Casual Blasphemies

The toad elevating moment.

2011-01-02T11:00:00.000-06:00

2010 was a pretty spiffy year for me. I’m not going to go into lengthy detail as to why it was a pleasant row to hoe, but suffice it to say, I can look back at the year and say “I had myself a grand old time and got some shit done”.

However, I do have one vague regret (though I’m a person who doesn’t do regret very often) – I barely wrote. I can still recall my glory days of writing constantly, constantly, constantly, the rush that came with telling a story and writing a screenplay in two weeks and not being able to walk away from something until I vomited forth every single thing that was knocking around in my head. A massive hard drive failure in July of 2006 in which I lost a tremendous amount of work killed a goodly portion of my creative spark, as did having that realization that decent writers are a dime a dozen, and I’m not quite so egotistical to think that I have that super-special-something that elevates me above any of the trillions of people who are able to slap together some charming sentences.

Instead, I started a long-view kind of approach to my life, as I had a large amount of fixing and tweaking and revamping to do on it, and writing fell to the side. When I discovered Fat Acceptance (FA), it provided an avenue for me to write again, and I did so quite enthusiastically because it’s a concept/social justice movement that I’m quite invested in. However, as 2010 wore on and other bloggers who were far more prolific and far better at saying the things that needed saying before I even noticed what the hell was going on wrote, I wrote less...and less...and less. Not that my investment level has changed, but my interest in writing what I felt essentially boiled down to a rehash of the same damn thing dropped to almost zippo. I couldn’t contribute anything new or insightful to the conversation, so I chose not to contribute. Instead, I became an interested observer who floats around a party and occasionally opens up her yap to rapid-fire opine and then goes back to eyeballing the bar and snacks.

So, to kick off 2011, I’ve decided I need to start having conversations again. The thing is, in order to try and rediscover that creative spark (because I do miss it terribly), I can’t limit myself to one conversation anymore. As a result, I’m starting up a new blog called, simply, the Jane C. Nolan Blog. I’m still going to talk about FA (lord, will I ever), but I also want to talk about movies or music or random weird happenings in my day or pop culture or what’s kicking at my synapses at any given moment. If you’re a mind to, bookmark the new space or chuck it into your reader or whatever you like, as effective today, Casual Blasphemies is going dark.

The conversation continues at...The Jane C. Nolan Blog.

Thanks for reading and responding over the last couple of years. It's been a lovely experience.

Jane

A spoonful of stupid.

2010-12-30T17:50:00.000-06:00

So I was over at Shakesville and watching a very cute video of a cute little baby kid who clearly has discovered the word "no" and, as a result, says "no!" to every question posed. "Do you want a million dollars?" "No no!" Very cute. It kicks off, however, by a commercial for (I suspect it's Dannon) Light and Fit Yogurt that is only 80 calories, people, versus that dreadful 100 calories that some OTHER bastardly yogurt is because that 20 CALORIES WILL MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOUR LOSING .5 POUNDS AND ONE FULL POUND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY

*cough* Anyway, it's the typical three ladies at a cafe table eating the LUXURIOUS and DELICIOUS sweet JESUS this could possibly HEAL THE SICK and bring PEACE to the WORLD yogurt and talking about all the magical properties it contains and how it will make their apparently dreadful lives so much better. One woman proclaims, "Here's to finding more than one outfit that fits me!" The next woman adds, "Here's to my pants not leaving marks on my waist at the end of the day!" They giggle like ladies are wont to do. "Here's to 80 calories tasting CRAZY good," the third woman says.

Okay, I've got an easy solution for them - how about finding fucking clothes that FUCKING FIT YOU? Hey, if you want to get down with some Light and Fit yogurt because it's tasty (I myself am not averse to yogurt, be it the full-metal full-fat yogurt or taking a spin with some random "light" yogurt because it can be tasty - particularly with some granola being involved), knock yourself out. But if you want to avoid those tragic marks on your waist? WEAR PANTS THAT FUCKING FIT YOU. It's remarkable how I, a fatty fat fatty fat Lady Mayoress of Fatville, is able to manage such a feat, as do many of my compatriots. You want more than one outfit that fits you? Go to the store and BUY SOME OUTFITS THAT FIT YOU. I mean, we've heard quite a lot of horseshit diet ad/diet product scripts over the years - how can you avoid it - but this one comes close to being at the top of my "COMPLETELY DEFIES LOGIC AND REASON" list. It's right up there with the "now that I'm thin, I can go to Paris!!!" crap as being "inspiration" to diet.

Well, the UNICORN POWERED YOGURT did serve me some inspiration, I guess...inspiration to want to run around my room going "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!" for a few minutes. HEY that might BURN CALORIES and MAKE ME LOSE .0000003 OUNCES. The tip of my right index finger looks slimmer already!

Here at the end of all things.

2010-12-19T18:16:00.006-06:00

The year 2010 is drawing rapidly to a close, which kind of blows my mind a bit because it seems like the year has raced by for me. And 2011 is looking like the kind of year that's going to zip by, too, since I'll be out of the country for a goodly chunk of February and then...who knows what other kind of tomfoolery I'll get into.

I'm a horribly lazy writer. Even when I was at my peak of writing about 900 years ago, where it was not unusual for me to spend hours merrily and furiously typing away, I'd still hunt for any reason not to sit down and write. Not much has changed...except for those blissful periods of furious typing. So I'm hoping that might change a bit in 2011. Not that it will mean more blog posts, of course. I was thinking about whether having a non-FA centric blog might spur me to write more, but I haven't devoted much more thought to it than just that sentence, pretty much. I suppose that's a decision I'll leave to the wee hours of January 1, 2011.

Since the odds are fairly slim I will update before the heady rush of Christmas and New Year's gets on a roll, I wish you the best for the remainder of 2010 and all of 2011.

The Lecture Loft is open!

2010-11-23T17:57:00.002-06:00

If there’s anything I like doing, it’s entrancing people into, at the very least, getting some science dropped on them regarding Fat Acceptance and its existence as an alternative to the current societal demand for physical perfection from its denizens. And when I say “science”, I don’t mean the studies and that sort of thing because analyzing and parsing the scientifical stuff is not in my skillset. I’m more of a “this is how I feel/this is how I react/this is how I roll” writer. I like the “A-Ha” moment, I dig on seeing that happen. It doesn’t happen often enough for my taste, of course, but I do what I can when I can. I also think that some “a-ha” moments need to come from within and nothing anyone says or does can make that “a-ha” happen until the person’s ready to rock it.

But for the moment, I’m going to riff (oh god, I used “riff” in a non-ironic context. Sigh) a bit at those who might be struggling a tad with getting their minds wrapped around Fat Acceptance and how it might apply in their lives.

It’s not fat acceptance if all you’re doing is being really, really angry at thin people.

FA’s got layers, and one of the first things I figured out was to hate the game, not the players, if you will. Do I have an internal wince and perhaps an eyeroll or 15 when diet – aka “Being ‘Good’” talk breaks out? Oh heavens yes. But I *get* the conversation, I get why it’s happening, and 95 percent of the time (the same percentage of diets that fail OH SHIZZ) I don’t take it personally. I don’t grumble and snarl at thin people that I encounter because they’re not the enemy. Teethgrindingly oppressive beauty standards pile onto everyone, not just the fat. There are segments of that everyone that don’t feel it as keenly as others, but it wrecks everyone’s jazz up, ultimately.

Of course you’re going to encounter thin people that are insufferable assholes whose validation in life is predicated on the notion that they are morally superior to those whom they believe “don’t take care of themselves”. But you’re going to encounter insufferable assholes that are a myriad of sizes. I’ve experienced thin insufferable assholes, fat insufferable assholes, short, tall, they run the gamut. It’s wiser to let someone earn their “Insufferable Asshole” certificate than to simply tag a group of people as being said assholes before they prove their worth, as it were.

If you want to be “successful” at FA, if you want to “pass” FA…in my way of thinking, the first thing you need to do is quit with the fucking crabbing about the thin people and oh the thin people and ach the thin people and their thin ways and their egos and bragging or whatever other villainous adjectives you want to lay at their feet. Stop with the “she looks like a social x-ray /lollipop/bobblehead” or “he’s a musclebound lunkhead idiot doucheweasel” crap. Because that’s not a) helpful or b) really the jist of Fat Acceptance because it’s got absolutely nothing to do with YOU and YOUR acceptance of YOURSELF. You can’t spread the good word if 98 percent of your words are about how ugly and wretched and evil thin people are.

I’m a high roader, I admit. After internet flame wars in my distant youth where I said some fucking horrific things, I have found it far easier for my own personal karmic level to resist the urge to spew forth rage and bile and whatnot. I know it’s hard to high road when it seems like the universe in general is bound and determined to low road our collective ass, but ultimately, I don’t think it serves a greater purpose to saddle up and go apeshit on those who froth at the fat and the evil we apparently do. And when I say “apeshit”, I’m talking about lowering the level of discourse versus responding in a mannered and level-headed fashion. You know, putting into practice the whole “walk away for a few minutes, perhaps run around in a circle, collect one’s thoughts, and dial it back, spiffy” thing. Taking a moment to dial back and collect doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be angry. Shit, I am fueled on caffeine, defiance, and anger. But the moment I lose control of that finely tuned anger and rage, I’m of no use to me or anyone. Yes, yes, it’s all very Jedi, dammit.

So let’s redirect and have a moment of think – what are you accomplishing with the “thin people are jerks and they’re the reason why I’m so miserable” campaign? I think it’s safe to say, not much. Fat Acceptance’s central message isn’t “Let Us Destroy the Thin For It Is They Who Have Caused Me Such Angst and What Have You”*. If that’s what you think Fat Acceptance has given you the green light to do, it’s time for you to start reading up.

I'm quite happy to terrify you.

2010-10-26T16:52:00.003-05:00

So yeah, there's this blog and it's over at Marie Claire's website and I'm not linking to it because I don't want to give the writer or Marie Claire one more goddamnable hit on their website, and two writers I enjoy have already thrown down exquisitely regarding the subject:

Lesley Kinzel at Fatshionista aaaand

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville

..and they say what I would say in response to the utter claptrap that appeared at Marie Claire today.

But.

To reiterate to those who read me and those who know me and those who might wander across this blog looking for some sort of assurance that they are worthwhile human beings who deserve to be treated like human beings: you can thrive on a steady diet of defiance. You can thrive in spite of a trillion messages being pounded down your throat every day that you are lesser and worthless because of your fat. I know sometimes there's frustration because you may feel like you're not doing "enough" for Fat Acceptance because you might not blog or write letters or whatever, but SIMPLY EXISTING and BEING and LIVING in public is a gigantic protest in and of itself. Walking out the door every day and making it to the end of that day is a rebellious act. Owning yourself, every single fucking inch of yourself, is a glorious "fuck you" to every person who thinks what Marie Claire writer-person wrote is right on the money or every mouthbreathing internet commentator who takes shelter in anonymity to vomit out bile and bullshit.

You don't have to answer to anyone about your body. You don't have to justify your existence to one single solitary person in this entire fucking universe. You don't have to apologize, you don't have to explain your exercise routine (if you have one, which you don't have to have) or go into detail about what you eat or smile and nod politely when someone who "means well" gives you weight loss diet advice.

And when you have those shitty days (because you will) when you cannot take one. more. bullshit. article or report about what horrendous creatures fat people are, know that you can be renewed just as easily by something positive you read about fat people or a song that you dig or a movie that you love or that knitting project you've been putting off (*looks forlornly at knitting needles and yarn lying dormant on desktop*). You can be renewed and you can summon up the strength to get up and go out and THRIVE on the defiance that is the fuel in this fight.

Fat acceptance and self-admiration/enjoyment/love is, at its heart, in this society as it stands today, the shit-hot ultimate in defiance. Don't despair, my thin compatriots, because the shit end of the stick gets brandished at you a-plenty too. There's always "more" you could be doing, am I right? It's never quite good enough, is it. That? That kind of tripe is precisely why Fat Acceptance isn't simply for the fat. If you're still scared of the word "fat" and all the baggage it carries, then by all means, call it "size acceptance" or "body acceptance", but my message remains precisely the same: you are absolutely, 100 percent a-okay the way you are this very day, this very second. There's no disclaimer, there are no rules that state you can only dig yourself if you're X pounds and X size and X height. And those that would tell you there are are, well, full of shit.

I can only class it up so much, you know.

Defy and thrive, everyone. Defy and thrive.

I don't think that's the right question.

2010-10-01T18:52:00.005-05:00

I was watching the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric tonight, and they did a story about Tyler Clementi. It segued into Katie Couric's Question of the Day or whatever silly-ass way they term it, and the Question focused on the internet and privacy.

All I could think was that's not the right question. Yes, privacy was certainly an issue in regards to Tyler Clementi, but in my head, the question should have been why the hell this young man had to feel so low, so awful, so rotten for his sexuality? Why the hell are we, as a society, still a-okay and supercool with being completely fucking awful to others and insisting that harassment and abuse and dismissing human beings as being less than because of their sexuality or their appearance is "a rite of passage", "a character builder", "something everyone goes through, so suck it up and tough it out"? I want to know what people think about *that*, not coughing up the same rote bullshit about "well, if you're on the internet, don't expect things to be private".

Lesley Kinzel's amazing piece at Fatshionista got me thinking about my own past, and then the Katie Couric question just launched me into orbit and thinking about how fucking lucky I was. I still can't explain to you why I dodged so many metaphorical bullets in my youth. I had one bad year, my freshman year in high school, and I can conjure up memories from that year in an instant. I had been privileged until that point - yes, I was the fat girl, but I had a loud mouth and was eager to please and overcompensate to the billionth degree in order to make people like me. Or, at least, to not blow shit at me for existing. And it had worked until freshman year.

From day one in homeroom, I became a target for being fat, for being "weird", for being who the fuck knows (even to this day). Tacks were left on my chair, signs were stuck to my back, I could feel the staring and the eye-rolling glances directed at me if I wore something "odd", the heat in my face as I turned redder and did my best to "ignore it" (we're always supposed to ignore it, aren't we). One guy (and he was fat, he should have been on my side, right?) barked at me, "I'd kill myself if I were you". I could not/STILL CAN'T fathom why I drew their ire, why they hated me so much, what I'd done to deserve this (because of course we must have done something to deserve it), why couldn't they just leave me alone, WHY.

I haven't thought deeply about that year in a long time. I see my survival and my (eventual) thriving as another piece of my privilege, of being able to push it to the cobwebby parts of my brain that I access less and less. But this story of this young man, and how more and more stories that follow a similar through line like his has conjured up so much hurt and so much anger in me. The hurt isn't as sharp as it was, time does dull it, but oh, Christ, the anger. The fervent wishing that I could go back in time and just punish every one of those smug fuckers, punish them with the irony that in three years' time, they'd be watching me with my ratted up Robert Smith hair and combat boots marching my fat ass up on stage to accept an award for being voted "Most Original" - shit, they may very well have voted for me.

At 38 years old, I want to stay on the high road, I want to be the bigger person and each and every trite, bullshitty cliche that gets whipped out, but the anger fuels me tonight. It burns hard for all the young (and grown up) people who are gone and who are lost and don't know what to do or where they can go, for those who hear that they aren't alone but can't believe it yet, for those who don't know if they have any fight left in them to go through one more day facing the people who seem so eager to destroy them.

I want people to be held accountable.

I want there to be consequences.

I want a reckoning.

I want the answer to "why".

No, not a blog break, just lazy.

2010-09-27T19:06:00.004-05:00

Given that weeks tend to fly by between my blog postings, one could easily interpret my radio silence as being blog breaks...well, no. Back in the days of LiveJournal when it was fresh and new and you had to get a supersecret invite code and all that stuff, I would update that mother two, even three times a day. Now...now, it's like pulling teeth.

It's not that I don't have anything to say, but I'm a big fan of saying it only if no one else has covered it. And as of late, far better writers than I say it in such a more awesomey fashion.

For instance (oh yeah, it's shaping up to be a "let's link to other people's blog posts" kind of night)...the effervescent and all-around delightful Marianne Kirby at the Rotund. She rocked my athletic socks right the frig off my feet with her latest post - and it's one I'm keen to bookmark for future re-reads. It's something I try to remember when I get all fired up and clenchy about things - to me, as much as I personally am not down with dieting and all manner of gastric surgery, I have to be cool about people choosing those choices because I respect, above all things, body autonomy.

Where it gets muddy, though, is that more often than not, that respect for body autonomy is not returned. There are few things more irritating in my little world than being on the receiving end of Weight Loss Messiah-ing. I ditched a friendship because of it, and I damn near stopped talking to my sister because of it as well. And certainly society at large does NOT want you to make a choice that doesn't involve dieting for weight loss purposes or bariatric surgery. How often does Fat Acceptance get tagged as "giving up"? Like...constantly? Yet, inside my head, going back to my old habits of dieting and self-loathing and riding that unicycle of suck is my version of giving up.

I've got some horses I'd like to hop back upon - being more active is the main one. I've been doing a lot of thinking and mulling about my activity level, and I think one of the main reasons why I bailed on going to the gym (which I actually enjoyed - hopping on a machine hamster-style appealed to my love of routine) was that it fooled me, you see. When I was a regular gym goer, I was in Fat Acceptance Short Pants - I was in an internal war, torn between "I want to lose weight" and "I just want to be active and feeling good". I dropped some pounds and unfortunately, became entranced with that. And once I slammed up against that wall, like we all do, I stopped focusing on the "feeling good" and got mired in the "but why won't I lose any more weight" whining which led to "I don't feel like going to the gym/I'll go tomorrow/I'll go next week/I'll start up again on Monday/oh shit look my membership's expired". Now that my mind's far more aligned with where I need it to be, I find myself trapped in my personal routine and for those of you that are routine-minded as I am know damn well that breaking out of a routine is a gigantic pain in the ass. But perhaps, with this blog post, I will find the internal spark to find my way back to motivating my carcass hither and yon.

Or...I will continue to play Angry Birds until my pointer finger falls off. Yes, I KNOW the rest of the world totally knows about Angry Birds and playing Angry Birds. I'm the woman who is just figuring out Rick-Rolling, for Christ's sake. It's just...oh my stars, it's a festive little game. Perhaps I could do leg lifts while I'm playing it...well, if nothing else, I will have a most muscular pointer finger by the time I'm done with it.

Goodbye, horse's ass.

2010-09-01T18:42:00.004-05:00

To whatever hipster douchebag, horse's ass, and overall jackmonkey it may concern:

I sometimes wonder what goes through your head as you amble down the street, eyeballing the world and racking up your witty bon mots to share with your Facebook/Twitter/internet audience. Do you think you're this deeply intellectual observer of the human condition, compelled to lord over those in the world you believe to be limited in their capacity to understand the things you consider to be hallmarks of a truly evolved mind? Do you think you have unique, remarkable insight into the world and all its machinations? Do you think you're special?

The thing I love about you, hipster douchebag, is just how much you wallow in privilege and absolutely refuse to acknowledge one drop of it. You're the kind of d-bag that crabs and rags about the horrors of fat people but you hang out with your fat pal and don't consider hir to be "one of them". Your fat pal's one of the good ones, right, because ze puts up with your horseshit and hey, ze's on a diet for the umpteenth time so ze's trying, at least. You insist that everyone can afford to eat "healthy" and cut your eyes at the contents of fat people's grocery carts so you can feel superior about your basketful of organic bok choy. If you can afford it, everyone else can, right?

And by gum, you are going to make sure that every single person within reading or listening distance knows precisely how special you are at any given moment in time, how well you adhere to your assorted "healthy" routines and food choices and bask in the praise that always comes because people mistake food intake and activity levels and weight loss for virtue an awful lot these days. You're determined to be the Messiah amongst your loved ones when it comes to health, for you (and only you) have discovered the way, the truth, and the light. It's only because you care that you're commenting on what your friends and family choose to eat in your presence. You mean well. It's coming from a good place. Truly.

It's not necessary for you to be self-aware, H.D., because you're aware of ALL THINGS. You totes understand the assorted struggles that assorted people endure at any given moment because you read that one book once or saw a movie or watched a TV show about this thing in the middle of the night in a hotel room. Because of your learnings, it's super-okay for you to say insensitive, idiotic things and brand them as "controversial" or "politically incorrect" because you're just speaking the TRUTH in very bold, capital letters. People who might attempt to correct you are oversensitive and need to just get over whatever it is they need to get over and not take things so seriously, god.

It's just, you know, whatever.

Consternation, uproar!

2010-08-14T08:36:00.006-05:00

I have to be honest, I am a cynic, and one with a short fuse in the patience department to boot. Nothing gets my eyes rolling harder or elicits sighs of a huffy nature more than gooey, insipid claptrap. You know, like what Oprah and skridillions of other "self-help" creatures push. My attitude can best be described as "Eat, Lay, Shove". I'm sure someone could scan previous entries of mine and level a "insipid claptrap" accusation at me, and I'd cop to it because I am nothing if not painfully self-aware of how I get when I open up the Lecture Loft and start peeling off Nuggets of Knowledge (tm). Or maybe I should spell it Knuggets of Knowledge (tm)...hmmm, no, that's too cutesy, like calling a place the Kooky Kafe or Krafty Korner.

Anyway, I'm putting out there that I'm an asshole so you know that when I say things like what I'm about to say, you know I'm being very serious. Imagine me staring at you intently like James Earl Jones does in "Conan the Barbarian" when he's trying to hypnotize people before he beheads them, with the little "doodily doooo!" music sting from the "Tiki Idol" episode of "The Brady Bunch" when they go to Hawaii and Vincent Price is tall, Hawaiian-shirted evil. Or not. I can't really remember all that well at this point, but he's Vincent Price for Christ's sake, you know he had to have at least a little bit of evil in him. No, wait, he wasn't evil, but talked to a carved wooden Tiki face named, like, Bob or Oliver or some shit.

Nigel?

What I'm trying to tell you between the vomitings-out of my subconscious on a terrifyingly early Saturday morning is: it is time to get free and stop being afraid. Billions - BILLIONS! - of dollars are sucked out of us every year by those preying on our fears, fears that these creatures generate and exploit and have made a part of our general culture over the years. We are to do whatever it takes and spend as much money as possible in order to combat being fat, getting old, being "uncool", being "different". Oh, you can be different up to a certain point, mind you, especially if you still fit into a certain dress/pant size and, if you take your glasses off and put on some makeup or a classy suit, morph into the Hot Piece of Hiney that was being hidden by your damnable, silly desire to not follow the cultural norms.

We're to be terrified of food, too, have you noticed? It's always been there, but it's just getting worse the more people (people who wouldn't understand the concept of "privilege" if it sneaked up on them and bit them in the ass like a king cobra) yap about it. I think they're sincerely baffled by the concept that not everyone has access to farmer's markets, or even a decent grocery store. They don't get that no, it ISN'T affordable for everyone. And yet, these are the people on the evening news, instructing everyone that if they aren't eating precisely the way they insist you should, you are, essentially, a lazy, horrible, ignorant person. You know, fat. (insert eye-rolling here)

I am more terrified by the misinformation and overblown "DON'T LOOK AT IT KEEP YOUR EYES SHUT!" (/climatic scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style) attitude about food than I am by a box of Frosted Flakes or the existence of fast food. I am genuinely dismayed, as I've said a trillion times before, at people hanging moral worth on what goes into their mouths. The thing I want for everyone, where possible, is to have a relationship with food that is enjoyable and generates nothing but feelings of "yuuuum". I want people to stop conflating having a normal appetite with disordered eating. I want people to stop believing that they must do all they can to ignore their hunger, to ignore what their bodies are telling them because they're terrified they'll "ruin" something. Lesley at Fatshionista fucking NAILED it when she said in a recent recap of "Huge": "Denial breeds craving — deprivation makes us desire whatever we’re missing more and more." If there's an effort that needs to be made regarding the food ingested by Americans, it needs to revolve around removing the shame that is hung on everyone for eating, period. It needs to revolve around working to give everyone safe, affordable access to food of all kinds. Yeah, it revolves around basically remaking society from top to bottom. Ain't I a stinker?

