and not address this fact of their existence.

But here’s Merrill Garbus actually singing about it, and all the deep-rooted shame and insecurity that goes with it, and the way people – even good, kind people – will (often unknowingly) reduce your value and humanity because you are fat. She’s giving voice to the feeling that bothers me the most: The notion that someone could only want you out of convenience, and that every good thing about you can be cancelled out by your fatness. She’s singing about the cynicism and fear that grows inside you, the entirely justifiable suspicion that everyone you meet thinks you are disgusting unless they prove otherwise. And even then, can you really trust them? But all of that is really just the outside layer of the song. The core of it is a gnawing feeling of loneliness and yearning for affection. It’s disappointment, and resignation to the belief that you’ll never get what you need the way you are.

Buy it from Amazon.