But it has to be done, so many things have to be done. It's hard work, but even the smallest, seemingly "nothing" things can have huge impacts. Simply being visible and living our lives without shame or apology is GIGANTIC in and of itself. I like to be insidious and sneak in my points in a cheery (yes, I can be cheery), casual fashion if an appropriate conversation comes up. I don't suddenly screech "YOU CAN'T TELL HOW HEALTHY SOMEONE IS BY LOOKING AT THEM!!!" during a chat about "The Lord of the Rings". I like the word "insidious" a lot. Hell, how do you think the powers that be work? They rock their shit in an insidious fashion, so why not do the same? I don't have any illusions that the "Thin Is the Only Way To Be" trope is going away any time soon, and ultimately, I'm a fan of body autonomy. But I am compelled on multiple levels to offer an alternative to everyone I possibly can, an alternative that isn't just for fat people, but for every single person on this planet. You have to do what you think you have to do in order to find your peace, but to give you a phrase: Don't Delay, Live Today.

Holy. SHIT. I think I have just found my cliche'd phrase that is going to pay and PAY HUGE BANK. Look out, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and oh yes, OPRAH HERSELF: I am coming for you, and I'm equipped with Nuggets of Knowledge(tm) with which I will strike like a king cobra!

Eventually!

Sunday morning ramblings from my bed.

2010-07-18T09:41:00.004-05:00

I am frigging exhausted with:

Every time someone rails about people being superficial and then turn around to bag on someone's outfit, be they someone famous or someone walking down the street

Every time someone loses their shit "jokingly" about how revoltingly old someone looks

Every time someone trots out "real women have curves" and then crabs about "skinny bitches"

Every time someone says "everyone should embrace their body, no matter what" but then shakes a finger and tsk-tsks at deathfat-sized women, because "we need to be healthy"

Every time someone looks at pictures taken on the sly of strangers in stores and posted online in order to mock the fat, the poor, and the underprivileged

Every time someone makes fun of an old friend they've found on Facebook because they aren't wearing the latest clothes or have "fashionable" haircuts

The above are things I have read online or witnessed in person within the last couple of days. Holy shit, am I exhausted with it. I am tired of people talking out of both sides of their mouths. Don't sit there and tell me "oh yes, I am all for body and size acceptance and our children are being tormented by blahbettyblah" and then turn around and tell me how hideous so-and-so looks in zie's Facebook pictures.

I'm over people being told the "right" way to dress, the "right" way to appear, the "must-have" accessories for whatever, the "right" way to behave. I'm sick of reading wailing about how certain bodies shouldn't wear certain clothing or how one's body is just too "fill in the blank with some sort of body hatred" to wear a certain piece of clothing. I'm tired of fat being used as this devilish spectre that's always lurking around every corner, ready to POUNCE upon any hapless person (usually a woman) who DARES to eat something that involves sugar or carbohydrates. I am way over the idea that being constantly hungry is a state one should aspire to.

Can I also add that it fries my ass a bit when I read a cooking magazine and see recipes doctored up so they're less "decadent", "sinful", or "naughty"? Because you know what? I'm going to take that recipe and I'm going to make it with every fucking inch of full-fat and sugar and carb product I can possibly find. And I'm going to eat it and I may very well take pictures of myself eating it so you can see the big-ass smile on my fat fucking face as I enjoy the shit out of it until I'm satisfied and then I put it in a Glad container for leftovers the next day!

Like I said...Sunday morning ramblings from my bed.

Today in "Check Your Privilege".

2010-07-11T12:51:00.004-05:00

So I was watching the CBS Evening News last night, and they closed the show out with a segment about "Iron Kids", a program that has kids as young as seven or eight beginning to train for and compete in triathlons. Of course, the distances required aren't as massive as grown-up triathlons, but the essential elements remain - you swim, you bike, you run. Of course, it was framed as a STRONG VOLLEY in the BATTLE against CHILDHOOD OBEEEEEESITY with that sniffy underlying theme of "you're a bad parent if you don't have your child training for triathlons"/"nothing's worse in the whole wide world than being fat or having fat children".

What I find endlessly interesting in all the media coverage of fat is the absolute disinterest by ANYONE that has an ass attached to a media outlet regarding the concept of privilege. The particular Iron Kids group that they profiled was a festival of white faces and undoubtedly, serious cash money, and it was presented as simply the default state for all of us. Never a moment is taken to acknowledge that a goodly part of this country doesn't exist in a lush suburb of two-parent families where there's plenty of time in one's day to make homemade meals and shop the local organic coop and the farmer's market and enroll the kids in 1,498 different activities that will all magically make one's child into a slim, attractive, fit, intelligent, courteous, clever, and delightful human. And if you bring up the concept of privilege in, let's say, an internet message board forum about how folks aren't exactly made of money, there's always the ONE person who insists they managed to be unemployed and still eat fresh organic hoo-hah and there's no reason why other people can't do the same on a limited budget...and you know, that one person always seems to be single, no kids, and living in an area that actually has access to fresh organic hoo-hah. But zie's not privileged, no sirree!

When is someone, ANYONE in the mainstream media going to summon up enough courage to fully address the gigantor issues of privilege and how it affects people in this country and around the globe? Until that day comes, I have no choice but to regard every single hand-wringing story produced by the mainstream media as, essentially, a concern troll writ large, a concern troll that doesn't really give a rat's ass about health or fitness or wellbeing but instead is really, really miffed that fat people exist. And I have to admit that the idea that my existence causes such handwringing is kind of entertaining, because it's simply fuel for my fire.

"No matter how hard you try you can't stop us now."

A lesson in what not to do...and other items.

2010-06-23T18:59:00.005-05:00

When a conversation comes up about the immense pressure on people (especially women and girls) to conform to society's extremely narrow beauty standard and people voice their dismay at the difficulty involved in trying to keep our heads above water and above all the steaming, wretched horseshit thrust at us every single day, the way to reassure those participating in the conversation isn't to post up a picture of a Hollywood actress who is slightly larger than the average Hollywood actress as evidence of what a "real" woman looks like.

First of all, let's take a 101 break: EVERY woman is a "real" woman. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. The woman who is 100 pounds soaking wet is as much a woman as one who is 300 pounds. The whole "the only women who are REAL women are ones who have meat on their bones" trope is silly-ass and wrong, so you need to get that through your noggin now, thank you.

Second of all, posting up a photograph of a woman whose body shape is one that would be just as difficult to obtain for many women as obtaining an extremely slender body shape doesn't address the ultimate issue, which is society's extraordinarily small range of what is considered beautiful and the resulting, massive pressure upon all of us, women and men, to conform to that standard. So sit back, think a bit, contemplate the bigger picture.

Third of all...well, there is no third of all at the moment. Or maybe there is, I've still got time on my hands to yap for a bit longer. I found myself astounded a bit ago while reading Shakesville - Melissa McEwan linked to an op-ed column on the Chicago Sun-Times website, which I won't link here because I don't want the writer to get any more page hits than she already may be. The op ed is a fat-hating screed done under the guise of "being funny" (those always wind up going oh so well), and it's not particularly surprising in its smugness or its complete fail in the humor department. It reads like something I might have written as a humorous column for my high school newspaper - pretty much shit, shit, shit for 500 words or whatever. But what's truly shocking...is that a good 98 percent of the comments...TELL HER OFF. There's no "why yes, you're right Crappy Writer, those darn fat people make this world a shitheap"s or the usual claptrap. Like, there are people telling her she's an ignorant butt writing ignorant nonsense! I'm telling you, it's like setting eyes on a wonder of the world seeing internet commenters on a story about fat NOT HATING ON FAT PEOPLE. It's like Bizarro Internet Commenter World, up is down, black is white, dogs and cats living together - MASS HYSTERIA. I'm sure it's an anomaly, but damn, was it refreshing to read.

Oh, and one more thing - holy shit am I sick of the ad for Miller beer or some such shit that takes place at a dog show at a sports arena. The beer guys are appalled, heavens to Betsy are they appalled that a DOG SHOW is being held in a place where such masculine sporting events as basketball and hockey normally take place. Memo to dog showers - your hobby (in some cases, a mighty profitable one) is officially stupid, worthless, and just a wee bit too sissy to be held in a place that celebrates Manly Athletics and sells Miller products. In my view, it's not a gentle tease at the culture of dog showdom, it's a "jeez, those fuckers are weird and obsessed with *dogs* - so if you want to be cool, you'd better not be one of them".

It makes me think of a blog post I started a couple nights ago and then stopped because I was wedging my head far too up my ass and getting too pompous (and believe me, I am plllenty pompous) and Opening Up the Lecture Loft-y about the facts of life. No, not the facts of life involving the birds and bees, but the little things that I wish I knew at an earlier age that might have made certain years of my life a wee bit easier. One of those was that no matter what your interest might be, be it dog shows or "Star Trek" or cosplay or whatever, somebody out there is going to take quite a large amount of delight in shitting all over it. At some point you will be made to feel stupid for liking something or having a certain hobby, and you may be made to feel so bad about it that you abandon something you love in order to avoid the pain that comes with being mocked. If you abandon it, it's certainly understandable because being mocked constantly isn't, you know, fun. But if you can manage it and take refuge in the thing you love and the friends you may have made because of that thing you love, being mocked won't hurt quite as bad and you'll still have your kick-ass whatever it is to enjoy.

One of the best things I ever learned over my years was to stop wasting my time trying to be cool, trying to be hip, trying to be something or someone I wasn't. There is tremendous freedom in not giving a rat's ass and I invite you to try.

And I link other people's blog entries.

2010-06-14T18:43:00.003-05:00

Shakesville's Melissa McEwan hits it out of the park/smokes it/wails like awesome with today's edition of I Write Letters.

Jonah Hill and my former life.

2010-06-01T18:32:00.007-05:00

For those of you who don't know, Jonah Hill is a 26-year-old actor whose star is on quite the rise. He first garnered major attention in 2007's "Superbad" and has since become something of a go-to dude in dudecentric movies like "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"* and "Funny People". His latest film, "Get Him To the Greek", matches him with U.K. comedian Russell Brand, who reprises his role of Aldous Snow from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". He's featured prominently on the posters for the comedy, and I'm guessing from the general tone of the trailer, he's essentially the star of the movie.

Oh, and he's fat. Fat, white, and male. Hmm.

I don't begrudge Jonah his success - it's rather refreshing to see a fat guy (not Hollywood fat, but full-metal fat) in the spotlight, even if it's in movies that aren't exactly warm fuzzy huggles for anyone who isn't male or white. He's even done a somewhat arty indie dark comedyish flick called "Cyrus" alongside Catherine Keener and John C. O'Reilly, so he seems invested in expanding his range beyond just baffled/affable zinger-doling fat guy. The thing that just kind of rubs my chub a bit is that we all know goddamned well that if Jonah was Joanie, Joanie wouldn't be toplining a major summer comedy release from Universal Studios. Joanie would be doing heartfelt, tear-streaked interviews with "Entertainment Tonight" or "Access Hollywood" about how repellent a person she was for being fat and how many personal trainers she had in her employ and what diet plan she was currently using to finally GET CONTROL of her life. She'd be doing the usual bullshit song-and-dance that almost every full-metal fat or even showbiz fat woman does the second she receives any sort of notoriety. Just now, I did a google search for interviews with Jonah Hill, trying to see if there was anything referring to him going on any sort of diet or weight loss effort for his "health", and while there's plenty of places where *others* discuss his fat, there doesn't seem to be anything from his mouth itself. His fat - at the present time, at any rate - isn't a liability.

And that just kind of frosts my ass a bit. In my younger days, I did some performing, I trod the boards, if you will. In college, I took improvisation classes with a wonderful teacher, Martin deMaat, probably the singularly most inspiring teacher I had in all my years in school. One of the initial exercises we did in my level one Improv class was standing in the middle of a circle of fellow students and loudly proclaiming, "I AM A GODDESS/GOD!". Ohhhh, I struggled with that a lot. Insecurity and cynicism does not lend itself to proclamations of goddessness. The size of my body and my general disdain of its size restrained me more often than not. I knew I was good at improv, I wasn't afraid of performing, I wasn't afraid of being funny - really, my only fear was saying unfunny things at inappropriate times. Martin gave me one of the best compliments I've ever received - that one of my strongest skills was being able to revive a scene that was dying and make it funny again. I could have easily moved into the training center at Second City, I reckon. But at 21, I also suspected what the score would wind up being. Second City was not (and still isn't) known for being a springboard to success for funny deathfat chicks. So I turned to writing - screenplays, primarily - and lost that improv muscle I'd worked so hard to develop.

Which, really, frosts my ass a bunch to this day. If there are any regrets I sport, it would be how I allowed my fat to guide my chickening out, because it was chickening out. Oh, I don't doubt for a second that my fat would have limited my "potential", and I would have struggled mightily, and hell, probably would have given up the ghost at some point. But I loved improv and I loved performing. I still love making people laugh. Not just *shrug* "love". We're talking LOVE in gigantic puffy letters. Looooooooooove from the back of your throat, looooooove from the bottom of your feet to the top of your skull. But my love couldn't overthrow the voice in my head that said "you need to apologize and make amends for being as fucking fat as you are/you need to be X size in order to be a success". My love (at that time in my life) couldn't have held up against the inevitable barrage of questions and demands my body would have inspired. Hiding was easier. Writing romantic comedies (ironic since when I was in my major screenplay writing mode, my life severely lacked both romance and comedy) that always featured a heroine that was just this side of plump was easier (Kate Winslet would be employed for eons if I had my own production company). I couldn't have borne the brunt of rejection that would have revolved solely around my fat rather than my ability.

Which leads to my ultimate frosting that frosts on behalf of both women AND men - that when you fucking google Jonah Hill, it autofills shit about his weight. It offends me that there are forums discussing Jonah Hill's weight or any other celebrity's weight. It's a plumb fucking miracle that I read an interview with him where he was discussing his part in writing the movie version of "21 Jump Street" and his weight wasn't referenced at all. While fatness might not be quite the liability for male performers as it is for females, we're always but a concern trollesque question or barely-disguised fat joke away in a puff piece or a movie trailer from being reminded that Jonah Hill or Kevin James or Jorge Garcia or Seth Rogen (though not so much at present) are GOOD SWEET CHRIST FAT!!!! They're Hollywood employable-fat, mind you, but fat all the same. And the shame is that 95 percent of the time, it's the performers themselves who work overtime to let us know that they are a) fat and b) will gladly humiliate themselves as needed onscreen or onstage in order to apologize for said fatness.

My dreamiest dream, which I don't expect to be fulfilled anytime soon, would be for a fat actor to be in a leading role where one's character didn't sob miserably due to one's fat; didn't engage in constant, snarky self-depreciation because of one's fat; didn't embark on a wacky montage illustrating just what a lumbering, clumsy oaf one was in physical/exercise situations because of one's fat; didn't sit down in front of a dinner plate piled with towers of "junk" food and proceed to shove it all into one's face because of one's fat; and didn't "strike out" with a romantic interest because of one's fat. I know, I know, it's asking an awful lot to see a movie or a television show where a fat person is portrayed as human, but I told you, my dreams are terribly dreamy.

*I am, despite its many problems, fond of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" as the movie made a valiant attempt *not* to portray Sarah Marshall as the world's most awful harpy woman in the entire world - an effort was made to, you know, give her something resembling depth. Also, frankly...I have a Jason Segel thing.

A little riffage on thin allies/potential allies.

2010-05-15T15:45:00.007-05:00

I had a conversation once, a long long time ago, with someone who was miles, downright light years from being fat. This woman basically fit the societal mold of being appropriately thin. Somehow, the chat turned to shopping for clothes and I mentioned that I generally hated shopping because I had such limited options and finding clothing that suited my personal style AND fit decently enough. She nodded sagely and informed me that she really, really understood how hard it was to be a fat person because she had gone shopping with a fat friend once.

This? In my head? Not the way to be an ally. Not the way to show support. The only reaction I could have was for my eyes to grow very, very wide and go on a hunt for the nearest liquor cabinet.

Everybody's body is a target in this day and age, no doubt about it - the finger-wagging's aimed at every single person for a variety of reasons and no one escapes it no matter how slender, how toned, how muscular, how groomed. I think for Fat Acceptance to thrive, it needs to involve everyone of every size. However, I also think it's terribly important for those who are of a smaller, more societally acceptable size to kick back and listen to those of us who would be cast as a headless fatty in a news report when we say "no, you really don't understand what it's like to be a fat person simply because you shopped with a fat person once and I'm struggling to conjure up sympathy for you when you go on a roll about the trauma of not being able to find anything you like at Express or the Gap or Anthropologie or Banana Republic or Abercrombie and Fitch or about 19 trillion other clothing stores". It's important for you to understand that the experience of a fat woman like me, the dreaded deathfat, is going to be wildly different than the experiences you might have had. My body is the kind of body that gets cast as the headless fatty in panicked news reports about the obesity epidemic. My body's the body that runs the risk of getting its ass booted off a plane for being too fat to fly. And my body's the kind of body that is often tagged as being too friggin' fat for Fat Acceptance. Oh yes, I will explain.

When I say "too fat for Fat Acceptance", I'm not talking about folks who are enmeshed in FA and have been rocking it for a long time. I'm talking about the folks on the outside looking in, the folks who might be taking their baby steps towards reading up on it and pondering the concept, who are still stuck in that "Real Women Have Curves!!" mode. Women's magazines love to give a fuckton of lip service to EMBRACING YER CURVES! and LOVING YERSELF and so often on pages facing the latest HAWT diet advice. There's a decided limit on how much curve we're allowed to embrace and just how much we're allowed to love ourselves, and if you're built like me? Ohhhhh lordy begordy, I am SO not supposed to not diet. I should be on the table right now, having my stomach jacked with and shrunk down to the size of a thumb (or is it an egg now?) because I AM A TICKING TIME BOMB.

I've probably said it before (I do tend to repeat myself), but the thing you're going to need to accept (hurr) is that if you want to be down with Fat Acceptance and be an ally? It covers ALLLLLLLLLL levels of fat, ALLLLLLLLLLLL levels of health, ALLLLLLLL levels of ability. You don't get to decide that you're going to be all for the fatty that goes to the gym five days a week but scold the fatty that doesn't exercise at all. You don't get to fling kudos at the fatty who eats salad and tsk tsk the fatty that would rather shit twice and die than eat anything resembling a vegetable. Deciding that you believe in Fat Acceptance doesn't give you a pass to subsequently declare certain types of fat people unacceptable for Fat Acceptance.

I want Fat Acceptance to spread and grow, and I want to see loads of people join in. But I'll be damned if I'll blow party horns and toss confetti and have a welcoming cake party for someone who'd eyeball me and see me as a liability.

TWO BLOG NOTES!: 1) I am going to be out of town until Wednesday evening, so if you make a comment, I won't be able to moderate it until then. 2) This post was inspired in part by Lesley's comment regarding how experiences differ for differently sized people during this discussion.

Of course it's because of the toys.

2010-04-28T18:39:00.005-05:00

Being a FA blogger who shies away from taking apart articles and studies because I don't feel I'm terribly good at it means that I tend to avoid the terror-filled shitpiles of "lifestyle" and "OMG OBESITY GET IT AWAY FROM YEW" articles on pretty much every single website in existence. But as I was perusing the Yahoo Entertainment page, I came across this gem:

California county bans fast-food toys to stem child obesity

I didn't think it was physically possible for me to roll my eyes so far back into my skull!

I just...I can't even construct a reaction to this nonsense that isn't laden with sarcasm and disdain, everyone. From the hand-wringing about that - that - FAT-PUSHING SLATTERN MCDONALD'S!!! to the mind-blowingly dopey "Well gosh, our kids are just so darn persuasive so therefore we are incapable of saying no to them when they demand McDonald's"...it's sincerely appalling to me that people this incapable of critical thinking and simple logic are in positions of power.

Look, I'm not a parent nor do I have any plans or desire for becoming one, but I spend plenty of time in the company of parents who have young children (ostensibly the TARGET of the FAT-DEALING EVIL THAT IS MICKEY D'S - THE D STANDS FOR DEVIL!!!!) and let me tell you, none of them have any hesitation looking at their kids and saying "yeah, fuck no" to anything from "can we have McDonald's" to "can I get on the shed and play Superman". I would suspect a vast majority of parents are just as capable. In online brawls about the evils of fast food and whatnot, the mystical Horrible Strawparent is always conjured up - you know, the one that everyone's seen giving her infant a bottle of Coke and a fistful of cotton candy (and it's always the mother, of course, NEVER the father). Horseshit stories about pretend people doing things leads to horseshit "Childhood Obesity Epidemics" and a government program that has no qualms about othering fat kids.

I'm sure I've said it before, but of course, I'll repeat myself: it never fails to astonish me how so many people are willing to roll their eyes and treat with utter cynicism so much of what is reported by the media and handed down by the government, but the second it has ANYTHING to do with fat? Holy SHIT does the logic go bye-bye. Forget about it. Even if scienterrific geniuses of the modern age, the most brilliant scientists ever to walk the earth lined up at a press conference Mercury 7-style and each stated unequivocally that the kids are okay and that good eating and physical activity is great for everyone, not just fat kids, and that fat is not a death sentence and you know, dieting doesn't work, really, and hey, while you're at it, it's none of your fucking business what anyone else's health status is and you can't tell someone's health status by looking at them and oh, let me show you our sciences, I guarantee the average person would call it all hoo-hah. Which simply goes to show you that it's really not about health and it never has been. It isn't enough to feel as good as you can - there's no point to it if you don't have the "right" body to go with it.

The cure for what ailed me.

2010-04-18T14:58:00.003-05:00

I had a grumptastic day yesterday. A pair of loungetastic pants that I loved have gone missing, so as part of my fruitless hunt for them I decided I should go through the items in my dresser to see what still fit.

Ooooooh, mercy, it was a bit brutal. I've gained a bit of weight over the last few months, enough to bump me up a size or so, and as I chucked pants and shorts and skirts into a Hefty (hurr) bag, I got crabbier and crabbier, plannier and plannier about all the different ways I needed (NEEDED) to get rid of these damnable pounds that have crept up on me. Never mind that 95 percent of the items I was tossing were items that I haven't worn in literally years and had no immediate plans to wear, they were SIGNS, FABRIC SIGNS OF MY HIDEOUSNESS AND SLOTH.

So I grumped and muttered and ventilated into the ear of my gentlemanfriend (who I'm just going to call Mr. Blasphemies because it's easier than conjuring up new ways to avoid saying "boyfriend" because I'm 38, for Christ sake) for a while, knowing that the next day (or "today", if you will) I would be shopping with my sister who has lost 70 pounds and can't get through a conversation without making mention of it and that's not the kind of shit you want to hear when you're having a bad body day. But I hoped that perhaps a decent shopping excursion might perk me up. Not any random shopping, though - the only cure for what ailed me would be a jaunt to Vive La Femme in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood.

Now, I hate shopping for clothes. My taste in clothing is generally not what is sold by Lane Bryant or Torrid (well, not anymore *HEAVY SIGH*), and I'm small-boobed and big-bellied - hard to find things I find to be flattering or, hell, comfortable for me. So I avoid shopping for clothes as often as possible, preferring to shop online or making twice a year treks to Lane Bryant to find something that I don't completely hate. But shopping at Vive La Femme is such an antidote to my shopping loathery. Owner Stephanie Sack is a force of friggin' nature, a character of characters, who will spend all the time you need picking out pieces she thinks will work on you and encourages you to try things that you might never try on your own. If you're in the general Chicago area, it is so worth the trip (and the hunt for street parking) because I walked out today feeling like a million bucks and then some - and let me reiterate, I. hate. clothes. shopping.

Added bonus - she's got some pieces from Lucie Lu in store, so I was able to try on and walk out with this dress - Marianne from The Rotund was definitely right - this dress is HELLO BOOBY, so I'll be throwing a tank top underneath this. Speaking of Lucie Lu, I ordered this dress a couple weeks ago and a) it looks really cute on me and b) I got it in, like, 30 seconds. Seriously, I think I ordered on a Thursday and got it on a Saturday. So thus far, my experiences with Lucie Lu have been quite positive. I would definitely encourage giving them a whirl.

(Notes: Vive La Femme, as well as Lucie Lu, swing into the pricey range. However, I will say that for the buck, you're getting a lot of bang and life out of clothes as compared to, say, Lane Bryant or Avenue. Also, while VLF states sizes between 12 and 24, there are plenty of things in store that would fit those of us over 24. I generally roll a 26/28 on the bottom and a 22/24 on top. Stephanie is fucking magic, I swear.)

And now, a message from Your Royal Highness.

2010-04-07T18:23:00.005-05:00

(h/t to Shakesville)

"When we get fat, we fool ourselves with every kind of lie imaginable. By 2008, my weight started creeping up and I said, 'Oh, I still look good at 150. I still look good at 155. I still look okay at 165. Some of my clothes still fit at 175.' And nobody was saying 'You're fat.' I was like a bank robber who was getting away with it."—Kirstie Alley

Well, first off, who's "we"? But that's just my initial reaction to yet another gigantically unhelpful quote from the annals of Kirstie Alley.

But let's see how I've fooled myself, Kirstie. I fooled myself for years believing that I wasn't worth a good goddamn because I was fat. I fooled myself for years believing I wasn't worth love or friendship or success because I was fat. I fooled myself as a child and adolescent by enduring verbal abuse from adults (TEACHERS!) who were simply "trying to help" by openly mocking me for being fat - I couldn't believe they didn't have my best interests at heart, because after all, they just wanted me to be "healthy", right? I fooled myself with endless diets that always failed because it was "my fault".

I must have been fooling myself when something - I couldn't even TELL you what at this stage of the game - kept me going, kept me living, kept me from shrinking into a corner and completely falling apart despite everything telling me that I was bad, wrong, awful, terrible, ugly, horrible, disgusting. And when I finally made up my mind that I was enough, that I was worthwhile, that I fucking rocked socks on epic levels as a fat fat FAT FAT FAAAAT woman, well, shit. I am clearly the Queen of Foolvania for daring to think that. You know what I've gotten away with? Freedom. Contentment. Calm. Joy. Enormous amounts of laughter. A real affection for goat cheese. Traveling the world. Shaking hands, making friends. ("Eric Stratton, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you.") Better health, both physically and mentally. Love - and not "in spite of" my being fat. Or that fucked up, creepy conditional shit where it's "okay" as long as I'm trying to lose it all. Actual full-metal no bullshit support and comfort and snuggles and smooches and nudity love.

Your experience is not universal, Kirstie. And you don't speak for me, or loads and loads of people like me. And it's my goal to see to it that there are more being added every day to the loads of people who have gotten away clean.

The line must be drawn here.

2010-03-21T15:28:00.004-05:00

Yeah, I'm getting all Captain Picard/"First Contact" on your ass because I am officially DONE, DONE, DONE with the food policing and the dubbing of foods as "sinful" or "decadent" or "bad" or "good" and people turning their lives over to what the hell they place into the mouths.

It's Sunday and on a Sunday I like to lounge and channel surf. More often than not, I land on Food Network because I like food and I love to cook. They have a show called "The Best Thing I Ever Ate", featuring assorted FN hosts as well as people that are connected to food somehow - though I find it questionable why you'd have someone like Lisa Lillien, the Hungry Girl person on since she's built a career off being constantly focused on food and how "good" or "bad" it is and what you should and should never eat. In my fat, humble opinion, there's no place for anyone who sees food as the enemy, as an adversary, in anything to do with the enjoyment and consuming of food. But hey, she's thin and I'm decidedly not, so clearly SHE'S THE BIG BIG WINNER, AMIRITE???!

But I digress, kinda. The episode I watched was all about - bing bong - Guilty Pleasures.

ZO.
M.
G.

Twenty-two minutes of *gasp* people eating things that have been deep-fried or involve cream or cheese or cream AND cheese and...the worst worst WORST thing of all...strap in and grab your socks and pull because it's about to get so fucking tragically real it's going to blow your hair back:

SUGAR

The only person who managed to not apologize once for his love of clam chowder from a place called Cabby Shack was Beau MacMillan. He was rapturous in his love of the chowder - and let me tell you, it looked fantastic if you're someone who loves a quality clam chowder. He said right out of the box that he wasn't going to apologize for eating or cooking with foods like heavy cream, cheese, or basically anything else that falls on "the naughty list". Everyone else - Michael Symon, Sunny Anderson, Michael Psilakis, Donatella Arpaia, Claire Robinson, and even my beloved Duff Goldman pretty much fell over themselves to talk about how TERRIBLE and AWFUL and LETHAL their particular "guilty" pleasures were. My head was already primed to cave in AND bust right on out again when Lisa Lillien appeared - I didn't know who she was until the big-ass HUNGRY GIRL caption popped up and I almost fell right the fuck out of my bed. This is someone who, on her website's front page, doles out "advice" on eating, trots out a disclaimer about how she's not a medical professional or a nutritionist, and caps her elaborate dance with:

But it's entertaining, helpful and pretty...so enjoy it!

No, I don't think I will, but thanks for asking anyway! In fact, one of my dreamiest, fattiest, most corpulent dreams is to help people not to torment themselves about what they eat - it's that we'd live in a universe where people are allowed to believe and TRUST THEMSELVES ENOUGH to EAT FOOD. STUFF YOU LIKE. AS MUCH AS YOU WANT. You are capable of so much more than you think you are, which terrrrrifies the weight loss industry. You aren't a grown-up who takes care of your business but the second a “forbidden” or a “decadent” or a “sinful” food is anywhere within your view you morph into a gibbering toddler whose hand must be slapped and be told "NO BAD WRONG NAUGHTY".

Trust yourself. You can eat. You will not eat any innocent bystanders who happen to be close when the melty goat cheese in tomato basil sauce appears (spread appropriately on crusty bread instead). How much more energy do you want to spend berating yourself and policing yourself at every single party, at every single breakfast/lunch/dinner? How much longer are you going to put up with it?

Voulez-vous the bus.

2010-03-10T19:00:00.003-06:00

(h/t to Jezebel)

Let me tell you, when I read the "etiquette" column linked through Jez, I damn near died. I mean, seriously. First of all, just the title alone is ridonk: "Do the obese really deserve contempt?" Because it's a question that only has one answer, which is "DUH."

Now, of course, the douchebaggions of the internet/world would say "DUH, of course they deserve our contempt because they're smelly/awful/ugly/horrific/lazy/blah blee blah blah blah". I would wager the comments on said article are chock-full so, as always, dear readers, avoid. On Planet Jane, however, the "DUH" is followed by another question: "are you dumb?" Don't get me wrong, there are plenty who I think deserve my contempt in several areas of my daily life, but my contempt has nothing to do with the simple fact that they, you know, EXIST. I don't zero in on Joe Dude standing on the corner and toss him into the Contempt Column. If he opens his mouth and says something asinine, then it's time for him to be launched into Contempt Town.

I think the author of said article, Mary Mitchell from Seattle, means well...but I also think we all know how absolutely jacked shit gets when somebody "means well". She "means well" when she makes statements like:

"The fact is, most obese people are fundamentally just average-sized folks who have become trapped under layers of fat and can't seem to find a way out"

Or suggestions like:

"Be wary of activities that require a lot of walking or standing. You would do the same for anyone with a walker or wheelchair."

I've never, EVER been "average-sized". Ever. I used to joke that I sprang forth from my mother's birth canal a size 14 and never looked back. I wouldn't know what "average-sized" feels like because I've always been big. I didn't encounter a boy that was taller than me until I hit high school. I was never small enough to shop at Express or the Gap. So when the "well-meaning" get on a roll about how much pain I must be in from my fat, it's like they're talking about a Jane that exists on some other plane. I'm not in pain - well, I'm achy because I've been a walking stressball for the better part of the last nine months thanks to work, and I have a difficult time getting rid of tension. I'm not "trapped" under layers of fat. I'm not being "smothered" or "choking" or any other number of dramatic adjectives. I'm just fat, that's all. I've always been fat, fat is my default, and it's something that I am done fighting with.

Please don't assume that because I'm fat that ambulating or being upright is the bane of my existence. In fact, stop assuming that you can figure out by eyeballing me what I'm capable of doing or not doing. And that little nugget (cuz you dug it) bit of advice goes for EVERYONE you might encounter, not simply us folks who are "trapped" under layers of fat. Add that to your Mannerly To-Do List - stop fucking thinking you know precisely how healthy or unhealthy/capable or incapable someone is simply by clapping eyes upon them. Or what their lives "must be" like. Or how much they eat or don't eat.

You would think that would be common sense, but as we've learned over the years, and are reminded again and again and again pretty much every single freaking day, fatness and common sense rarely mingle in the cocktail party that is society.

The more things change.

2010-02-23T18:54:00.003-06:00

First, a quick note - Marianne Kirby, aka The Rotund, is going to be on ABC's Nightline Face-Off regarding "Is it Okay To Be Fat". I'm having a hard time not calling it Nightline After Dark and/or Nightline FACEOFF!!!! with exploding graphics. I've read the article over at ABC.com but can't bring myself to watch the clips. I go from zero to flipping my shit very easily and I know watching the video is guaranteed to put me over the edge. No matter how much I try to logic Meme Roth and the vitriol that falls out of her mouth, I can't get past her being from the Planet BWUH in the constellation *bzzzzztWOOOOOO* and that's not good for my brain or general demeanor. I think that's why I kind of take the easy-peasy way out on my blog - it's rare that I will address any article directly and approach fat acceptance, etc. from a more personal experience/emotional angle because my style of debate quickly devolves into "get bent" instead of "Here are 50 scientific facts that you overlooked, my fine fellow". I'd much rather settle into a comfy chair and rap with my readers.

Isn't that what the kids today do, get together in beanbag chairs and rap? Well, let's rap about a little something. And I might repeat myself, but bear with me.

Way way way back when I was a girl in grade school, a favorite game of mine was called "Kissing Monster". I would chase the boys around the playground, tackle my prey, and then cover the victim's face in kisses until they managed to squirm away from me (I was a bruiser as a child, so it was harder for them to escape than you might thing). One day, a teacher pulled me aside and told me (while trying very hard not to laugh) that I had to stop doing it "because they don't like it when you kiss them". Oh, how prophetic Mr. Rossi's instruction would be.

In April 2008, I talked at length about my state of singlehood and how frustrating I found the entire affair. Since then, I've spent a good deal of time taking a peek into my innards and determining how to navigate life solo in as enjoyable a fashion as possible. Which, I found, was the key - trying to have as much fun as I could despite all the noise from the outside telling me I was too this, too that, too loud, too fat, blah blah blah. At the end of the day, I really, really enjoy the hell out of my own company. If there's any advice I would give anyone who is single and may wind up single for the foreseeable future is to figure out how to enjoy your own company. Hell, it applies to everyone, single or partnered. Yes, there will be days of epic shit and loneliness and irritation. But we can have way better days and better days that far outweigh the shit days because we're all capable of way more than I think most of us give ourselves credit for. We're so trained to think we're less than, that we're incapable of reaching that mysterious "potential" simply because of the size of our waists that it can't help but bleed over into every single aspect of our lives. If anyone were to ask me what the crux of Fat Acceptance was in my head, it would be that the world would be a far better place if people didn't believe so fervently that life doesn't begin (and simply wasn't worth living) until (or unless) you hit a certain weight. So much time is being wasted, so many experiences aren't being had because of this bullshit trap, and that's tragic to me.

I touched on this in more detail at the end of December and at that time, I couldn't have predicted how my life would take an unexpected turn. It's a turn I've been trying to figure out how to discuss here because I think it is beyond important in the movement to present not just Fats With Partners Defying Stereotypes, but Fats Who Are Single and Pissed and Mixed Up About It as well as Fats Who Are Single and Rockingly Okay with it. I don't think we hear enough about the last two. But I'm going to have to start officially disclaimering myself as I have a beau (I'm 38 years old, for cry-yay, "boyfriend" seems just so...25-year-old me). Rest assured, you will be spared my waxing poetic about his dreaminess, inappropriate TMI-ing, and I'd venture to say he will be rarely discussed unless it's in the context of a fat acceptance topic. But I felt it was important to let you know what was up instead of presenting myself as Single and Pissed Yet Okay Most of the Time I Think, because that would be jerky and dishonest. I'm guilty of being jerky a bunch, but dishonesty is not my bag.

I can't really explain why my fortune in that particular department happened to change. There's no formula, no magic revision of my methodology. The thing I can promise you is that if I ever am tempted to type a platitude like "OMG THERE'S SOMEONE FOR EVERYONE!!" or "YOU HAVE TO STOP LOOKING IN ORDER TO FIND THE ONE!!!"... I will punch myself in the face for you.

To those who know me but might not know me.

2010-02-15T19:42:00.005-06:00

I'm apologizing in advance for this blog post because I will probably get disjointed (more than usual), ramble (more than usual), and whatnot. But this is a blog post for the people who don't know me as Jane, fat acceptance activist from Casual Blasphemies, but Jane... from View Askew or Janesy from LiveJournal or JaceyIBLTD from Musicland.

When you're done with this, chances are good you will think I'm deluded or ignorant or touched or all three. And you're welcome to think that when you're done because I expect it. I've heard it and the following all my life, really:

"Doesn't she realize what she looks like?" (audience member at 1990 Madrigal dinner at high school where I was playing Portia from a playlet called "When Shakespeare's Ladies Meet")

"My mom asked me if you have any friends" (friend in third or fourth grade)

"TUB OF LARD!" (car of males driving down a side street, probably junior high)

"Yes." (a young man in response to being asked if he'd accepted a bet from his friends to dance with me, senior year of high school)

"Are you pregnant?" (third grade)

"If I looked like you, I would kill myself" (Freshman year, when the entire homeroom of about 25 kids engaged in nine months of harassment, including "Wide Load" notes on my back and tacks on my chair)

My experiences aren't unusual. Ask anyone who is or was fat or in any way different from the so-called norm and I'm sure they have similar stories. I'm not particularly special in that regard. I might be slightly special snowflakey because of how I chose to deal with it. Instead of completely rejecting the world (which would have been understandable), I chose to go at it headlong and goddammit, I would make people forget I was fat by sheer force of personality. I would be the funniest, I would be the nicest, I would be the most fun person you could ever hope to meet so that the first thing you thought of when my name came up wasn't "oh, the fat girl" but "oh, the cool girl/the one who sings/the comedian/the one on the radio/the one who eats fire/the one who gives really good advice/the one who listens well/the one who writes well".

I dieted with purpose and with skill, like so many of us do. I counted my calories and exercised accordingly and I'd lose that weight and oh, how wonderful I looked, how good I looked! It was never enough, of course. My body held onto as much of my fat as it could and the second I would relax a little, not work out all five days or six days or seven days, KAZAAM it came screaming back. I did it for years. I did it from the age of 10 until my early 30s. I almost committed suicide twice in my teen years because I knew no one would love me because of my fat and I'd always be alone. (First time around, I didn't do it because I wanted to see Duran Duran live; second time around, my ego - which is epic, mind you, to this day - wanted to see how many awards I would get at the end of senior year of high school because I was very active in theater, speech, the radio station, the newspaper. Yes, the stupidest things can actually save you.)

Being a fat acceptance activist is the best decision I made, one that I'm 110 percent happy I made, and I will go to glory believing deep in my bones that fighting the diet culture and the sizeism and fatphobia and fucking wrongheaded information and attitudes that rule this country is right and the truth and even if I make ONE person embrace their size AS IT IS and not give a shit what the scale says and lives one's life without tormenting themselves about one's weight or appearance and lives one's life how it suits them without fear or apologies for it, I will feel like I did some good. But actively rejecting the diet culture, the default, the lifestyle that is deemed morally sound and "good", fucking sucks on many days.

It's been sucking the last couple of days, ever since Kevin Smith got booted off his Southwest flight and he went public so gloriously with it. It's sucked because it's served to remind me just how hated I am. When I say "I", I don't necessarily mean the Jane that you know (either in "real life" or "online"), because you may be of the "oh, I don't mean *you*" persuasion. That is, when you go on a tear about the horrid fatties making the world a shittier place or when you have no compunction about peering in someone's grocery cart and criticizing their choices because of their size or busting on a celebrity's weight gain - oh, *they're* fat and horrid, but oh no, Jane...you're not horrid. You're not like THOSE fat people - why, I don't even see you as fat! I understand that mindset. I've lived in the shadow of that mindset my entire life, worked my ass off to distract people into that mindset because I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be loved, I wanted to be cool.

Over the last couple days, it's sucked and it's hurt me to see fat people apologizing to the universe for existing and not trying hard enough to be thin and taking up too much space and failing morally for being fat; the cheery, game self-deprecating tinged with self-loathing, the act I put on for so many years rolled out before me over and over. The act is exhausting. The act is wrong. The demand for the act is morally bankrupt and vile. And yet, it's easier. It's approved, you see. If I were to declare I was going on a diet tomorrow, I would be praised to the high heavens. It wouldn't matter the kind of mental pain it would cause me, the personal pain it would cause me, the pain it would cause those closest to me because of what dieting requires of me. I would be trying for a just cause, not something as foolhardy and useless as fat acceptance (pah!). I would be liked by more people. I might even be loved. I certainly wouldn't be "crazy", that's for sure.

I don't require you to understand my fat acceptance stance. I wish you could, but I know there aren't any miracles coming down the pike anytime soon. If you're dieting, I'm not going to cheer you on or praise you for losing a half a pound. I'm not game to agree that any food you consume is "bad" or "good" because it's just food and food is lovely. I'm sure we can find plenty of other things to talk about other than your diet and other than my fat acceptance (except "Lost" - I bailed on that shit in season one). I hope you find contentment and that you find a way to dig yourself and your body and all the things it's capable of doing regardless of how much fat may be on it, and that you don't put your life on hold until that magic day when you've met your goal weight. I wish you only the best.

Jane

Let me tell you the one about the director and the airline...

2010-02-13T22:45:00.003-06:00

As covered nicely over at Shapely Prose, director Kevin Smith found himself getting the boot off a Southwest Airlines flight for posing a "safety risk" - in other words, flying while fat. Kevin's Twitter can be found here if you'd like to keep an eye on any future Tweetings he might leave about the subject.

It's hard for me to objectively talk about Kevin because I'm a blatant fangirl of his, very active on his message board at ViewAskew.com, I've had the pleasure of meeting him a couple times as well as his enormously cool wife, Jen Schwalbach. In many ways, he reminds me of me - "the fat kid" who honed the sense of humor to a razor-sharp point and developed a personality that would hopefully distract people from my fat, that they would like me *despite* my size. He's broken my heart with his honesty about his feelings regarding his weight and his numerous attempts at losing weight because holy fucking shit, I've been there, we've all been there. And I've been horrified seeing him get concern-trolled by his fans at times.

I can't say whether or not Kevin would be eager to become a public proponent of Fat Acceptance, though I know I'd love to have him. I think I *can* say that he wasn't banking on becoming a hot topic in the Fatosphere tonight. If nothing else, I hope that he holds onto the disdain and Twitter-rage towards Southwest Airlines and the realization that *he* wasn't the problem and Tweets the dopes into oblivion.

Why, I have a blog business note!

2010-01-22T19:52:00.003-06:00

I'm sitting here in the nerve center of my spinster lair, running through lists for the triltonlith time to make sure I don't forget anything as I'm leaving for Australia tomorrow. Granted, I'm not the most terribly prolific blogger, but I felt compelled to keep those who read me posted that I'm going to be awake for, like, 24 straight hours or more but thank the universe for Valium. I may even blog internationally (oooh! Exotic!) as I'll have internet access at my final destination. So that's my story.

Oh, one last thing - while I was heading into work this morning, I was turning the phrase "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" over and over in my head and thinking about meals and foods I've had over the years that I suspect taste and feel way better than being skinny does (though I've never actually been skinny ever - a future post will feature me from my youth to present and you'll understand):

*An old school Caesar salad complete with poached egg in a restaurant in Christchurch, New Zealand

*Eggs Benedict with crab at a place outside Clearwater, Florida

*A warm cinnamon sugar pretzel from a stand on the upper level of the New York-New York casino in Las Vegas

*Lobster bisque from the Capital Grill

*Cranberry White Chocolate Almond Moose Munch from Harry and David

*Chicken schnitzel from a cafe in Canberra, Australia

*Frozen Hot Chocolate from Serendipity 3 in New York City

*Creamed spinach from Smith and Wollensky

*Grilled vegetables from Benihana

*Grilled portobello mushroom sandwich with goat cheese at Cleo's in Chicago

If anyone comments, since I'll be IN THE AIR FOR FOURTEEN HOURS (oh mercy), it'll take me a bit of time to approve. But I'll get to you, I swear. Enjoy your weekend and thanks for reading.

Prepare ye the way of the fail.

2010-01-06T19:16:00.003-06:00

Dear New Year’s Dieters,

It is with some degree of sadness that I inform you that chances are rather good your “New Year’s Diet” or so-called “Lifestyle Change” that you’ve adopted effective at 12:01 January 1, 2010 is going to fail. Unfortunately, I’m unable to give you a precise date or time as to when the Brand New You is potentially going to revert back to the Old Old You, but suffice it to say you may want to begin considering a new approach.

I know you’re going to get angry with me, which I expect. I mean, it’s harsh on the ears to hear “you’re probably going to fail”. But in this instance, since it’s early in the new year and there’s still time to kick back and do a little introspective poking into one’s own gray matter, let’s use my admittedly harsh statement to do just that. Let’s have a bit of a think together.

I’ve been where you’re at, about…oh, I’d say 15-20-25-30 times or more over the course of the last 37 years. And every single time I believed that THIS TIME WILL BE THE LAST TIME because “I know what I’m doing this time and I did it alllll wrong the last time!”. Uhhhhh-huh. I just KNEW I had to cut out all carbs or never eat sugar or only eat salads or only eat things the size of my fist or never use butter or only eat fat-free products or only eat at certain times or never eat after six p.m. or drink 180,000 ounces of water a day so I felt full or constantly chew gum or eat only using chopsticks or only use my non-dominant hand to eat or put down my fork between every bite or drink a sip of water with every bite or or or or or or or or or. Sure, I lost weight.

And sure, I hated every single minute of it as I divorced myself from enjoyment of anything that might have threatened my imagined “virtue” and obsessed about what I could eat, what I couldn’t eat, will there be food I can eat at that party or at my mother’s or at my friend’s or at that restaurant is there time for me to work out what if I don’t work out oh god if I don’t work out and I eat something involving fat maybe I’ll just stay home. But I lost that weight. And it came back. Plus ten. Plus twenty. Plus who knows how much more.

You’re saying right now, “that isn’t me. I’m not obsessed about my diet, and it’s NOT a diet, it’s a Lifestyle Change, thank you very much.” So why am I hearing people getting bent over officemates bringing sweets into the office or sighing heavily over the salad they *must* eat or the amount of miles they *must* run/walk or the amount of pounds they *must* lose and that’s…pretty much all I’m hearing? If you’re not obsessed with your Lifestyle Change, then why is it the only thing you can discuss? Why am I hearing about your laundry list of foods you simply CANNOT eat? Why am I hearing stories of your failure to do a full 45 minutes at the gym (you only did 40, you naughty monkey)? If this Lifestyle Change of yours is such a revelation, such a pleasure, such a delightful thing that is going to bring you nothing but joy and unicorns and butterflies, why are you so terrified? How is any of this healthy?

“Well, the end result will be healthy, I’ll be X pounds lighter and I’ll be super-healthy and super-happy, so eff you, jealous fatty ugly fatty fat girl,” you might be saying. Hey, if that’s your awesome dream, Dreamweaver (gary wright omg) then don’t mind me – and you won’t because I know how people are as I happen to be one of them. You can go back to your Atkinsing, Weight Watchering, Nutrasysteming, Jenny Craiging, Slim Fasting, Optifasting, Medifasting, Gastric Bypassing, Alli-ing, Sugarbustering, and Lapbanding with loads of support from millions upon millions of others. And every January 1, you swear you’re getting back on the wagon, back on the horse, you’re going to be good and do things right and get yourself back under control with loads of support from millions upon millions of others. You will berate yourself for being bad if you have a cookie or two cookies or five cookies. You will berate yourself for being a disgusting slob if you eat more than your daily Points allow. You will berate what you see in the mirror for not looking like Mr./Ms. X down at the gym even though you’ve been going faithfully almost every day for weeks and weeks. You will berate yourself for not losing a third of a pound. You will hate exercise and sweating and moving your body no matter how good it might feel because you didn’t lose that third of a pound. You will berate yourself for being hideous and revolting and appalling to look at while forcefully telling any friends who voice how hideous and revolting and appalling to look at they believe themselves to be that they are wrong and they are beautiful and wonderful and delightful.

You are worth more than this, you know. Take the chance and let yourself “fail” for a while. Allow yourself to eat without involving a book that involves calorie or point counts – you won’t believe me when I tell you, but you’re not going to revert into some sort of gelatinous “Altered States”-esque protohuman that devours absolutely every single sugary, fat-laden foodstuff in sight if you do so. Remove any goal that says “be in size X by Date X/lose X pounds by Date X”. Enjoy what your body is capable of doing instead of hating it for what it doesn’t look like, move your ass because you have fun moving your ass, sweat just to sweat.

But…I know the chances are good you’re not going to listen to me. You’re going to roll your eyes, maybe swear at the screen, perhaps assign me the role of being “delusional”, “crazy” and certainly most definitely “lazy”. You might get angry at me saying such things, insisting I’m advocating people stop being healthy because I would love to see people stop dieting for weight loss purposes. The great thing is that you can click away and trot on over to SparkPeople or any of the batrillions of diet-friendly internet forums and get back to the business of Losing Weight and Looking Great! Or remembering A Moment on the Lips, a Lifetime on the Hips! Or engraving Nothing Tastes as Good as Thin Feels on a plaque from Things Remembered. You do whatever you need to do in order to make yourself happy.

I just hope you take a moment while setting down your fork between bites to figure out what really does.

Auld Lang Suck.

2009-12-26T22:48:00.003-06:00

Ohhhh ladies and gents of a single nature, we’re getting into that time of the year that full-on, no doubt can suck huge if you’re not partnered up, the double shot of annoyingness that’s known as New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day.

Along with the usual year-end horse puckey of making “resolutions” that all seem to circulate around losing weight and “getting healthy”, there’s such an extraordinary pressure upon pretty much the whole of civilization to be in a relationship because, after all, YOU MUST HAVE SOMEONE TO KISS AT MIDNIGHT ON NEW YEAR’S EVE DAMMIT. Well, for the first time in a gigantically long time, I’m not feeling that horrific empty ugh that would accompany me in years past. Oh, it’s not because I’ve got some sort of big reveal hidden after the cut. I’m not about to spring an Oprah-esque makeover show KAPOW moment on you. It’s because I decided to try a new tack – and of all the assorted tacks over the years that I’ve tried, it’s one that is actually working for me. That tack?

Not giving a good goddamn.

One of the major things I did for my head and my heart this year was extract my hind end out of the online dating pool. I deleted all the assorted profiles I had on eHarmony, Match.com, Yahoo personals, Plenty of Fish, and OKCupid. I found the exercise in online dating to be utterly exhausting because they didn’t seem quite able to convey...well, me to my satisfaction. There are plenty of folks who have had success on online dating sites – I just found myself excessively pissed at the end of the day at my general ineptitude/fail at it. The weird thing is that once I did that, once I took that particular stone off the seemingly infinite pile that I tend to tote around on my shoulders, I felt really...good. I was surprised, actually, at how relieved I felt to shut all that shit down. I’m sure on paper it screams “GAVE UP”, but I’m someone who is a firm believer in not doing something that causes me stress, pain, or all-around agony (much like, you know, dieting), and I just wasn’t taking any sort of pleasure in trying to explain the jist of me in 300 characters or less.

That action forced me to turn waaaay inward. I needed to do an internal inventory of just what I really, really wanted and who I really, really am. At the heart of it all, do I want to be in a relationship? What do I want out of said relationship? What am I seeking in a partner? Is it possible that said partner might not actually exist and is actually a construct of assorted male movie characters played by Hugh Jackman, George Clooney, and Steve Buscemi? And most gigantically super-importantly, if said partner never materializes, can I get through the next however many years I have left tromping around earth?

Ultimately, I think that’s the question we all have to ask ourselves because as we all know (and as the well-meaning critters around us insist isn’t the case), it’s quite possible that we will never have a romantic relationship of any significance. We have to make that peace with ourselves because ostensibly, we’ve all got a loooooooong time to dither away here on the planet and we have to make those years enjoyable – or, at the very least, tolerable. I don’t want to wake up every day feeling like I’m at the bottom of a well and spending every moment of my day trying to climb to the top of said well, you know what I mean?

My best friend Kristin is my guru, for lack of a better word. She’s one of those extraordinary people who seems in tune with the universe in general and can effortlessly whip out insights that would take the top of your head off. We were having one of our endless conversations about starting a blog together and discussing the dramatic relationship travails of a friend of hers and she said something that caused the “record scratch” sound effect to go off in my head: “Your life can’t be all about finding someone to make you ‘you’.” Mercy, did that ring my bell. I’ve spent so many years thinking that if I found the One, I would blossom in some form or fashion - basically, the Fantasy of Being Thin except replace “thin” with “in a relationship”. I couldn’t possibly be of value to the world or the people in my life because I hadn’t been anointed by the mystical God of Romance...or...something. My existence would have meaning because someone else (a male, in my heterosexual case) deemed me worthy of romantic attention. Whatever magical properties I contained on my own weren’t terribly impressive since I didn’t have a male at my side to officially communicate to my family, my friends, and the world at large that I was somebody.

Let me tell you, after quite a few brutal years, holy fuck am I exhausted of that sack of nonsense. I don’t need someone to “complete me” (sorry, “Jerry Maguire”) anymore. What I need is to be at peace with me and stop dreaming about who I could be and be who I am as I am now. When I seriously think about it and listen to those who love me...why in the high hell would I want to be different than who I am now? The very heart of me (w00t, Aragorn) isn’t an improvement project looking for someone to take charge of it. I am damn fine company – and not just for other people.

So I guess it does beg the question – if I’m not goofing around with online dating sites anymore, what exactly am I doing? The answer is nothing, and it’s the right answer for me at the present time. And I don’t know if that’ll change any time soon because I feel good about me and my life as it stands, partner-free. Do I have wistful days? Well hell, of course I do. But the good days far outnumber the bad ones (finally). I’m not in a constant state of pine for what I imagine those with partners must have that I lack and will never have. If the opportunity to get together with someone comes up and it suits me and feels right, then I imagine I’ll take the leap. And if it doesn’t, it’s not because I’m broken or have failed or am defective in some way. I have myself and I am, finally, enough.

Reminder: There are no rules in loving yourself.

2009-12-07T19:12:00.003-06:00

I'm going to be kind of vague and I'm not going to name names or throw up links, but in my internetting travels it seems to me that there are a preponderance of stories lately about women who are embracing their bodies and loving those bodies, dammit, which is great...except that the message is quite loud like an air raid siren that the loving of said bodies only became possible after losing 10, 20, 30 pounds or more. Or "eating healthier and exercising".

Let me reiterate (and I'll have to be quick about it because the Bejeweled Blitz is calling and it's looking like the Midwest is about to have its ass kicked by snow and winter and it's really bumming me out having to mentally prepare for it): YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MEET A CERTAIN WEIGHT OR SIZE IN ORDER TO LOVE YOURSELF. Your belly, your thighs, your ass, your arms, every single frickety-fracking inch of you is eligible for embracing and enjoying and rocking and locking and popping RIGHT NOW. The crap magazines and all the other horseshit fiascoes online love to sell body acceptance, but their brand of body acceptance is only applicable to certain kinds of bodies - ergo, they aren't truly advocating for ALL of us though they do so enjoy wearing out their rotator cuffs trying to pat themselves on the back for being so edgy and progressive.

We're about to go headlong into the New Year's Resolution season. All we're going to be seeing, reading, and hearing for the next month or so is a fuckton of body-hating, self-loathing bullshit in the media and most likely from friends and family. I think the most important resolution any of us can make is to continue to be visible, continue to be seen, continue to live lives that so many seem determined to prove to be wrong, defective, ugly, faulty. We must dig in our heels and keep pushing back, keep pushing back not just for ourselves, but for everybody in every body.

Self-acceptance is not a treehouse club that only allows certain members. It is not a limited time offer for gold card holders. It's for all of us.

I'm grateful to be free.

2009-11-27T20:01:00.001-06:00

All I wanted was for someone to call me beautiful. All I wanted was attention to be foisted upon me by the male population for my body and appearance that wasn’t negative or abusive or obnoxious. I watched my thinner, more conventionally attractive girlfriends bask in the attentions paid to them and oh, did I burn with jealousy. How I wanted to be something that wasn’t “other”, something that bordered on human, with feelings and wants and desires. If I could only winnow this carcass down to an appropriate size, an appropriate shape, perhaps fix this prickly, mouthy personality of mine so as to be more appealing, more proper, I would be a good woman.

I wore my drag, I painted my face, I fixed my hair just so, and wished wished wished I might wake up pretty. That I would stop being “one of the boys” and become an object of desire for these baffling men who always seemed to find me so very fascinating and interesting and funny and smart, but never could manage to like me in “that way”, that oh so mysterious “way”.

Then I started reading things and I started thinking those deep thoughts that strike in the middle of the night like a fucking thunderbolt and realizing that my body was mine to present in any fashion I chose, with the only person required to be pleased by it being me (awkward sentence construction, ho!). No, I didn’t like the way my face looked with make-up, no I didn’t like the way I felt in sucky-in gear*, no I didn’t like using hairspray, and goddammit, I don’t care if you approve or disapprove of how I’m looking today, whoever you are.

I will never meet your standards for what you think is beautiful or breathtaking. And I am overjoyed.

*sucky-in gear: a very technical term for shapewear like Spanx and what have you.

Where I Get TMI On Your Asses Strikes Back.

2009-11-22T21:31:00.001-06:00

A while ago - hell, well over a year ago - I spoke candidly about my mindset at that time, the loneliness and downright bafflement I felt as a fat woman at my inability to find someone who would love me back, my anger at my feelings of isolation from my friends because I wasn’t able to add to discussions of relationships or intimacy or what have you. Since then, some things have changed. And by gum, I’m going to TMI on your asses yet again – well, to an extent.

You might want to get a cocktail because chances are good sister’s gonna ramble for a little bit and it’ll take me a while to make a point, per usual. I may give you a miss and have absolutely no point at all, but I’m having one of those “Vomit Out Thoughts Sundays” and it’s been a long time coming. Hey, you know that sex thing is a pretty fine thing. Yes, I finally jumped that particular shark and engaged in frank adult behavior with another consenting adult, and it was quite a delightful experience. I’m going to do my darnedest not to get into the gories, but I want to speak on it for a moment from the “holy shit, what if he/she is horrified by my fat ass/belly/thighs/etc.” angle. I would say that one of the Fantasies of Being Thin (tm Kate Harding) for me was that once I was thin and luscious and muscular and buff that I would rampage through the countryside, bedding men near and far, but NOT until I was that thin/luscious/muscular/bufferton. It was nigh impossible for me to believe with any conviction that I could conjure up wood. I believed me and my carcass to be a boner killer of the highest regard or, at the very least, said boner owner (that is SO fun to say) would have to be exceedingly high or wickedly drunk in order to produce in my presence.

Was I ever wrong. Also, I was always rather panicked that if the opportunity presented itself that I would be so wrapped up in how I looked or how he thought I looked that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself in the least. The first time I was in a naked state in front of someone that wasn’t a medical professional, I stopped mentally comparing myself to all the thin women whose bodies I coveted and my body was just...my body. And it – me, I, we, WOW, HEY - was doing some really awesome shit. Since digging in and enveloping myself in fat acceptance, my relationship with my body has become a downright lovefest compared to life pre-FA, but even after digesting and repeating and believing all the good stuff about being a worthwhile, decent person who happens to be fat, the little voice that says “shyeah, whatever” still has a voice, as we all know. The little voice wanted to interrupt and whisper in my ear, “ewwwww, aren’t you a horror”. Luckily, the “WOW HEY NEAT!” voice was waaaay louder.

Despite being a fully-growed adult woman, I still have days where I think about...things, and I’m stunned it happened. I spent so many years – SERIOUSLY SO. MANY. YEARS. – thinking about why and what I was doing wrong and what I was supposed to do to fix it and why it wasn’t working when I would try to fix it, whatever in the hell “it” was – that the “holy CRAP *astonished face*” has yet to go away. I mean, I do try to be somewhat cool...but it doesn’t always work. Allowing myself to finally believe that goddammit, I am someone’s cup of tea was incredibly freeing and, strangely enough, made me realize that I will be absolutely okay and fine and happy if I’m never someone’s cup of tea ever again. And I would have been okay and fine and happy if I’d never been a cup of tea. Of course, saying that is easy, as I *was* a darn fine cup of tea.

Yeah, I know, I don’t know what the hell I’m trying to say, either. Anyhoo. The love part? Well, that’s a bit more complicated. I’ve spent some time analyzing the men I have loved (or tried to, at any rate) and my particular “style” of loving, if you will, is to love AT those I want to love me back. I’m very much a “look at me, look at me, look at how awesome I am!!!!” kind of woman. I both show and tell, shall we say. I overcompensate for my imagined flaws with material things and epic dissertations as to why I love who I love. I try to love my intendeds into submission, basically. I think my brain believes that if I wear my target out, he’ll have no other option but to love me back. Hell, when I was a little girl, I would chase the boys around the playground, tackle them, and then kiss them. The game was called “Kissing Monster”. Finally, a teacher named Mr. Rossi had to hold me back and explain to me, “Boys don’t like it when you kiss them”. Oh, you prescient man.

Despite being in a bit of a limbo at present, my mind is so much quieter these days. The work I have been doing on my mind and my self has been difficult and I do still have a goodly cry when the mood strikes, but there is much more peace in my head and in my heart – and not just because I had me some intercoursage. It is a hard-won peace. I’m sure I have more battles ahead, but at least one – the one with myself that raged for years and years – has come to a close.

Quick Snits

2009-11-17T19:27:00.007-06:00

Just a friendly reminder from Hollywood - it's impossible for George Clooney to act like he's falling in love with you if you're "as big as a house", according to producer Ivan Reitman. Reitman, one of the producers of son Jason's film, "Up In The Air", sat down at a round table with the Hollywood Reporter with other successful movie producers and brought up this delightful nugget when asked how his relationship with a director differs when the director happens to share his DNA: (bolding courtesy of me and the magical bolding feature)

Reitman: I have to stop being his father, I have to be his producer, which is a subtly different job. I'd say the biggest disagreement we had was over Vera Farmiga, who is a wonderful actress but she was eight months pregnant about two months before he started shooting. He said "Look, I wrote it for her, I think she'll be perfect." And she was as big as a house! As a producer, I have to say to him, "I know she's a great actress, she's going to be great in it, but she's got to be someone George Clooney is going to fall in love with." There were all kinds of actresses who wanted to play this part, bigger names than Vera was at that moment, so I kept saying, "Well, how about her?" But he just hung in there. I had to really defend his decision, and I know he agonized about it enormously. There were a couple rough opening scenes -- first days -- that he reshot at the end of the schedule to give her a little more time to get into shape. Apart from that, there was really no downside.

Behold, readers, Vera Farmiga pregnant:

And unpregnant at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of "Up In The Air" earlier this year:

Oh Hollywood.

Fuck you.

Sincerely,

Jane C. Nolan

Greetings, funky retailer.

2009-11-14T17:17:00.000-06:00

Hi, Eastern Serenity!

I suspect I landed on your catalog list due to my patronage of the cats at the Pyramid Collection. When I received your catalog, I was quite intrigued. I'm in the market to do a little holiday shopping and like to get things that are unique. I also like to support independent artists and crafters and such, so I eagerly dove into the Eastern Serenity catalog a bit ago (seriously, like, 20 minutes ago). Many very lovely handcrafted items, yes indeed. Many bags and yoga bags and decor for the home, good good. The clothing, of course, stops hard at size 14. There are a few clothing items tagged as "one size fits all", which is horseshit a good...oh, 90 percent of the time. But none of that made me raise any particular part of my eyebrow because, hey, it's not unusual. I get that. But the thing that kind of...annoyed me a bit is that you're selling these:

...and the catalog description is this: "Six yoga poses assumed by a vigorous set of life-affirming bronze statues." Okay, so far, so good, I'm feeling it. "The Rubenesque figures are bursting with energy and vitality" - yes, by gum, they certainly are! I may very well unleash some kudos, look out! " - reminding us that health and exercise aren't exclusively reserved for people who match the prevailing media images of what the human form should look like." Well, that's pretty awesome, Eastern Serenity. I like that nice little shot at mainstream media ideals, that warmed a good millimeter of my cold, dead heart. But my kudos have to be half-enthused because while you're giving me some HAES-esque lip service, you don't offer fucking clothes that I can buy and wear.

Okay, I'm sorry about the swearing, but come on. According to your catalog, "Our collection is sourced directly. We don't purchase items from wholesalers, dealers, or middlemen. We support creativity and excellence in our product selection and supplier choices. The craftsmen, designers, and artists we choose to work with are often copied by less original organizations, but we insist on purchasing from the original sources to ensure high quality workmanship and materials." So how about asking those craftspeople, designers, and artists to throw my fat ass a bone because I suspect my fat ass isn't the only fat ass that would like to drape a fat ass in something nice from your catalog. And my fat ass, thankfully, luckily, has money to put clothes on my fat ass. Money that I'd love to direct to something other than stores with names that sound like "Schmane Schmyant" or "Schmorrid".

So, in closing, Eastern Serenity, you've got some lovely (and pricey, Christ) jewelry and bags and knickknacks and whatnot, but I have to give you a big fat PFFFT in the clothing department at the present time. And no, "one size fits all" does not count.

Yours sincerely,

Jane C. Nolan
Casual Blasphemies

This is who I am.

2009-10-31T20:19:00.002-05:00

You know, I was all souped up to write a blog today that was full of anger at myself because I went clothes shopping and I was horrified at what I saw in the mirror. I was horrified at the shape my body’s in – the literal shape of it. I’m not the hourglassy big-boobed, big-assed fat girl with curves that go kablam, I’m the deathfat small boobed, big-bellied, backfatted flat-assed fat girl with curves that go in all the wrong ways. I was horrified as the clerk at the Lane folded my new pants and I swear they sounded like a truck stop gigantor American flag that is the size of a football field unfurling. It didn’t help matters that I was shopping with my inbetweenie sister who was able to buy all sorts of cute things and all the while bitching about what a fat hog she was.

Things didn’t improve when I got home and went to a message board and read posts filled with hate and disdain for people like me, people fat like me, people that purport to be my friend or friendly with me spewing this hate and disdain but would be the first to screech, “But I don’t mean youuuuu!” And the hate and disdain was just so fucking casual, so infuriatingly breezy, because me and others like me are subhuman, barely worth the oxygen we inhale, barely worth the space we take up unless we proclaim that we are “trying” and we’re so very sorry for sullying your view and we promise that one day, we’ll be thin, honest. But they don’t mean me, they never mean me, except when they mean me and shake their heads at how unhealthy I must be and how miserable I must be and how I’d be such a better person if I just wasn’t so...you know.

And I bought it all for a while, I was deep inside my head and going through all the familiar rigmarole of what I “needed” to do to “get back on the horse” and “exert some self-control”. Then I took a wander over to Jezebel and read this article and naturally, this paragraph leapt out, grabbed me by the shoulders, and gave me a good shake:

Large women are a lot like killer whales. Desperate for attention, consume massive amounts of raw fish, and need to be taught right from wrong on a pretty regular basis. By sleeping with a chubby gal who thinks that her double D breasts are, in any way, attractive is just fooling herself. If breasts, regardless of size, are propped up by a sumo-sized stomach, it doesn't count as sexy and by looking at them you're just re-enforcing bad behavior. Do you want to be part of the problem? Or part of the solution to try to get fat girls off of the streets and on a one way sewage barge to Australia.

The hate’s kind of breathtaking, isn’t it? And it’s hate that’s acceptable, appropriate, and oh so hiiiilarious because we’re subhuman, remember? Thing is, it’s not having the effect the epic, epic pile of excrement was hoping for. This sort of loathsome nonsense, coupled with the loathsome half-truths vomited out by the ill-informed only fuels my fire, it only makes me work harder, and be more determined that I will not accept that I am only as worthy as my size will allow. I will work as long as I have to so people aren’t consumed with self-hate like I was, like so many of us were, like so many of us still are, burning years of our lives swearing it’ll be better, different, do-able the second we’re thin, pretty/handsome, perfect.

I’m sure I’m repeating myself – I’d wager that I’ve said a variation on this a good...bazillionty times since the inception of this blog. I’ll repeat this message until I fall over dead because it’s a message that needs to be screamed on an endless loop, screamed into a din that is at the volume of jet engines, and maybe I’ll lose my voice before I make any significant dent in the utter insanity that is gripping our society. But I will continue writing what I write and saying what I say and believing what I believe because I don’t think I have a choice in the matter.

Off Topic: Some 20 years.

2009-10-20T19:42:00.008-05:00

I am a nerdular fan of Nine Inch Nails. Very nerdular. NIN is a band that I was down with from the very beginning – the beginning which happens to be 20 years ago today, the 20th anniversary of the release of NIN’s debut record, “Pretty Hate Machine”. It rapidly became the soundtrack of the latter half of my junior year and a goodly part of my senior year of high school (alongside “Disintegration” by the Cure, of course) because I was extremely, extremely angry at that point in time.

I was in a massively fucked up unrequited love sort of situation that picked at my self esteem and picked at my wobbly brain chemistry and picked at my ego (which was shockingly enormous, based on journal entries from that general time period and my own recollection). The object of my affection, which doubled as my best friend, knew how I felt and exploited it time and time again, humiliating me and coloring my relationships for years. At one point, I considered suicide. What saved me was I wanted to see what kind of awards I would get at the end of my senior year for all the activities I was involved in. Once that was done, I swore, I would end it all. My ego saved my life, which is why I stroke it so lovingly to this day. After yet another humiliating event that I can’t bring myself to go into at the present time, I finally dismissed him out of my life with a phone call that I ended with “I can’t see you anymore”. Click, done, over, free.

But it wasn’t over, not really – the jerkwad douchebag dungfuck assholes that we encounter in our lives may eventually exit our lives, but they always leave a trace, a hint of stink. And his scent lingered over me for a very, very long time. I spent most my twenties in a fairly solitary state, living alone in the city of Chicago and going to work, renting movies, smoking cigarettes, venturing into the suburbs on the weekends to see my family and my couple of friends that lived out there as well. I wrote screenplays and would send unsolicited manuscripts of “The X-Files” out to Fox (I did manage to get a couple episodes to the reader stage), but for the most part, I kept to myself because I had learned that to be vulnerable, to be honest, to be an open book was asking to be terrorized, mocked, and humiliated. I was incredibly lonely. I watched my friends couple up, get married, and well-meaning friends would always say, “I don’t understand why you don’t have anyone”. Well, I did. I mean, problem number one: I never went out of my apartment! Problem number two: I was convinced that me fat = hideous horrible awful ugly disgusting smelly rotten poopy. My personality in general was (and is) kind of a hard sell, so to couple it with a body that didn’t look the way I wanted it to look? Oh, hell no and then some. Of course I was dieting through all of this mishmosh. On and off and on and off and lose and gain and lose and gain. Let me tell you, I was a pile of sunshine and delight.

But somehow – I couldn’t tell you how because at 37, I’m finding it very hard to remember the details of anything that happened before 34 or 35 - I emerged out of my twenties fairly intact and discovering the world again via the internet, of all things. I started being social again with folks both online and off. My urge to diet dialed back, though I hadn’t quite seized onto the concept of fat acceptance yet. I was approaching some semblance of peace. Not contentment, mind you, that is something that eludes me somewhat, though I can feel it nearing, but a peace with myself, a self that I beat the shit out of for so many years because of the actions of one single jerkwad douchebag dungfuck asshole. Not that I completely stopped beating the shit out of myself, oh no no no. I still take a swing every now and then. I was feeling good, feeling confident, doing my thing. Then, one day, while out in the suburbs visiting the family, I went into a grocery store while my dad and sister waited in the car at the curb. I was walking down an aisle when I spied the jerkwad douchebag dungfuck asshole and his wife and their kid. I’ve experienced many things in my life, but I had never felt the kind of utter fright and terror I did when I saw them. I hadn’t spoken to him in 10 years or more and as I started to shake, I knew there was no way in hell that this day was going to be the day I’d break that streak. The item I’d been sent in to find wasn’t something that was difficult to find (we’re talking, like, a loaf of bread), but I couldn’t find it and I ran out of the store and climbed into the car, still shaking and begging my dad to drive away as fast as he could.

Later, I berated myself for having such a reaction. I should have marched straight up to him and been cooler than cool (ice cold). I should have made up an exotic boyfriend to show him that he hadn’t destroyed my ability to connect romantically with someone! I should have should have should have ohhhhhhh for God’s sake, I did the right thing running out of the store like I did because my brain knew I needed to protect myself. I had a ways to go, but a few years later when I got a MySpace message from him telling me that he figured I was the kind of girl who would let bygones be bygones, I wasn’t a gelatinous sobbing mess for the next few days. I muttered, “oh, go fuck yourself” and clicked “delete”.

When I think about the me that was 20 years ago, I’m occasionally shocked that I survived because I have a long memory for my excruciating miseries and missteps, so much of which was accompanied by Nine Inch Nails. The electronic cacophony and driving guitars and the rage that Trent Reznor wrote and sang about served as a comfort for me because NIN was the first band that really, really got the roiling, unsettled landscape that was my brain and my heart and gave it a sound and gave me the opportunity to scream it out, exorcise it. Earlier this year, Trent announced that NIN would be playing its final shows for a very, very, very long time (if not the last time) and I managed to get a ticket for one of the Chicago shows. My life is quite different than when I first listened to “Pretty Hate Machine” – hell, it’s different than when I first listened to “The Slip” in 2008. Instead of the show serving as a way for me to vent all the unhappiness that was filling me up, I had the chance to celebrate myself and the fact that I have survived. As Trent says in “Hurt”, “I am still right here”. I may never be able to explain precisely how I managed it, but goddamn am I grateful I did.

Not so much fluffy as just plain fat.

2009-10-11T16:39:00.003-05:00

I would like to be able to whip out a merry tra-la-la kind of post, but I’ve got things gnawing at me like they tend to do. They’re just small things, the kind of innocuous, little things that I tend to write about – you could call it my “small stuff-ing it”, I suppose. I’ve noticed that more often than not, it’s the small stuff that gets stuck and chews and grates on me, while bigger stuff seems eminently easier to handle, easier to process. And when I say it gnaws and chews and grates, it’s more that they’re things that make me clench my fists and swear quite vigorously and write e-mails that have many words in capital letters...and then I’m playing Peggle and being entranced by rainbows and unicorns (literally).

But goddamn, it pisses me off when I’m watching a favorite show or reading a blog or something from someone I enjoy and they whip out a fucking fat joke or go on a bitch about fat people.

Case in point, “Dirty Jobs” on Discovery. Hoo boy, do I enjoy that show a bunch. I enjoy Mike Rowe. I enjoy his humor (mostly) and how he doesn’t treat the folks he’s working alongside like they’re dummies or somehow “beneath” because they’re doing jobs that others would say they’re simply too “good” to do. I enjoy Mike Rowe when he’s shirtless. But I did not enjoy it on this week’s episode when Mike trotted out the old har-dee-har-har, “dating a fat girl is like riding a moped – it’s a lot of fun, but you don’t want anyone to see you doing it”. Oh dear, what a...kneeslapper? See, when I was younger, I did what a lot of fat people tend to do – we do the whole “oh, I’m going to insult myself first before anyone else does” when we’re in social situations. We launch the volley of fat jokes and self-deprecating remarks just so you can be assured that:

a) we know we’re fat
b) we know you’re disgusted by us
c) we’ll do our darnedest to entertain you so you don’t rip on us too hard once this social interaction has come to a close

And, in grand fat tradition, if someone makes some sort of fat joke, it behooves us to find it just as funny as everyone else because – all together now – ”I DON’T MEAN YOU”. (I wish I could insert a grand, operatic “TA DA!!!!!!” right now.) I swear to Christ, that’s one of those phrases, along with “you have such a pretty face” and “I only like you as a friend” that if I had a buck for every time I’ve heard it, I would be writing this from my ultra-cool underground lair that would be heated appropriately because HI SUBURBAN CHICAGO, I AM NOT READY FOR THE CRAZYCOLD YET. Uh, sorry, I digress, mainly because I’ve had to stop and blow warm air on my hands.

They don’t mean you, they don’t mean us, because we’re their friends, their sidekicks, their loyal pals, the ones who listen to all their bullshit and then flee the moment we might want to have a moment to discuss what’s going on in our lives. Okay, I might be spinning things a bit bitterly. And I should say to all of my friends who read this, I...uh, don’t mean you. But you feel me, readers. Because I would venture to say more of us than not have had that awkward moment where someone we’d tag as being a dear friend or a beloved family member spews out a fat joke or rattles off some sort of casual fat loathing/expression of disgust for fat people and we either half-heartedly chuckle or just stare in horror at them. And when it comes on the heels of maybe feeling like said friend or family member might not be quite so reciprocatey when it comes in the General Support Department...I’ve felt a lot of feelings in my life (that may be the most awful sentence I’ve ever typed, but roll with me), but few things feel worse than when someone you trust basically lets you know they think you’re a horrific piece of shit, someone – hell, something - worth only mockery and derision.

“But Jane,” you might say, “they’re not talking about you, remember? They don’t mean you!” The problem with the whole “I don’t mean you” thing is that it’s an excuse – it’s an excuse along the lines of “but one of my best friends is ____!” It’s not necessarily a conscious decision on the speaker’s part – I’d wager that if Friend Z tells a fat joke, zie’s not thinking in zie’s head, “I am going to tell a fat joke just so I can make Jane feel like shit and THEN I’m totes going to tell her that I don’t mean her!”. Mike Rowe didn’t bust out the “fat girl/moped” gag thinking about the fat women he might piss off. If he has fat women that are close to him in his life, I suspect “I don’t mean you” would come flying out of his mouth at the speed of sound if he dropped that joke and got a less-than-enthusiastic response. But what the ultimate problem is is that at the end of the day, kids, you do mean us. We fats that you insist you adore, etc. are part of that pulsating, terrifying amalgamation of deadly obesity that you’re told almost every single day is responsible for just about every ill in the world, that you mock, that you hate, that anger you for existing. So when you break out the hilarious fat gags or you’re propped up on your soapbox about that lazy lardass you saw at the grocery store whose cart was filled with nothing but what you would consider “junk food”, the message you’re sending to your fat friends is, essentially, “ew on you”.

Yes, my astonishingly deep summation is “ew on you”. I can’t spin gold 100 percent of the time.

As for the instinctive response of the fat person to sputter out a collection of self-deprecating, self-insulting fat jokes, it’s amazing to me how it makes me have such a visceral reaction, particularly when it comes out of nowhere. I used to be the Queen of the self-deprecation action, but now that I don’t think it’s particularly cricket to hate myself or for anyone else to hate me or for anyone to hate themselves, it puts me right over the edge when I see it*. I challenge those of us amongst us who still fall into that reflexive position to take a 24-hour (or however long you wish) break from doing it. Just give it a whirl, even if someone serves up a “perfect” opportunity for you.

*You may be at a different point in your FA journey than me, so do take what I talk about with whatever size grain of salt you wish. Hell, as big as a salt lick for a deer if need be. Your trip will take as much time as it takes.

Subway, eat crap.

2009-10-03T21:52:00.002-05:00

Subway is at it again, shaming those of us who are audacious enough to choose the dreaded “fast food” instead of the allegedly nutrient-packed Subway products. In the commercial I saw this evening whilst immersed in a “Mythbusters” marathon (ostensibly in preparation for the new season’s debut on Wednesday OMG CAN’T WAIT) featured a couple of fellows taking a lunch break while working in a warehouse. As one average-looking fellow was presented with his greasy bag of Satan, a voice-over intoned (and I will be forced to paraphrase because doing a Google search only caused me to crawl into the liquor cabinet), “Here’s your bag of opposite sex repellent”; then, of course, there’s the token fat guy who doesn’t know he’s fat, HAR HAR getting his bag of “the 'I’m not fat, I’m husky special'”.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Subway, the hilarity, it just burns!

Look, I’ve bitched about you before, Subway, and the bottom line is, I will never, ever patronize your establishments if my options are eating shit that is sugar-coated or eating one of your dreadful fucking subs. You started going straight to hell when you eliminated the wacky cut and topping subs with the resulting strippy bit of bread, and you sealed your fate the second you latched onto the magical tale of Jared and the Subway Diet. Your product is about as appetizing to me as stale turds in a punch bowl, and the angle your silly-ass advertising team takes even less so.

Plus, your stores have a funny smell. I don’t like you. Go away.

As for fat being an “opposite sex repellent”, I think all of those in The Museum of Fat Love would disagree with you.

And it goes a little something like this.

2009-09-21T18:36:00.003-05:00

I’m currently suffering from having all sorts of fragmented thoughts in my head, none of which I can wrangle into any kind of cohesive structure (or, in layman’s terms, “make sense”). Multitudes of things of a fat-related nature have been irking me and inspiring me and irking me again. And I’ve got all sorts of personal life and work life flibbertygibbetry happening (good stuff in the personal, silly-ass in the work life) which only serves to distract me more from unleashing hell. So pardon me while I riff (and pardon me for actually using the word “riff”) a bit on a few things.

As always, lots of swearing ahead.

Stop using morality-laden words to describe food. If you want to cook my goose, burn my biscuits or frost my ass, use words like “decadent”, “sinful”, or “guilty pleasure” to describe food or the ingesting thereof. “Decadent” is not a flavor; neither is “sinful”. I know I’ve said it probably…1.5 billion times already, but food does not contain morality. It does not convey upon you any sort of moral standing. If you have a salad for dinner, it does not make you a better, smarter, more fashionable, or more interesting person than if you have a cheeseburger for dinner. Watching every single thing that you put into your mouth does not make you a good person or a bad person. What makes you a bad person is you looking at what others choose to place into their mouths and declaring them to be repugnant for ingesting what they choose to. Don’t comment on what other people are eating unless it contains the words “fuck, that looks delicious” or “I think it’s moving”. If you’re unable to handle such a concept, then you should not dine with others.

Charlotte Cooper says things that make me say “YES”. In a post from September 16th, 2009, she says the following: “I don't think obesity is the problem, I think social attitudes towards fat people go a long way in affecting people's health. I think my health as a fat person is threatened by a health service that tries to withhold treatment from me until I lose weight, or tries to coerce me into profitable but unhealthy weight loss regimens; or the stress and social repercussions of being stigmatised or discriminated against, and the internalised self-hatred this can engender. I think my health is more threatened by these things than by the wobble of my belly, and that the cost to the nation of obesity-related health problems is really about what hatred costs the nation.”

“Lose weight/get fit” does not qualify as quality advice, nor does it solve your life’s problems. I’ve mentioned previously that I am an advice column junkie, from Carolyn Hax down to Judy Bachrach at Obit-mag.com (which I believe was a tip from a CB commenter). Recently, I was reading Ask Amy, which is usually an exercise in massive eye-rolling. A woman wrote in wondering how to confront a husband who might possibly be straying. Nowhere in her letter does she mention anything about her appearance, health status, NOTHING even REMOTELY resembling anything like that. It was simply an inquiry into how to deal with a husband behaving like a jackass. Amy’s response, initially, made sense (a shocking turn of events, trust me), but then rattles off a list of things she should start doing, like going to the gym to get “fit and healthy”. What in the high fucking hell does that have to do with ANYTHING? If I ask for directions to Main Street, the response shouldn’t be “well, you’ll want to join a gym so you can get fit and healthy”. The answer to “What is the capital of Wyoming” is not “the gym so you can get fit and healthy”. If I’m attacked by a cougar, going to the gym is not going to take care of the massive bite wounds I’ll have. And I don’t think the gym would look kindly at my bleeding out upon the leg press machine. Life is complicated and baffling and infuriating, and advising friends, let alone strangers, on difficult situations is a monumental task for any of us. If your go-to advice to someone is “oh, just join a gym and lose 20 pounds and all your cares and worries will disappear”, you’re a really shitty adviser.

Please strike “You’ll find someone when you stop looking” from your personal lexicon. I don’t really have anything to follow that, I just wanted to fling it out there because holy SHIT, I am tired of seeing that as another never-fails chunk of advice. If that’s the best thing you can muster up for your single friends...well, see above.

I don’t give a fuck if you’re attracted to me or not. No, really. I’m not in the fat acceptance business to demand that you must be attracted to fat people. Everyone is free to be attracted to whoever they wish to be. Where you cross my magic line, however, is shrieking that being attracted to fat people is wrong, weird, or “settling”; where you cross my magic line is when you trot out that tired-ass trope that fat chicks are better in bed because they “try harder”; where you cross my magic line is being absolutely incapable of separating your individual preferences from the preferences of others and judging those with preferences that differ from yours. Oh, and if you’re too terrified that your friends will judge you negatively for dating someone who’s fat or if you think you can magically transform your fat partner into a thin partner through “love” – really, the only phrase that comes to mind is “fuck off”, frankly. Really, I just can’t come up with anything more erudite than that.

A non-fat acceptance related pick to click: Cinematic Titanic live. My wizened cold heart just about burst with joy at the Lakeshore Theater in Chicago September 12th when I saw Cinematic Titanic live. CT is made up of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” originals Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff, and Mary Jo Pehl. I was very much a Joel girl (and a Trace Beaulieu girl as well - hellooooooooo sailor) and to see them live in stereo made me all kinds of warm and nougaty inside. If you were a MSTie and Cinematic Titanic is coming to your town, go go go.

This is why you're fat.

2009-09-09T19:02:00.007-05:00

Here's my personal answer to that website that keeps cropping up everywhere as some sort of "proof" as to why the world is eating itself to death or fat people are destroying the universe or killing the children or causing the earth to spin off its axis or whatever.

Chances are rather good that this is why you're fat.

I will not be your scare tactic.

2009-08-19T18:27:00.004-05:00

There is so much flying around my brain today. Of course, I can’t help but heed Lesley at Fatshionista’s call, and as a result of comments made today on Shapely Prose by the most delightful Fat Nutritionist and Living400Lbs, my brain that probably should have been concentrating on work items instead spun and twirled and probably spurted some glitter at some point with all sorts of fat-related things. Whether or not I wind up making sense...well, start making your bets now. (Plentiful vulgarities lie ahead)

So, the PETA billboard thing. I’ve never had a high opinion of them, so the whole “Save The Whales” horseshit isn’t surprising to me. There isn’t a group of people they won’t go after in their efforts to allegedly help animals. There’s no major **newsflash** when it comes to them – their primary interest is publicity and nothing more. The animals they purport to be dedicated to saving would be better off being as far away from this group of complete morons as possible. I’d wager there are probably TRILLIONS of animal lovin’ groups out there far better suited to helping animals than the brainless dingbat douchefucks at PETA, as PETA only cares about itself and seeing how much attention they can get. Being the twerp that I am, I get a little sad clowny when I find out actors or celebrities I enjoy are PETA people because PETA is a gaggle of assholes. If you want to support animals and whatnot, I have to imagine it’s easy to find organizations that promote animal rights without using racism or objectifying women and who actually, you know, give a rat’s ass about a rat’s ass.

PETA talk then led me to a fantastic comment from Living400Lbs on Kate Harding's article at Shapely Prose, where she responds to a portion of Kate’s piece: “We’re all just so used to the framing of fatness as “other” that no one bats an eye when people who are actually speaking to fatties only speak about and around us.

…and they reinforce this to use pictures of people like, oh, ME to illustrate studies and pronouncements on people who are overweight or slightly obese because if they admitted that only 5% of Americans are in the “death fat” category they might have problems justifying the panic."

Whenever you’re watching a news report about the AAAHHH OBESITY EPIDEMIC, you get pictures of headless death fat people going about their business. For those who might not be sure what I mean by “death fat”, it’s a description coined by Lesley of Fatshionista to describe those of us who would be classified as beyond just “chubby” or “chunky” or “fluffy” – we’re full-metal fat. Despite what the mainstream media and the general universe would like you to believe, there’s only about five percent of us in existence in the United States. We’re the poster girls and boys for terror, however; they are doing a bang-up job of convincing all of you that we are sweeping (and eating) the nation. Basically, my body is meant to serve as a scare tactic, a cautionary tale as to what MIGHT (but most likely won’t) HAPPEN TO YOU if you don’t live your life “right”. My body is supposed to horrify you, repulse you, make you say to yourself “I don’t want to wind up looking like HER.” And, in turn, my body is supposed to horrify ME. But it doesn’t – not anymore. Oh, there was a time, a long time, where I wanted nothing more than to completely disconnect myself from my carcass – which leads me to the deliciously awesome comment on the same article by the Fat Nutritionist:

“Which gets me thinking — fat acceptance is not just accepting the fact that your weight may never change, but it’s the willingness to incorporate that physical fact into your identity as a whole person. The willingness to not violently divorce yourself from your body at every verbal and mental and social opportunity.”

When I read this this morning, all I could do was say “YES! YEEEEEEEEEES!!!” (inside my head – I didn’t want to alarm my co-workers who are probably already alarmed because OMG DEATH FAT IS WORKING BESIDE THEM!). I couldn’t reconcile my inner self – my “thin self”, of course – with my outer self for years. My thin self, the “real” person that I was, the Fantasy, she didn’t have rolls of flesh or varicose veins or flibbety upper arms, no no no. My Thin Self was Linda Hamilton in “Terminator 2”, my Thin Self was Janeane Garofalo in “Reality Bites”, my Thin Self was any body but the body that I looked at in the mirror. I was the Queen of Self-Deprecatingland, I didn’t let one opportunity pass to let people know that I thought my fat ass was as horrific as (I was certain) they thought it was, what a walking punchline I was. If my appearance was remarked upon in a positive fashion, I immediately provided a list of reasons why it actually wasn’t worth any kind of positive comments. Even now, I have my days where I have a gander at my body and wish for a magical unicorn of thinness to appear and give me a whole new outer me. And then I have to remind myself that all the things I’ve done in my life I’ve done as a fat person. I’ve been to London, Paris, Australia, New Zealand, I’ve been on stage at the Chicago Theater, I’ve performed a one-woman show, I’ve sang in front of hundreds of people, I’ve kissed boys – all those things, I’ve done as a fat girl. All those things that I was told weren’t possible for me to do because I was fucking fat. When you think about it – when you really, really think about it – it’s fucking absurd. It’s fucking absurd that we exist in a world where the message is sent each and every day that if you’re fat, you shouldn’t be doing until you’re thin. And not only that you shouldn’t be doing it, but that you don’t deserve to do it. It’s absurd. Not only is it absurd, it’s downright fucking obscene. And offensive. And from my perspective, far more terrifying than this:

You want a cautionary tale? Here’s mine: I waited far too goddamned long to realize that I was good enough. I waited far too long to realize I was lovable. I waited far too long to embrace my body AS IT IS and all of the nifty things it can do. It’s your time. Don’t wait one second longer.

Taking it personally.

2009-08-10T18:32:00.002-05:00

Embracing what is different, unusual, or goes against the grain is not something a goodly majority of the world has in its skillset. And certainly embracing something like *GASP* fat acceptance is just plain wacko in many, many, many, many people’s eyes. Now, when I come across something that doesn’t quite twirl my skirts or baffles me, my tendency is to either do research to find out more about said thing, ask people who have experience in said thing about said thing, or simply say, “okey-doke” and move on with my bad self to whatever next thing catches my interest. However, there is a certain breed of cat out there that will stomp feet and screech derision until the end of time not only about the O-beeeeeeeeeeesity Epidemic that Ees KEELING US ALL, but also absolutely anything that deviates from that cat’s personal norms.

Recently, I read a Dear Abby column in which a grandmother was given tremendous shit by her daughter-in-law for sending only $5 in a card for her grandson’s eighth grade graduation and then following said shit-blowing with a “thank you” card from the grandson that was, as expected, passive-aggressively awful. I thought it was simultaneously horrific and yet, amusing because I tend to be evilly entertained by awful people that believe being grateful and polite is for the weak. I started a conversation about it on a message board and it soon turned into a discussion about graduations and experiences with graduations. It appears that graduations vary by region – I graduated from eighth grade, while others graduated from sixth grade, and for others, the move from middle school into high school wasn’t marked at all. Which is fine and interesting and whatever, much like how I drink pop while others drink soda. However, one poster got sweaty and hyperbolic about how graduating from anything other than high school or college was ridiculous, clearly a money grab created and sponsored by the big bad corporations, it’s a waste of time and money and if ZIE was invited to anything even resembling such a thing, zie would practically take a dump on their porch for suggesting zie would endorse said practice in any way, shape, or form. It was impossible for hir to comprehend the notion that things are done differently in other parts of the country, things that will continue to go on with or without hir endorsement, and that hir outrage was fuckdiculous.

The Takin’ It Personally people (TIPPs!) are the people who paint fats as being food-shoveling, sweaty, lazy fools who are making the choice to be fat because they don’t want to stop eating Suzie Q’s and Ho-Ho’s while they lay on the couch/floor/bed, and are certain beyond any doubt that the fats are destroying America one stick of beef jerky at a time and should health reform ever come to pass, will bankrupt the system before you can say “but the population as a whole is aging and bringing with it increased medical needs because of age-related afflictions”. “The Obeeeeeeeeeeeeese/the poor/the disadvantaged/’the lazy’ are going to REACH INTO MY POCKET/PURSE/DITTY BAG and TAKE MY HARD-EARNED MONEY to support THEIR UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLES,” they rage before falling onto the nearest fainting couch in an anger-induced swoon. They’re the ones who get all sputtery and concern-trolly and eye-teary when the subject of the Fat comes up because it’s SCIENCE that all fat people are ticking time bombs of diabetic heart faily oozing death and they’re Takin’ It Personally because they want you to be the BEST you can BE and you’re only BEST when you are – ding dong, candygram! – thin. Rejecting the Fantasy of Being Thin and spreading that concept around really gets the TIPP’s drawers in a fiery uproar. I was informed by a TIPPer that Fat Acceptance was as “evil” as McDonald’s* and that people really shouldn’t have as much self-esteem as those in Fat Acceptance believes everyone should. Somehow, having a positive view of oneself means one no longer is interested in striving in improving oneself...? Oh wait, no, okay, I get it now, I get it now – the only really worthwhile improvement one should be making is shaving off those horrific, nasty pounds. Right. How on earth could I forget? Another TIPPster was quite aggrieved that I “refused” to “get healthy” and wouldn’t praise hir endlessly for hir “hard work” when zie embarked on a liquid diet. If I was a TIPPer, I might have raised a ruckus and railed against the futility of it and how I was personally offended and tearfully told hir how in the long run, zie would only be doing more damage to hirself and hir psyche by engaging in such a practice. But that’s not my style. My style is simply to reiterate again and again my personal message of self-appreciation, self-love, and self-worth being the ultimate goal, and a goal that is achievable and available for every single frickin’ person walking the earth, fat or thin; that it isn’t something that is only deserved by those engaging in societally-approved “healthy” behaviors or lifestyles or income brackets; and most importantly, isn’t impossible no matter what society or you tell yourself.

I had a TIPP approach me in the bathroom at my workplace one day – she was getting a gander at the nine stars tattooed on my left forearm as I dried my hands and the disdain was clear as she asked me The Question: “WHY would you do that?” It was quite hard for me not to respond, “WHY would you give a shit WHY I did it”, but I like to be polite to the TIPPs and speak slowly to them as if they were five-year-old children. “Because I’ve always liked tattoos, always wanted tattoos, and I like how they look,” I responded. She shook her head and tisk-tisked and smiled at me like I was a silly billy, saying as she exited the bathroom, “To each his own!” I only wish that the average TIPP actually believed that.

A hot link.

2009-08-04T20:42:00.002-05:00

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville does damn fine deconstructing and basic "are you frigging kidding me" far better than I could ever do and she brings the rock with Evil Fatties today. Follow the link and read the rock.

More To Hate.

2009-07-29T18:24:00.001-05:00

It's weird - for whatever reason this particular week I became acutely aware of just how much out-and-out hatred is leveled at fat people. Or, at the very least, how the internet has provided a platform for such hatred to be aired. Marianne from The Rotund wrote a great piece at the Daily Beast regarding Fox's "More to Love", the dating show featuring a fat bachelor and fat women vying for his reality show-generated love (see her blog for the link). In an unusual moment of complete duh, I took a peek at the comments.

WOW. That's all I can manage is a WOW. The vitriol was overwhelming, the disdain, the hate - and there's no other way to describe it, it wasn't just "reservations", it wasn't just people having some "minor issues", this was a gleeful carnival of Hate and everyone seemed to be clamoring for a spin on the Hate-O-Whirl about how I (because I have to make it about me) am a horrible, awful person who is going to steal tax dollars and is a lazy, good-for-nothing loser (except when it comes to weight, of course, and it's SO SIMPLE TO LOSE WEIGHT YOU FAT ASSHOLE) who just really fucking sucks and ruins everything.

I don't get shaken by much. This shook me because you see, when I'm out and about in the world, I don't see all that many women that look like me:

The way the media hypes it, there should be an Army of Me rampaging across the planet, landing in hospitals using up all precious resources so as to prevent thin (read: deserving) people of them, and then we're rolling across the countryside, devouring nothing but ice cream and Fritos and Fritos in ice cream layered with chocolate and high fructose corn syrup - fuck, we BATHE in high fructose corn syrup. And we entice the weakest and most vulnerable among us, THE CHILDREN, down the chubby road to despair and heart attacks at age four, and we gleefully cackle as we completely undermine all society ONE POUND AT A TIME!

Except that's not what I see, and I don't think it's what a vast majority of people see in the everyday world, but with every headless fatty that's trotted out to symbolize "the obesity epidemic", people are convinced that they come across monstrous resource-sucking beasts each and every day. Things. Things that are less than human and don't deserve humanity unless they look and behave precisely how they're supposed to. I haven't felt like a thing in a long time, but after seeing those comments...I'm still having trouble walking it off. It is a relentless assault, day after day, no matter how disconnected from the major media outlets you may be. And I've stated before that it's not a winning game for anyone, but today, I'm focusing in on me because it's the only way I can manage to dig my heels in and find myself again amidst all this thing.

Of course, Fox's fucking "More to Love" ain't helping matters much. They claim to be trying to perform a public service of sorts by having a fat-centric dating show so the world can see "They're Just Like Us Skinnies!" The way they show that? By displaying the fat women's heights and weights onscreen whenever they do an interview with a particular contestant. You know, how they do on all the dating shows, right? *pounds head into desk repeatedly*

I know I'll get over it. I always have throughout the years, and few things fuel my fire more than some good old-fashioned defiance. But damn. Just...damn.

Why do I do this?

2009-07-15T19:05:00.002-05:00

Being a fat acceptance activist or supporter is not…the…easiest thing to rock. It’s a two-fronter: you have the obvious battlefield of the mainstream media and entertainment and the weight loss industry and on and on, but you also have the internal battlefield that you’ve carried since…hell, BIRTH, it seems. Internal voices that at times seem way louder than the collective shriekers that get bent at the thought that fat people are, you know, human.

I’ve been having a bit of a time with those bastardly dastardly voices as of late, and even when I’m in one of my wiggier states, I can logic the shit out of my wigs. I’m less active than I’d like to be and I’m feeling it mentally, feeling it physically, and I have to ride the resulting grumps out and figure out some sort of activity that I like doing because I like being active and I love how it feels when I am active on a regular basis. Life has changed a bit on other fronts and I’m wrangling with that. My sister’s on a diet and she’s lost weight and WHY CAN’T I DO THAT SURE I COULD DO THAT I COULD YES I COULD PAY A DOCTOR WHOSE NAME SOUNDS LIKE “GODDAMN” MONEY FOR IT AND TAKE AN APPETITE SUPPRESSANT AND I COULD NITPICK AND OBSESS ABOUT WHAT I’M EATING FOR EVERY SINGLE MEAL *high-pitched unintelligible squeal*

Oh yeah, it’s been one of those…quarters. It’s been one of those quarters where something really, really lovely and wonderful and gorgeous and miraculous happened, but it was soon followed by the inevitable sneak-up of my brain to say, “oh hi, Jane [laughs]”. It’s annoying as hell witnessing the falling-over of people when they see someone who’s lost weight. I went to a family function recently with said dieting sister and of course, all talk went to a) how great she looks and b) what kind of failures everyone has been because they have been “bad” and need to do “something”. It’s just so…weird to stand there next to the Latest Marvel In Dieting Technology and listen to them be gushed at and know – you KNOW – the gusher is looking at you and thinking, “ugh…she’s so fat” (and not “fat” in that “it’s just a neutral descriptor!” kind of way, if you dig). And this quarter, that’s been irking me a fucking bunch. It makes me angry. It makes me very, very angry that my worth as a person is immediately negated, not just by strangers, but also by family because of my fat. I’m fucking angry that I can’t find clothes that I like. I can find clothes, sure, but I fucking don’t want to wear what I’m being told I’m supposed to like because I have a vagina. I’m fucking angry that I have to hear sloppily-researched, half-assed reports on the news just about every night about how I and people who look like me are villains and destroying pretty much anything and everything that’s good in the world. I’m fucking angry and I am tired, so so so very tired of suffering fools.

I’m fucking angry that fat people’s medical concerns are insty-treated with “lose weight”, as if there’s absolutely no other explanation for a malady. I’m fucking angry that people are actually questioning whether the nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin, can do the job because she’s fat. I’m fucking angry that little kids are learning earlier and earlier to hate themselves because they don’t look like what they see on TV, in movies, or like other kids. I’m fucking angry that there are parents who are teaching their children that nothing matters more than thinness. I’m fucking angry that billions of dollars are made off the self-hate industry and that people with influence and a voice that others pay attention to buy right into it again and again and again (HI, OPRAH). I’m fucking angry that people cloak their prejudice in “I’m only concerned about your health”. And most of all, I’m fucking angry that there are women and men in the world who walk through their lives believing they’re not worth a sack and a half of shit simply because they’re fat, who wait and wait and torture themselves over and over and over again believing they’re only permitted fun and wonder and love when they’re thin.

I’m not the best blogger in the Fatosphere, not by a long shot. I suck at deeply analyzing studies and articles and reports because I get too (fucking) angry. My ability to coolly parse goes right out the window due to my inclination to go from zero to !!!!!!!!!!! in 2.3 seconds. I’m not the most strident blogger, either. I don’t have tales of getting into online brawls, spewing out facts and figures to counteract the “YOU’RE GONNA DIE BY 30 FATTY (just as an aside, I’m 37 and we’re all going to die sometime)/UGLY FATTY (well, depends on who you ask, I reckon)/NO FAT CHICKS (you got me there, sport)” vitriol. I refuse to return to the mindset I required in order to diet and I will not encourage others in their efforts to diet or have weight-loss surgery, but I’m not the person who will shriek, “NOOOOOO!” at them because ultimately, as I ask you to respect my right to treat my body as I wish and not make judgment or comment upon it, I will do the same for you. But goddammit and tarnation, I will repeat over and over again that there is nothing gained by anyone in accepting that self-hatred and self-loathing is appropriate, welcome, or a rite of passage that we should all endure. It does not make you a better person, a more “real” person, a more right person to live each day telling yourself how awful you are. The people who would gladly tell you yes, you’d be prettier/more handsome/better/more moral/”good” if you were only 10, 20, 50, 100 pounds less are not people who hold your best interests at heart. They are, plainly put, in my way of talking...jerkoffs. Those would love you conditionally – they are jerkoffs.

So why do I do this? Because I remember so, so very well how I used to feel about myself. How I cried over how ugly I thought I was, how worthless I believed myself to be, how I couldn’t possibly be loved as fat as I was/am, how many years I blew refusing to really live because I didn’t think I was allowed to. If I can get just a few people to get off that train and see – really see – that they have and deserve a place in this fucked up, goofy-ass world just as much as the “beautiful people” do, then I’ll have done something good. Maybe not earth-spinning-off-axis huge, but I can be content with tilting things a bit.

The State of Independence.

2009-07-04T11:01:00.003-05:00

It's the Fourth o' July here in the United States, marking the day we said "hey yo, we don't think so" to the British and threw down stakes on our own joint. Of course, because I'm having people over for dinner and had planned on grilling...the weather has taken a big dump on the Midwest. THANKS, WEATHER.

But I'm not here to talk about my grilling plans (or how they've been pooped on) - I'm here, instead, to declare independence and hope you might join me at whatever comfort level you're currently residing.

My self-worth is not determined by the size of my ass, the span of my belly, the jiggleliciousness of my upper arms, my stretch marks, or how this might determine how attractive or unattractive I am to others.

The food I eat doesn't change my morality. The chocolate Frosty shake I had yesterday didn't make me bad. The mixed green salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing I had before it didn't make me good. The pork tenderloin I'm cooking tonight won't make me bad. The fruit salad I'll be having along side it won't make me good. I'm a decent person because I'm not a raging douchehole. (Okay, some might disagree, BUT WHATEV.)

My weight also doesn't affect my morality. The size of my thighs is not an arbiter on the Good/Bad Scale. I will not be a better, finer, smarter, more charming, or more delightful person if I'm thin. I am a fine smarty charmer, period.

My weight doesn't determine how worthy of love I am or how much love I'm capable of flinging out there.

I will not hide myself. I will not sit in a corner and behave like I'm "supposed to" because I'm fat. I will be true to myself in all respects and accept and embrace the consequences of being me. I will be loud, I will be honest, and I will gleefully work to upend every single bullshitty message that is being sent to women, to men, to everyone about what makes them worthwhile.

I will be defiant to the very end, and goddamn, I will have a great time.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

The Wonderful World of Doucheney

2009-06-15T16:35:00.005-05:00

I've been lax in the new bloggage arena, as I've recently returned from a trip to Australia and bouncing back from 24-hour-long travel days is not quite as easy as it used to be. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit all over the place because I'm in one of those moods that results in having far too many subjects swimming through my mind and simply not enough brainpower to summon up any kind of intelligent response beyond "SHUT IT" or profanity-laden variations thereof. So, for now, I will focus my ire on the Wonderful World of Disney.

My bell has been rung hard by Walt Disney Studios' upcoming animated movie called "G-Force". "G-Force" is about a gang of intrepid international spies or some shit, and they all happen to be guinea pigs. Cute, right? Well...if you're into guinea pigs, but yeah, CUTE! Whee! Fun! Guinea pigs doing karate and engaging in adventure! Voiced by Sam Rockwell, Tracy Morgan, Nicolas Cage, and Penelope Cruz, the G-Force get into hi-jinks and stuff and...whatever. This movie never would have registered on my Couldn't Particularly Give a Guinea Pig's Ass About Disney (yes, including Pixar*) Radar unless I'd seen a commercial for it on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet and couldn't suss out who was doing the voices of said guinea pigs. I looked up the website for information and what put me over the edge and fired my ass up was the fact that the female guinea pig, in a film that is ostensibly geared towards children, is described...as SEXY. Agent Juarez, voiced by Cruz, is a "sexy martial arts pro". IT'S A FRIGGING GUINEA PIG. GUINEA PIGS ARE JUST ONE THING: CUTE (well, if you're a guinea pig fan). They are not SEXY. The male character pigs aren't given descriptors like "sexy" - they're "determined to succeed at all costs", "outrageous". Not one mention of how "sexy" those male guinea pigs happen to be.

Oh, but sexy Agent Juarez is "the brains of the outfit", so it's okay that the female character in this crapfest's initial description is about how fucking "sexy" she is. If you're wondering why boys and girls are getting sexualized younger and younger, you don't need to look much further than this impending shitfest for some clues.

*Yes, I realize that not being a fiend for Pixar makes me a soulless, heartless robot incapable of love or something. It's not that I hate Pixar, I'm just not particularly driven to rush out opening weekend to see whatever they might fling up on the multiplex screens. Plus, I spent a year in college studying and doing animation, and it kind of made me really hate most cartoons. Except "The Venture Brothers".

Self-loathing coated in butter.

2009-05-11T18:22:00.000-05:00

How do you solve a problem like Kirstie Alley? She’s on the cover of People magazine this week, decrying the horror that is...well, her. Of course, she’s a horrible, disgusting human being because she’s “fallen off the wagon” and has gained 83 pounds as a result of de-Jenny Craigging herself in 2007. She’s at the shriek-inducing number of 228 pounds, which I haven’t seen myself since I was in high school, and so, like a good self-loathing fattie, she’s publicly deriding herself on a major magazine cover and on Oprah for being 58 years old and not looking like she did or weighing what she did when she was on “Cheers”...OVER 20 YEARS AGO.

There are comments on the article – I’d advise avoiding them, as it’s mostly the usual song and dance of “calories in/calories out”, “there’s no way she’s only 228 lbs, she must be 350 lbs.”, “embrace your size – but lose weight anyway!” and “it’s a lifestyle change!!!!” I swear to Christ, if there’s any cliche’d phrase I’d like to torpedo, it’s “IT’S A LIFESTYLE CHAAAAANGE!!!!” Say it in a really high-pitched voice to amp up the annoying factor. But at the same time, it’s an interesting microcosm of the hamster wheel so many people are stuck on. “I lost weight, it came back, and I lost weight, and it came back, and it lost weight, and it came back” is a common refrain among the commenters, but dammit, they are determined that this one last time, just this one...last...time, it is going to stick and stick hard and they are going to be the perfectest version of themselves that they know is hiding inside of them--! Oh, and the usual “I need to be around to see my grandchildren” gets dropped that I can so easily envision being said in a wobbly yet summoning up strength they had not known they had with tears dancing in their eyes sort of voice. This fat ain’t gonna lick me! No sir! I’m gonna spend my days counting my calories/points/eating my frozen NutriSystem meals/endlessly fretting about what I put in my mouth and one day, I’ll find me a man who loves me and get a real nice job in the big city and everything’ll be a-okay ‘cause I’ll be skinny and pretty and good!

Sorry – flight of fancy that probably should have stayed in my head. Though I do tend to have internal dialogues that wind up sounding like 40s melodramas. I’m not sure I have a point, exactly (and when do I, really), but when I read all of this horseshit I wish I had a scream as loud as an air raid siren so I could grab people’s attention but good and tell them that hating themselves is not going to be the magical key to weight loss and perfect health. Self-loathing is not a fucking character-builder. It doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you better. It’s just an ever-deepening, creepy-ass trap; a trap that is a huge moneymaker for corporations that do not have and never will have good intentions. You’re not disgusting. You’re not freakish. You’re not ugly. And you’re never going to be perfect. And holy shit, that is so okay.

Random rambling for a Thursday night.

2009-04-30T19:26:00.006-05:00

I watched the trailer for “Julie and Julia”, the upcoming Nora Ephron comedy based on the true stories of renowned chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a woman who decided to go through Child’s seminal cookbook and prepare a dish every day for a year straight. I’m interested in seeing the movie because I’m quite fond of both Meryl and Amy, but damn if I didn’t get pissy with the trailer trot-out of the usual trope – that Powell is upset to the point of tears that she might be getting fat due to her labor of love. Of course, she’s reassured by the Sassy Sidekick Girlfriend character that it’s only showing in her face. Blugh. My queendom for a woman-centric movie that doesn’t contain one single fucking “I AM TERRIFIED I MIGHT GET FAT/I AM FAT/DOES MY ASS LOOK FAT IN THIS” scene. It’s rather creepy that the most frightening thing for so many people is the idea of becoming or being fat. I’m more afraid that I’m going to get into a life-or-death struggle with a giant squid or hammerhead shark than I am of my fat. But I also have to acknowledge that I’ve never held a position of thin/beauty privilege. I’ve never been praised exclusively for my looks and my self-esteem has never hinged primarily on my thinness. And it will probably sound condescending of me, but I feel bad for those who have been or are in that position. I’ve got plenty of mind-fucks for a myriad of other reasons due to a myriad of other subjects, but jeepers, that has to be one of the biggest mind-fucks to be so terrified of gaining weight and not fitting in that teeny tiny societal box of what is considered “pretty”.

I’ve lived fat my entire life. It’s simply the way I’ve always been. I’ve practically cross-stitched “You have such a pretty face” on pillows. So it’s admittedly hard for me to truly understand the kind of panic that seems to accompany so many women and men over the idea of being fat. And how could you not panic, thanks to the constant broadcast message being sent: fat destroys, fat depresses, fat makes you morally suspect, fat makes you lazy, fat makes you ugly, fat makes you unlovable. Even after all the personal work I’ve done to embrace me and every bubbly bit that is part of me, I still had a moment of astonishment not too long ago during a pretty deep conversation with a friend of mine where he told me “I’ve always thought you were beautiful”. Mercy, how I had to fight myself to not tell him “you’re wrong/you’re blind/you’re high”. I think I even had him repeat it because my brain kind of shrunk like a squeezed sponge for a moment from the volume of the “BWUH?!?!?” that echoed through my skull. You really never completely get rid of the “you’re wrong/you’re blind/you’re high”, I’ve learned. Even if you’re able to parry immediately with “oh, shut the fuck up, brain”, the “oh pshaw” litany hides in the dark, waiting for the perfect opportunity to leap out like Vegas Elvis doing karate moves to “Suspicious Minds”.

How do we make fat something that simply is, like being thin, like being blond or brunette or tall or short?

If you pretend it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist!

2009-04-09T16:59:00.003-05:00

Emily Yoffe, a.k.a. “Dear Prudence” on Slate.com, is into chats now, apparently. And this question came up:

Arlington, Va.: Dear Pru,

I need your feedback. I am a "woman of size". I have been all of my life. I work out regularly, don't overeat, but here I am. I'm not asking for diet advice. What I need is something different. I need advice on how to deal with the country's hostility towards overweight women. Women of size are not seen as date-worthy, have insurmountable negative connotations associated with them (lazy, slobs, smelly... I'm none of those things!), and are in general treated poorly. Being judged for your looks is the last acceptable form of "prejudice". I guess what I'm most sad about is that this is such a tiny part of who I am, yet never gets overlooked. However, I'm still invisible. So, I guess my question is: how do I overcome my anger at people who feel it's okay to judge me?

First, Yoffe’s response, and then my response to her response.

Emily Yoffe:: First of all, remember you're not alone. Most American are "people of size" so at any workplace or social setting you are hardly going to be the only overweight person. Remember, often the way you are treated is in response to the way you act. You say your weight never gets overlooked, yet you are invisible. This sounds as if you spend a lot of time looking for ways to interpret encounters as being about your weight. I am not saying there is no fat prejudice out there. But if you are comfortable with yourself, and act as if you are, you will notice a lot less hostility.

I almost want to pinch Yoffe’s cheeks for being so...deliciously clueless. But let me say first to Arlington, VA., and everyone else in general: drop the “Last Acceptable Prejudice” hoo-hah now, please. Because it’s not. And engaging in the Oppression Olympics is foolish and undermining to anyone’s cause. Now, back to Yoffe’s “advice”, which boils down to “people won’t be mean if you behave” with the obligatory “oh, well, hurr hurr I certainly don’t doubt there’s no fat prejudice out there”.

Is there air on your planet? On your very, very privileged planet? All you have to do is watch network television for an evening, look at any tabloid at the checkout stand, or read the fucking internet and there is fat prejudice everywhere. EVERYWHERE. If you stopped fat women on the street and asked them when was the last time they felt like they caught shit for their weight, be it blatant or otherwise, I’d bank they could rattle off quite a hefty list of grievances. I also don’t think Yoffe quite gets the idea of fat not being overlooked, yet making one invisible at the same time from a fat woman’s perspective. I’ve had plenty of occasions where I would say that I have felt invisible and yet simultaneously quite obvious because of my fat. Dismissed and ignored because of my fat. Being dismissed and ignored would certainly fall under the umbrella of “invisible”, I think.

Let’s also take a moment to address the idea of “start acting like you’re comfortable with yourself and people will not be mean”. I think many of us have learned that being comfortable with ourselves and being public about it doesn’t exactly warm the hearts of all people, everywhere. If there’s a blogger on the Fatosphere that hasn’t gotten at least one comment telling us to shut up and quit complaining, to stop being fat, to go on a diet because they DO SO work, to stop being lazy/binging/ugly/stupid...well, I would eat my hat. Embracing how we look and loving how we look is a threat. And the thing is...it’s not only a threat when fat women do it. Women refusing to adhere to the demands of the very narrow spectrum of what is considered “beautiful” is a threat to the weight loss industry, it’s a threat to the patriarchy, it’s a threat to the fashion industry, it is a threat to everything we are taught from the get-go about what’s “right” and what’s “wrong” and what women should do in order to be “good” instead of “bad”.

Later in the chat, a participant chimes in with this, which is all kinds of awesome:

For the “woman of size”:Check out the Fat Acceptance movement! It's a wonderful way to work on combating the kind of prejudice you describe, and to connect with other people (mostly women) who have similar experiences. I'm particularly fond of Kate Harding's Shapely Prose blog, but just google Fat Acceptance, and you'll see lots of options.

Yoffe’s response (I can so easily imagine her sniffing with derision)? Good advice, thanks. But I also think the "woman of size" needs ways to think less about her size. Uhhhhh-huh. So if we all just think less about our size and more about...oh, I don’t know, pretty shoes or kitties or unicorns, ALL THE BAD IN THE WORLD WILL GO AWAY. Yes, I realize I’m probably hyperbolic and heavily sarcastic and getting capslocky, but for fuck’s sake. I’d love to not think about my size. However, THE ENTIRE FRIGGING WORLD IS FOCUSED ON IT. If you read anything even resembling a major newspaper/website/watch news channels, there isn’t a fucking day that doesn’t sport some sort of “holy shit the fat oh my god the fat the fat is coming we are all fat we are eating ourselves to death think of the children don’t let them have sugar or cake or anything because the cake kills” story. And what makes it all creepier is that people eat it up without question. Any other stinking story about ANYTHING and eyebrows are raised, cynical statements are made, data that looks wonky is dismissed. Something about fat, though, and it’s BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES BECAUSE THE FATPOCALYPSE IS A-COMIN’.

FYI, the “Fatpocalypse” is here, and it’s not going anywhere because it’s always BEEN here. And it’s getting more visible. And, even better...it’s getting louder.

Say ladies, it's OUR turn!

2009-03-30T18:11:00.003-05:00

Strange, I just don't see this ending very well:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Fox is developing a dating-competition series that casts "average-looking" people.

The series, titled "More to Love," is billed as the first "dating show for the rest of us," throwing open its doors to overweight contestants.

"For six years it's been skinny-minis and good-looking bachelors, and that's not what the dating world looks like," Fox president of alternative (programming) Mike Darnell said. "Why don't real women -- the women who watch these shows, for the most part -- have a chance to find love too?"

Fox orders heavyweight dating show

Of course, the tired-ass bullshit about "real women" gets trotted out. Newsflash, fellows: ALL women are real women, be they fat, thin, whatever. Having you come right out of the gate using that snooze-inducing nonsense doesn't inspire me to try out or tune in. Apparently, the success of "The Biggest Loser" is what "convinced" the network to give "More To Love" (and that title can go fuck itself, too) a whirl. The success of "The Biggest Loser" isn't about people thirsting to see "regular" people on TV. People watch “The Biggest Loser” to pull some sort of “inspiration” from it for their own bound-to-fail diet adventures, or to ooh and aah at the magical transformation that would come to anyone if their primary occupation was dieting and exercising. A magical transformation that, for a majority of the contestants, is fleeting. When “The Biggest Loser”, a show that has been mislabeled as a “public service” as it not-so-subtly humiliates and risks the health of its contestants on a weekly basis serves as your model, I’m not feeling confident that “More To Love” is going to be anything more than an exploitative humiliationfest geared towards people who want their pointing-and-laughing to be even more condoned than it already is by the media/society.

Sure, I'm willing to admit that my cynicism comes from having experienced the darker, crappier side of humans. And obviously, the producers are looking to make a buck. But it's so...annoying and rather offensive to me that they're trying to paint themselves as these Mr. Beautifuls who want to shake things up and show the world that fat girls DO date and fuck and *gasp* deserve love, too! I'd love it if Mike Darnell and Mike Fleiss managed to make a show that wasn't a train wreck of a nightmare and really did take their mission as seriously as Hollywood players can take it. But considering their first project together was "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire"? Yeah, I'm not banking on it.

The Ass That Wasn't There.

2009-03-09T20:47:00.002-05:00

I need to put a Post-It note or something on my computer monitors both at work and at home to remind me that the next time I get a wild hare up my ass to do some lingerie shopping that one really needs to have an ass to wear “cheeky panties”.

It’s like, I look at the pictures on the website of heinies sporting “cheeky” unmentionables – point of order, I have to use “unmentionables” because FUCK, do I hate the word “panties”. In my head, I can only hear my own nasal Chicago accent saying “panties” and it’s a brutal, brutal noise, so “unmentionables” it shall be from here on out. So anyway, I look at the pictures on the website of hind ends sporting cheeky unmentionables and they look so lovely and I’m dazzled into imagining that I possess such a hind end and suddenly, I see they’re on sale and I have a Lane Bryant credit card and oh, it’s been so long since I’ve bought anything at LB let alone refreshed my unmentionable collection with new gear so YES I WILL TAKE THE CHEEKIES THANK YOU *CLICK*.

Then, they arrive and I gleefully throw a pair on and realize I simply do not have the ass to fill these fuckers out. My flat ass that has been flat since the dawn of my time, that remained defiantly flat even when I was at my peak gym attendance, my flat ass didn’t magically puff out to match the photoshopped Lane Bryant asses. It just stayed its usual flatty self, with flaps of fabric sitting on my ass where ass would go if I only had an ass (a deleted song from “The Wizard of Oz”, perhaps).

Of course, I’m not going to send them back because from the front, they look pretty okay. And they go just enough with the new fancy bra I bought that has a little dingly-dongly decorative bit hanging from the middle thing (as you can tell, I am a dedicated follower of fashion). I go through odd periods of buying lingerie. And as you’ve learned from previous (whiny) posts of mine, it’s certainly not because I’m jazzing my junk up for my man – I just have these inexplicable buying jags where I turn my nose up at casual (or comfortable) underpants and will not buy anything that doesn’t feature lace or beading or sequins or see-throughy bits. I’ve dabbled in many lingerie areas, from boy shorts to bustiers (not that I have much yay to boost), and learned that more often than not, I wind up feeling more uncomfortable than sexay. It’s kind of hard to feel sexy when you’re digging lacy fabric out of your crack or trying to bend underwire so it’s not poking you in the side of the boob (or, in my case, my flibbety flubbety upper arm flesh).

And yet...when I get into one of my moods...I can’t resist the siren call to try and look like something of a siren.

Well, as much of a siren as a fairly androgynous chick who gets mistaken for a guy at least once a month can look.

Fear me.

2009-02-28T18:50:00.001-06:00

So I was at Jezebel.com today, as I am usually every day, and this article caught my eye. It’s not a huge revelation that high-end designers aren’t interested in designing clothes for fat women. Something that burned itself onto my brain years ago was Donna Karan proclaiming she’d never make clothes for fat women because she didn’t want to alienate her thinner clientele – she said something along the lines of that if a thin woman saw a fat woman wearing the same outfit as she was, the thin woman would feel horrible because she’d “worked so hard” for her body and how appalling it would be to see a woman who didn’t work hard in that same outfit (after all, us fatties – lazy, lazy, lazy bitches we).

The thing that rang my bell more was this little bit from the L.A. Times article written by Emili Vesliind: "The fear of fat is so ingrained in designers and retailers that even among those who've successfully tapped the market, talking plus size often feels taboo.” The fear of fat. The FEAR of fat. As if fat is this creature stalking through the night, seeking out new victims, a mythical critter hell-bent on wreaking havoc. Simply put, fat is the globe’s chupacabra.

Thing is, though, it’s quite easy to imagine the fear of fat, because most, if not all of us, have had that kind of funky, unsettling experience where you can sense someone physically shrinking away from us because of our fat. I can remember my mom telling me stories about patients at the drug/alcohol/eating disorders clinic she used to work at where some of the anorexic patients were terrified of sitting near the fatter patients because they thought they might “catch” the fat and gain weight. Logical adults would see the illogic in that, of course – but then you have scienterrific knobs claiming fat spreads like a virus amongst friends and family and the world gobbles the illogic up because, after all, a SCIENTIST said it and it MUST be true. It’s not difficult to find articles that are a variation on “Kids Say The Darnedest Things!” where kids proclaim they fear being fat more than they fear the end of the world or fire or war or any number of things that are far more horrible and awful.

And it’s not hard for me to imagine people thinking that if they looked like I do, it would be the most horrible thing to ever happen to them. They’re informed by the media every day that a person that looks like me is a ticking time bomb, a heart attack waiting to happen, a slovenly, lazy, filthy, out of control thing that eats everything in sight, is unloved, is friendless, is pathetic. I’m sure I’ve made reference to this before, but when I was in third or fourth grade, a classmate of mine told me her mother had seen me at some sort of school play or whatever and asked her, “does she have any friends”. Some years later, I was performing in an event at my high school – every other year, they’d throw a madrigal dinner, kind of a Renaissance Faire lite sort of thing where food was served and entertainment was of the “Huzzah!” variety. I was playing Portia from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” in a playlet called “When Shakespeare’s Ladies Meet” by Charles George. My parents and sisters were sitting at a table with strangers (never the Nolans’ idea of a good time) and were stunned into silence listening to the running commentary they were making on me and my size. These were adults mocking a teenage girl, a kid. But in the world we exist in, there are plenty of people who might try to justify such a thing. The same people who raised hell because Torrid exists (making cute clothes for fat teenage girls only “enables” them, you know – let them wear sackcloth and repent for their sins!), the same people who believe that liking yourself if you’re fat – hell, loving yourself if you’re fat – is a terrible thing, the same people that want fat people to stay indoors and out of sight and stop defying society’s rules by being loved, being loud, being visible.

If I’m going to be shunned for my fat, then by God, I want to be feared. I want you to fear that I’m not going to shut up about everyone being allowed to love themselves, appearances be damned. I want you to fear that I’m going to screech it from the rooftops that everyone deserves to be loved. I want you to fear that I’m going to convince more and more people each and every day that being different is okay – not just okay, but goddamned great. I don’t fear being feared – I fucking embrace it.

That gratitude thing AGAIN - with a twist.

2009-01-23T23:20:00.006-06:00

So I was talking to my sister tonight, and finally pried out of her that she's got herself a boyfriend. It was always one of those things that everybody figured, but nobody wanted to confirm - not because the guy's a shitheel or anything, but my family tends to operate on a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. We're not the most open of people because we were raised with a philosophy that if you're having issues, shut up and deal with it. Of course, I'm pleased for my sister. She deserves to be happy and this guy's a decent fellow. But of course, I went to bed in a foul mood and couldn't sleep for all the, you know, crying.

At the close of last year, I made a decision to remove all of my dating profiles from various sites. I spent far too much time sending out messages to various menfolk and receiving no responses in return, which only served to make me feel humiliated and idiotic. As I chewed on it and thought about it, I think if there's anything I've figured out, any kind of grand revelation I've had, it's that I simply do not have the mental energy to try and suss out what in the fuck men are looking for and why I seem to completely lack it. My grand plan for 2009 is coming to terms, once and for fucking all, that the universe has sent a very loud message, loud like an air raid siren, that I'm not meant for a relationship. It will never matter how much I may have in common with someone, it will never matter how well we get on, I lack whatever...SHAZAM or SHECLACKY or SHEBANG that seems to be key in turning over that particular engine. You either got it or you don't, and I'm someone who clearly don't, for whatever reason that I will go to the grave not understanding. It's a blessing that I don't have a screaming need to have children and haven't spent years daydreaming about a perfect wedding to the perfect guy, and I'm certainly able to take care of myself and I've never not done something because I'd be doing it alone. I'm more than capable of contending with the next however many years I'm left with on a perpetual solo mission. I know this, in my heart and in my brain and every other corner of my being.

So it's rather vexing to find myself sitting up at 11:30 p.m. ugly-crying about it...YET AGAIN. Because I'm supposed to be in a good mood. I'm on vacation, for Christ's sake. I'm going out of town Monday to Vegas to celebrate (well, cope with) my birthday, and it will be so nice to be someplace where it's 60 degrees instead of 10 below, and have the chance to kick back and relax and oh yes, do some--okay, a LOT of gambling. I'm going alone, by choice. And I know the second I land at McCarron, I will be delighted to be someplace I really dig, staying at a hotel I've never stayed at but have always wanted to, with plenty of books to read and plans to stretch my shit out and lounge. But I also know that corner of me, that corner of me that I would do absolutely anything to vanquish, to silence, to shut up once and for all, that corner of me that wants to be with someone and will not/cannot process why I'm not worthy of being loved, that corner that I want so much to STOP CARING because it is CHILDISH TO EXPEND ALL THIS ENERGY ON IT (and write about omg), will be scratching at me...gnawing. Knocking at the door like the fucking Land Shark, determined to remind me at every turn that I am not the girl that gets a happy ending, I am not the girl the fellows fall over, I am not going to be someone's have to have. To remind me that every single guy that has been tragically unlucky enough to fall on my radar, every single one that I've held my heart out to and said, "it's yours, fucking TAKE IT"--it doesn't matter. That's probably the most...maybe "galling" isn't the right word, but mercy, it's medicine that doesn't go down easy. That notion, that truth that it doesn't matter how much I loved, what I did, it meant nothing. In the big scheme of things, if I'm remembered at all, it's as a joke. An awkward moment they'd prefer to forget.

Now it's midnight, and I seem to be all ugly-cried-out (sing about that Lisa Lisa). The temperature in and around Chicago is plunging into Oh Hell No proportions, and I've realized that I've penned yet another blog entry that is not particularly Fat Acceptancey and more...brain-vomity. I do want to touch on gratitude, though - not being ordered by people to be grateful for all that I have, which I've bitched about before. No, I want to throw down an order to all the folks out there who are in healthy relationships with people who dig the absolute shit out of them - be grateful. Be so very grateful. Give them hugs and big old smooches (virtual or otherwise), let them know how brilliant they are, how much they rock. And if you're in a relationship that you know damn well needs to come to an end A.S.A.P. but you're terrified of being alone - living alone is heaps better than living a lie. You had the SHAZAM to get into the one you're in now, you'll have that SHECLACKY to get into another one, a healthier one, a happier one.

I wish I could summon up a really good, Go Team! message for those who are in positions similar to mine, some sort of "'sawright, we'll get froo it" like I'm some jolly old bat in a very British musical. It'd probably be disingenuous at best. I guess if I were to say anything, it's that it's okay to be pissed off and baffled if you've given it the good old college try and then some and still come up with naught. We just need to stumble and grasp our way to contentment at all costs.

For now, I hope to stumble my way into some sleep.

Is it really "living"?

2009-01-19T13:52:00.007-06:00

Weight Watchers says they're going to help you stop dieting and start living. After seeing their ridiculous commercial 900 trillion times, where they insinuate that being hungry equals an inability to eat anything except junk food, my teeny brain started turning over and over about what their (or any other weight loss industry program) version of living entails.

Is it living when you weigh yourself three times a day?

It is living when your entire day is ruined because you gained .00005 of a pound?

Is it living when your entire self-worth is based on the number on the scale?

Is it living when the only topic of conversation you're capable of having relates to what you've eaten or haven't eaten, how many reps you've done or haven't done, and what size pants you can wedge yourself into?

Is it living when you injure yourself working out but are terrified at dialing back on it in order to heal because you might gain weight?

Is it living when you think you can't live because of the size you wear?

The Infernal Optimist.

2009-01-05T18:08:00.003-06:00

“Starting Monday, I’ll be perfect.” – from ‘Starting Monday’, a play by Anne Commire

Happy New Year, to those of you who celebrate it. It’s a dreadful time of year if you’re a Fat Acceptance Funperson, since it’s difficult to escape the advertising pile-on courtesy of the weight loss industry – did you KNOW that if you eat “right” and exercise, YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT (results may vary)??? If you never, ever, pinky-swear EVER eat another cheeseburger, donut, or anything involving fat, carbohydrates, sugar, or flavor, YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT (results may vary)??? If you pay a company a large amount of money, YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT (results not typical)! So whip out those checkbooks, chubsters, because 2009 is YOUR YEAR…TO COMPLETELY SUCK THE JOY OUT OF EATING! AGAIN!

That violently sarcastic aside out of the way, it’s also a dreadful time of year if you’re a cynic. So you can imagine the kind of brain-injuring facedesking I’ve been doing for the last few days. The approach of the New Year always brings out the “holy fucking SHIT, the second the time clicks over to 12:00:01 January 1, 2009, I am going to sprout wings, pixie dust is going to fall out of my ass, and I AM TURNING INTO A UNICORN!!!!” in people, and while I *did* turn into a unicorn, I remain extraordinarily cynical. I’m not one to see January 1 as a tabula rasa. And I tend to react poorly, if silently, to the optimists who are bound and determined to let the world know that January 1 IS a magical date and it’s a time for renewal and it’s a clean slate and you’re starting again so shut up and don’t raise that eyebrow at me, Cynical Susie, because you’ll see! I’m never 100 percent sure when an optimist throws variations of “you’ll see!!!” at me if it’s playful…or if it’s kind of threatening. It’s very easy to mentally substitute an optimist trilling “You’ll see!” all Glinda the Good Witch-style with the Wicked Witch of the West, shaking her fist and cackling, “You’ll see…how about a little fire, Scarecrow?!?!??!!”

I think part of my inability to join the Pixie Dust Club comes from being a part of a group of people who aren’t exactly legendary for getting a fair shake. Hell, go Googling for stories about fat and you’re going to see borderline vitriolic diatribes from the U.S., the U.K., and many points in between about how you, you obese beast you (or “obeast”, if you will), is responsible for a remarkable number of ills in the world and how you deserve to be shat upon from a great height to teach you lessons about “control” and living “right”. It’s rather hard for me (and keep in mind, I do only speak for myself on this here blog) to run out into Daley Plaza, joyfully twirl around in circles, and declare my love for life, the world and all of its inhabitants. (Imagine Ron Burgundy in “Anchorman” when he screams, “Veronica Corningstone and I had SEX and we are in LOVE!” and you’ll catch my vibe of just how I would do that twirling and declaring.) When you’re fat and you’re visible, the likelihood of you seeing the very worst in people is, unfortunately, high. I’ve been remarkably lucky compared to others, and when I read stories of how others have been treated in a society that loves to pride itself on being super-tolerant and so goshdurned welcoming (except when they’re not), it chews away at my soul and dials up the rage something fierce and I can’t play the Glad Game.

I’m a grownup, staring down the barrel at 37, I’ve got some coping tools to withstand the kind of nastiness other grownups are capable of throwing. If I was a fat kid or fat teen in today’s world, I don’t know that I’d be able to survive the sheer amount of “YOU ARE BAD” messages being sent each and every day. You’ve got five-year-old kids sweating over the sizes of their asses. As grownups, we know the crazy-making that dieting is, the ridiculous microscope we put on every single thing that goes into our mouths and how much exercising we do and whether that’s “good enough” and determining our worth simply through the number on the scale. Do you think saddling a child with that nonsense is “healthy”? Is it worth setting up more children for years upon years of self-hatred and torture in the name of “health” that is less about actual health and more about thinness?

I’d love it if the mainstream media and all their assorted screenworthy doctors would simply admit that so much of the demand for “health” among the world’s citizens was less about actual health and more about aesthetics. Let’s stop bullshitting ourselves. How many posts on any given message board, be it about dieting or something completely related, has anything to do with “health” and everything to do with “I want to fit into a size __”? Much like 12:00:01 on January 1 turns us into beautiful unicorns with pixie dust flittering out of our bungs, being a size ___ is the benchmark for so many of us where our lives will truly begin, where the true us will finally emerge, and our lives will be truly worth living.

It all causes me recall tales from my fat youth (no, my youth was not electric, it was fat): one of my friends smoked up to me and informed me that her mother had spotted me at some sort of school function (perhaps the school talent show, maybe me playing in orchestra as I was a first chair violist, THANK YOU VERY MUCH). The mother asked my friend, “does she (meaning me) have any friends?” My friend, bless her heart, said in that inimitable kid way, “MO-THER!!! Of COURSE she has friends!! I’M her friend!” Things like that were benchmarks for me. Whenever someone took a shot at me because I was fat, I refused to retreat to the corner and shut down because the fat kid should shut up and disappear. When I was singing a solo in the variety show in high school and had to haul ass out of the theater and boogie down the hallway in order to get backstage and two lunkheaded teen boys yelled “FREAK!” at me as I passed, I only sang louder, I only made myself more visible. Perhaps my innate defiance, despite so many really shitty times (many in the past year alone, go fuck yourself 2008), could pass as optimism. But my brand of “optimism” requires one to see the world as a place that is great for some people and crap for others, and no amount of life is a cabaret-ing can alter the inequities of the world and this society we’re in without a radical attitude change from pretty much everybody. Empty words peeled off a poster hanging in a third grade classroom or in an office (you know the ones – like the orange tabby hanging off a branch and the caption, “Hang on! Friday’s coming!”) are as empty as the dreaded calories in something that isn’t on your “good” foods list. Chances are that cynical person you know that rolls his/her eyes whenever you bust out singing "Don't Rain on My Parade" has got plenty good reason for that eye-roll. If you're going to demand we turn our frowns upside down, we demand you take a pause from chipper cause to try and understand why our eyeballs are stuck in the sarcastic position.

A Holiday Message From Your Holiday A-Hole.

2008-12-23T17:59:00.005-06:00

In recent weeks, I've determined that rather than being a bearer of good tidings, I'm more of a...Holiday A-Hole. Not that I'm not an A-Hole 365 days of the year, but my A-Holishness seems to kick up a few notches during the Holiday Season. So it seems fitting that I would end this year (seeing as I suspect my lazy ass probably won't blog again until 2009--SEE YOUSE NEXT YEAR HURR HURR) with some of my patented amicable irritation and rage. (It's mostly not fat-themed and wow, I am using some adult language, that is for sure.)

1. Stop bitching about not being “allowed” to say “Merry Christmas” because it’s OMG NOT P.C. Unless you have supercool mind-reading abilities that can tell you the person you’re dealing with is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist or whatev (or the person is sporting hijab, peyos, yarmulke etc.), a good rule of thumb to remember for all eternity is ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION. So, even though it may make your buttocks clench with fiery, righteous rage, say “Happy Holidays” if you don’t know the person’s persuasion. However, on the flip side…

2. Unless you’re wearing the garb of your particular religious persuasion (i.e. hijab, peyos, yarmulke, etc.), people can’t tell what persuasion you happen to be. So cool your jets, ace, and don’t get all hinky because someone said “Merry Christmas” to you instead of “Happy Holidays” or said “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. I had an instance of that a couple of weeks ago. A guy needed change for a five. I didn’t have change, but I did have a couple of singles, so I told him to take the singles and rock on. When he approached me on the el platform to thank me again, I said “have a nice holiday” and he admonished me for getting it wrong. “Christmas, I celebrate Christmas”. In my head I was thinking, “I want my fucking two dollars back, you jackass.”

3. If you encounter someone like me, someone who does not care for this time of year and can’t wait for it to be over, please don’t try to infuse me and my ilk with Holiday Cheer. The reasons why I don’t like this time of year are varied and would probably not make sense to you, and that’s okay because it’s none of your goddamned business. I’m perfectly content not liking Christmas. I’m not trying to dissuade you from being in love with the season. Knock yourselves out. Stop thinking it’s some sort of tragedy that I don’t like it. Stop thinking you’re going to be the one who is going to “fix it”. That kind of behavior doesn’t endear you to me. It’s off-putting and obtrusive. Don’t get passive-aggressive about it either, because that’s even more off-putting. (P.S. to a certain person: the key to passive-aggression is subtlety. You’re doing it wrong.)

4. A special message to the jackholes who were behind me at the Nine Inch Nails concert in Vegas: I HOPE YOUR COLONS FALL OUT. See, I’m one of those crrrrazy people who go to a concert to listen to the music, not to hear your conversations. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the volume level at a NIN show, let’s just say it’s like a jet engine times a motrillion. Imagine being seated in front of people who take that as a challenge to talk over the jet engine-level volume. I had Huey, Duey, and Louie yapping endlessly while getting ‘faced (yeah, you are SEW KEWL because you can drink in Vegas!) in one ear, and then JoeBob Superfan and his girlfriend directly behind me. JoeBob’s a true superfan because he owns almost all the CDs and DVDs, you know. When he wasn’t whistling at eardrum-shattering levels directly into my other ear, he was shouting along with my beloved Trent Reznor or explaining to his girlfriend the deeper meanings behind songs. It was all I could do not to turn around and offer all of them $20 a piece to shut the fuck up. Thankfully, TR brought some serious-ass rock and my lingering memories will be of him blowing the roof off the dump rather than the douchetronics seated behind me.

5. Take a day off from berating yourself for, you know, eating. There are creepy creatures out there who would tell you the Best Way To Be is to go to holiday dinners and parties with a notebook to document in detail what you put into your mouth. Nothing says “holiday fun” like whipping out a notebook to exhaustively document what you eat. And FYI: dieting doesn’t make you a saint or a better person. It just makes you boring as hell if you’re incapable of not talking about it.

6. Hey, Mom – please stop with the “my son is married and my daughters are single but VERY successful, which is fine”. It’s kind of annoying, particularly when it only applies to two of your daughters. I haven’t been put in jail, so I reckon that makes me “successful”. And it’s not “fine” for me, frankly. Let’s lead this into...

6a. Please refrain from telling me I should be grateful. I’ve discussed this before, but let me bring it up one more time since the “grateful” tends to go hand-in-hand with the whole “How can you hate Chriiiiiiiiistmissssssssss???”. For everything that I do have (friends, roof over head, employment, blah blah blah), there is always going to be a metaphorical hole in my alleged heart that is not going to be filled by friends, roof over head, employment, hobbies, blah blah blah. Platonic love, such as it is, will never satisfy me. Being the wacky asexual sidekick/third wheel doesn’t make me turn cartwheels of glee. I don’t “need” a partner/relationship. I want one. But because of whatever (anonymous commenters like to point out that I’m “angry” and that’s why I’m kryptonite to the male population of the universe), it doesn’t appear to be in the cards. You can also refrain from suggesting every dating site on the interwebs, too – I have been a busy beave over the last few months, sending out messages on a variety of sites to cats and I have not received one response. And let me again emphasize that is FINE. I understand that I am not 99.99999 percent of the universe’s bag. I get that. But don’t tell me that I shouldn’t have moments of sadness, that I shouldn’t be a touch resentful, and I shouldn’t be ANGRY that I ain’t feeling too great about being alone. Mind you, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, I am able to function, entertain myself, travel alone and I won’t be sitting in the house every weekend and I will make do until I kick off. But I will rage about it and I will raise hell about it until the day I fucking die, and if that’s problematic for you? Tough titty says the kitty. If nothing else, feel free to use me as your own lesson in gratitude. (However, I do charge for the privilege. I have PayPal.)

So that’s how I’m ending this year. I request 2008 get the fuck out of my face A.S.A.P. and here’s hoping 2009 doesn’t suck completely. Thanks for reading, and I hope you are able to find the occasional chuckle/coherent thought in this potpourri of genial raging that I do.

X X O O O

Jane

Why we need an under-informed person tax.

2008-12-18T17:22:00.004-06:00

New York governor David Paterson weighs in today on CNN.com about why, for the love of God and all that's holy, New York state needs an "obesity" tax--that is, a tax on sugared pop ("soda" for some of you) and juices that have less than 70 percent actual juice in them.

Here's the link to the article itself: O M G THE CHILLLLLDREN!!!!!

It's the usual song-and-dance that we're all used to - OMG the fat children are taking over OMG fat causes everything that's bad and wrong with the world OMG the only way to solve it is to tax the shit out of junk food OMG OMG OMG.

The one bit that actually is worth more than an eye-roll is this:

"To address the obesity crisis, we need more than just a surcharge on soda. We need to take junk food out of our schools. We need to encourage our children to exercise more. And we need to increase the availability of healthy food in underserved communities."

Now, of course, take out the "to address the obesity crisis" and replace it with "to address the lack of access many communities and citizens have to quality foods and adequate healthcare", and you've got something there. But instead, Gov. Paterson is, like so many ill-informed government types and regular folks, waving the OBEEEESITY EPIDEMIC!!!!! flag because panic sells. Panic is profitable. Actual information isn't sexy, people.

Let us take a moment to repeat the following: CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.

Obesity causes serious health problems like type 2 diabetes - WRONG. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION
high blood pressure- WRONG. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION
high cholesterol - WRONG. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION
It puts children at much greater risk for life-threatening conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer - WRONG AGAIN. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.

"Just as the cigarette tax has helped reduce the number of smokers and smoking-related deaths, a tax on highly caloric, non-nutritional beverages can help reduce the prevalence of obesity." No, it'll just mean that people will either pay the tax on sugared pop/pseudo-juice and CONTINUE BEING FAT or cut back on drinking sugared pop/pseudo-juice and CONTINUE BEING FAT. It's wacky how that whole thing works. I rarely drink sugared pop. I like the taste of diet pop so that is what I choose to drink. Holy shit, folks, STILL FAT.

The deliciously spectacular Kate Harding discusses it further, so have a peek. There's also a link in there leading to another quality post about how it would be so lovely for the government to invest some serious money in getting people good food, safe places to get out and gad about, and quality healthcare. It would be such a delight if the government would invest some serious time in actually making an effort to do research and for someone--ANYONE--to use some critical thinking. I mean, I know that's plumb nutty to even suggest, but I reckon it's worth a try.

Oh, and the other thing that made me snort, because PLEASE:

We must never stigmatize children who are overweight or obese.

But you already do, boss. And with more and more legislative horseshit like this, with "The Biggest Loser" and every ad for every weight-loss company, and every bit of media that screams "FAT = DEATH", you stigmatize fat kids, you stigmatize fat adults. By recycling junk science and half-truths, you're not going to magically make people healthy. You're making it clear who is acceptable and who isn't, who is worthy and who isn't, who belongs and who doesn't. Who is the enemy and who isn't. You are simply helping along a nation that already has an eating disorder spiral down the drain at an ever-quickening pace.

On Blago, Oprah, and Other Sundry Items.

2008-12-09T18:00:00.006-06:00

I should preface this by saying I'm not a political animal by any stretch of the imagination. I don't like debating politics in general, and the stuff that I believe is the stuff I believe, and know that my mind won't change on those stuffs, so it's folly for me to think I can change someone else's point of view. So you'll have to excuse my rather...lighthearted attitude regarding the governor of my state being, essentially, a less-murderous, big-haired Tony Soprano.

I do think it's a horrible thing, don't get me wrong--I mean, this cat was threatening to cut funding for A CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL if it didn't pony up a sizable campaign contribution, for Christ's sake. But I can't help but be hugely amused by the hubris of this guy. He knew he was being wiretapped, he knew he was under serious-ass scrutiny, and his response? "I think there's nothing but sunshine hanging over me. By the way, I should say if anyone wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly." Allegedly, his wife Patti can be heard in the background on the tapes, right-onning Blago's working over people for cash, dropping just as many f-bombs as he does as he angles and connives and threatens. When I heard that, all I could conjure up in my head was Carmela Soprano bringing the pie to that lawyer's office to get a letter of recommendation for Meadow to attend Georgetown:

Carmela: I don’t think you understand. I want you to write that letter.

Joan: Excuse me?

Carmela: I said I want you to write the letter.

Joan: Are you threatening me?

Carmela: Threat, what threatening? I brought you a ricotta pie and high school transcripts so you could write a letter of recommendation for my little daughter to Georgetown.

"I've got this thing, and it's fucking golden and uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there." - no, not Tony Soprano...but Rod Blagojevich discussing Obama's Senate seat that HE WAS GOING TO GIVE TO THE HIGHEST FRIGGING BIDDER

Can you imagine what he could have accomplished had he used his power for good and not evil?

Meanwhile, on Oprah Watch, she kind of made me sad today. I am not an Oprah fan in the least. On a good day, she makes me grind my teeth. So when I read that SWEET MOTHER OF GOD OPRAH IS 200 POUNDS and the subsequent self-hatred she flung out there, I was simultaneously grinding and thinking, "woman, you are worth so much more than this public self-flagellation horseshit". My personal opinion of her aside, there's no getting around that she has accomplished some significant shit. There's something so...pathetic, watching a woman who has the world by the ass a) providing comedians/assholes ammunition to debase her solely based on her weight and b) essentially discounting all she's accomplished because she's *gasp* 200 pounds. And reinforcing the message that you are a failure, no matter what, if you're fat. That nothing is more important than being thin. She has millions of Oprahlytes who look to her for guidance and suggestions on how to live a better life - can you imagine what she could accomplish if she used her powers for good and not evil?

And finally, this piece on McSweeney's made me laugh this week - laugh and THINK (oooooh). It was this bit in particular:

Whoops, I don't know what I was thinking, talking about my problems when you're so much more lovably flawed.

I don't know about you, but I've had that fleeting thought more than once in my real-life relationships. I've believe I've mentioned it before, my tendency to become the zany wacky fat girl sidekick in a good 99 percent of my relationships. We've all had that friend that we believe to be prettier, smarter, better than us, the charming narcissist who will allow us that token 30 seconds to share what how we're feeling and soon navigates the conversation back to her feelings and her struggles. And because we're convinced we're not quite worth the oxygen to talk about what we might be feeling or struggling with, it becomes habit to zip it and let the lovable minx keep on yapping...and yapping...and yapping.

At some point, however, I realized it was okay for me to talk about me for a while. In fact, it was super-okay to jettison people out of my life who weren't willing to talk about me for a wee bit. It was downright kickass to give the heave-ho to people that weren't willing to support me, to comfort me, to regard me as something beyond an asexual sarcasm/heartfelt advice generator. It's cliche, but that phrase "it's not the quantity, it's the quality"? So true when it comes to friendships. It takes a while to accept that it's worth doing the dumper on people that bring us down, but holy shit, it is so...freeing. Not that I'm suggesting you should go out tonight and go on a friend-jettisoning spree, but if you're feeling like someone in your life is consistently crapping on you? It might be time to do a little housecleaning.

But the-- and the -- oh, for the LOVE.

2008-11-16T17:53:00.006-06:00

So I made the grave error of watching the "Sex and the City" movie Saturday night. Watching a modern-day fairy tale with the obligatory happy ending -- not the best idea I've had as of late. (Spoilers lay ahead)

I was an intermittent viewer of the show. It depended on whether or not I had HBO at any given time, basically. While I could find it entertaining, more often than not I found it baffling and irritating. But at the end of the day, I was never the target audience for a show about four single women navigating the wilds of single life in New York City because I was never a single woman navigating the wilds of single life. I never had anything resembling a "single life" (and one could quite easily argue, have never had anything resembling a "life"). If I went out with my fellow single girlfriends, I sat at the bar observing as they were talked up by the dudes. I never got very bent over whether or not I'd have a date on Friday or Saturday night because it simply wasn't something that ever happened to me. And I'm not boo-hoo-poor-me-ing, it's just the way things were. When I read advice columns (I READ WAAAY TOO MANY ADVICE COLUMNS), the agony aunts go-to advice is "OMG, ask yer friends to set you up!" Well...that wasn't something my friends did, either. Trust me, I am a tough fucking sell on a good day, I'm self-aware enough to realize that. So coming from the background that I have, watching "Sex and the City" (TV and movie) is like watching a foreign film without dubbing or subtitles or a twisted version of the "Planet Earth" mini-series. Imagine a breathless Sir David Attenborough narrating the wacky hi-jinks and heartbreaking moments of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte. Wait, I think I may have just made it more entertaining for myself.

My mood swings with the SATC movie began within the first two minutes of the narration as Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) explained that women moved to New York City in search of "labels and love". Forget advancing your career, ladies. That's not sexy. Spending beyond your means so you can have Vivienne Westwood on your hiney: THAT IS SEXY. It's SEX-AY, even. Goddamned irritating. But I sucked it up, tabled it in my head, and soldiered on. I must be honest and say that I enjoyed it here and there. I always thought Cynthia Nixon was excellent on the show and I liked her relationship with Steve (David Eigenberg). I laughed out loud hither and yon. I was generally bored with Samantha (Kim Cattrall) as I was when I watched the series and love-and-hatey with Charlotte (Kristin Davis). I thought it was rather brave of SJP (not to be confused with Super Jackpot Party) to appear on film sans make-up and looking like a woman of age when Carrie is in her post-Big-wedding-bailage depression. And my personal jury will always, always be out on whether Big's a rang-dang-diggety-douche or swoon-worthy.

But I don't know if I have enough words available at the moment for the utter ridiculousness of actual screen time being devoted to Samantha's tragic, horrific...WEIGHT GAIN. I know, I know, hold onto your hats and tell the children to leave the room, A WOMAN GAINED WEIGHT AND SHE DIDN'T STAY INDOORS SO AS TO NOT SULLY THE WORLD. Of course, the requisite "what the hell is wrong with you" scolding went down with a weak-ass side of "but we'd still love you and you'd be beautiful at any weight" and Samantha was shown scarfing down food so as to further hammer home the message that she was being shameful and lacking control. But as I reflected upon the movie later on (and tried very hard not to be irritated with my mother for fucking up my red velvet cake that I had baked earlier in the day), SATC has always talked out of both sides of its mouth. Women should be independent individuals who should take pride in their achievements and are not defined by the men they are with, but...how awfully tragic it is to be without a man and certainly without pretty shoes. Why on earth would I expect that they would avoid the silly-ass trope of a woman eating her feelings and begging forgiveness for being "bad" and "out of control"?

And why in the name of all that is good and holy did I think I wasn't going to wind up in my well-decorated and cozy pit of despair after watching a movie that in my world should have been titled "Sex (Which You Don't Have) and the City (Which You No Longer Live In Because You Are Quite the Loser--Keep On Keepin' On, Failurebritches)". To make it even worse, TBS was showing "Shrek"--you know, the HI-larious fun cartoon movie about the anti-social ogre who manages to find someone to love him. OF COURSE I COULDN'T TURN THE CHANNEL. I had to blubber through John Cale's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and simper through Shrek coming to Fiona's rescue at the wedding and spew firehose-strength tears as they proclaimed their love for each other. The best thing - THE ONLY THING - I could do at that point? Grab my DVD of "Aliens" and revel in a movie that contained nary a whit of romance and an absolute fuckton of...well, "Aliens".

The lesson learned (yet one more for the "Life Lessons" folder)? Avoid movies that have "Sex", "Love", "Sweet", or "Heart" in the title; limit viewing to movies that contain many explosions, some car chases, and enormous amounts of martial arts; and just keep watching Discovery. Never turn away from Discovery if I can avoid it. "Mythbusters" will not break my heart.

Pardon me if my party hat's not on.

2008-10-29T18:19:00.007-05:00

When I think about achievements one could muster up in life, I can dream up many things: having a book published, passing a difficult test, getting a promotion at work. Losing weight through dieting will never be one of those things I will muster up praise for.

I can’t clap my hands and say “yay!!!!” for the kind of mental trauma people put themselves through, counting calories or points and berating themselves and kicking their own asses around the block and then some if they don’t do everything just so on any given day. I can’t say “bully for you” when you talk about how hideous you look and how terrible a person you are because your thighs don’t look like a supermodel’s. I won’t encourage self-hatred. I won’t congratulate self-abuse. I won’t lead a cheer for obsession.

If that makes me a bad person or if I'm overreacting or if I'm mean-spirited, so be it. My disinterest won’t stop you from beating yourself up for not being the “real you” you think is lurking somewhere underneath your skin since there are many, many more people in the world that are willing to fall over themselves to give you kudos for weight loss. You can mutter I’m jealous because I’ve obviously “failed” and “given up” and don’t have “control” (oh, that mystical “control”). You won’t be the first person to tag me with that, believe me. I’m jealous of assorted people for many reasons, but not of the mindset that is inevitable when it comes to dieting for the purposes of weight loss. I did my time angsting over the size of my ass and it’s not a place I ever care to go back to again. If I learned anything, it was that the ever-elusive happiness that I still seek isn’t going to appear if I whittle myself down to a socially acceptable size. Satisfaction with my life won’t come simply because I can shop at a straight store. The issues that I have creaking in my cranium aren’t going to go away if I boogie down to the local J. Craig and get my salt-laden crapfeast on.

There’s a scary percentage of people who would rather get hit by a truck than look anything like me. In a life where any number of things can go horribly, horribly, horribly wrong, where we can suffer so much loss and hurt and hate and misery...really? Being hit by a truck is preferable? But I’m the one with the problem. Hmm.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

2008-10-20T19:45:00.003-05:00

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m an advice column reader. I’m fascinated by people’s issues and what sort of solutions are proposed to them by both the columnist and (if the website has comments enabled, a’la Salon) readers. For better or worse, I tend strongly toward trying to solve my own issues, which…has…worked out so well? *ahem* Anyhoo, I read Carolyn Hax in the Washington Post and this particular nugget caught my eye:

Part One and then the follow-up (thank Christ for posting it the same day as I’m stumbling through trying to express my thoughts): Part Two

Read it and then come back. I’ll wait.

I’m of two minds on this particular subject, which in and of itself is quite vexing at present. On the one hand, I’m super-annoyed in general by the “oh sweet lord God you don’t mean to TELL ME…THAT SHE GAINED WEIGHT?!?!?! *trumpets of doom*” tone from both Carolyn and the letter-writer (let’s just say the letter-writer would not be a winner-winner-chicken dinner in my book with his need to emphasize just how HOT his fiancée was and the lackluster tap dance of “well, it’s not the ONLY reason…HOT!”). Carolyn’s is, of course, playing the Concern Troll. But on the flip, I’m kind of feeling the “presenting a false front” angle. I understand the irritation—NOT the primary reason he wants to jettison his fiancée, but the irritation at being hornswaggled, PLEASE NOTE in glittery text and fiery exclamation points. I swear I will get to the fatness angle eventually (you know it takes me 18 hours to arrive at a point – pack a lunch). I feel it with women who intentionally present themselves as less intelligent so as to appeal to men—a friend of mine called it her “cute and stupid” persona. I much preferred it when she’d use her far more interesting and honest “smart and wicked sense of humor and still remarkably adorable” persona (thankfully, her honest self won out when she met her husband – they’ll be celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary on Halloween). I feel it with men who gamely trail behind their wives/girlfriends at various activities or events that they’d much rather not be involved in, but feel like they “have to”. I mean, maybe I’m pie-in-the-skying, unrealistic and dumb, but if my Imaginary Boyfriend didn’t like the Cure, I’m not going to demand (either right out front or passive-aggressively) he go see the Cure with me because I’m a damn grown woman and I can go to a goddamned concert by myself. Or I can go shopping by myself. Or I can go to the movies by myself. Or any number of activities that my Imaginary Boyfriend might not be interested in, and vice-versa. To me, that’s logical and fair. In my head, I would have enough in common with my Imaginary Boyfriend (I really should give him a name one of these days) that we could unite in doing the things we both like to do and not have snitters over doing things on our own or with friends that does not include our partner. However, my learnings from the internet, advice columnists, and hearing tales from my friends who have non-Imaginary spouses/partners would tell me that there seems to be no place for my logic. Personally, I would find it weird and wrong to pretend to be interested in my Imaginary Boyfriend’s hobbies/activities if they weren’t compelling to me. If I pretended to be super into spelunking simply to attract a mate, imagine how fucked I’d be when the time came to don my helmet with the shiny light on top and receive the request to belay somebody. It would be a sad day at the cave, my friends. A very sad, tragic day.

But to get back to the OMG FAT BRIDE thing for a mo’...it’s a tough friggin’ sell in my book to screech “I didn’t get what I bargained for (i.e. my fiancée didn’t stay what I consider to be HOT)” and put on a show for sympathy, no matter how hard Carolyn's on board with his boo-hooing. When I think about whom I might marry one day and all the things that might change about him physically or personality-wise, I think finding out he bricked his pet cat into the basement wall or he had a shoebox full of heads of women that he was acquainted with and had meticulously carved out of photographs that he would then paste onto centerfolds from porn magazines and masturbated to every day* would be a much bigger dealbreaker than him putting on 40 pounds after engagement-ringing me. But the brawl between those who think it’s acceptable to lose their shit over their significant other putting on pounds and those who think that attitude makes them superficial jerks will rage for all eternity. The only thing any of us can hope is that we stay as far away from those men and women and let them impose their regulations on each other.

But then it makes me think about other shit, about men and women tiptoeing around what they look like, particularly in the online dating universe. It’s fucking nerve-wracking as hell winging up photographs of oneself on a dating profile, let alone pictures that are in focus, not taken in shadows, and not cutting oneself off at the chest line so as to minimize what one imagines being one’s worst “flaws”. I spent quite a while deciding what pictures I was going to put on my various profiles floating around the ether. The most important thing to me was being up front about my appearance, and I realized I’ve always been like that. Way way way back when, when I first got internetting, I was a weekend fixture in the X-Files chatroom on AOL (I’d say...1995-ish, perhaps). I didn’t have internet access or a PC at home, so I’d truck out to my parents’ house every weekend to “visit the parents” but mostly to bullshit with online friends about "The X-Files". A fellow took something of a shine to me and I was quite frank that I was a fat girl. The one thing I remember the most about the entire silly situation was his insisting that I was lying in order to “test” him or that I was exaggerating when I said I was built like a linebacker. It pissed me off that he was insinuating that I was trying to garner sympathy by being the sad clown fat girl or fishing for compliments somehow because I was simply being my special brand of honest. I don’t like surprises, and I don’t like surprising others (except with, say, a Hallmark card or a Tower of Treats from Harry and David). So my pictures at my dating profiles feature how my face double-chins when I smile, my semi-slouchy posture, my belly, my smallish rack. I’ve only one picture where I’m wearing make-up because I rarely wear it. I don’t want to come away with a story where I wind up meeting a guy for tea and the first thing I see is his face falling at the sight of me. I want to screen out fellows that aren’t down with my appearance. And I don’t want to bullshit someone into thinking I look like someone I’m not. I understand the fear men and women have. Christ, do I ever. We all want to appear like the most fabulous cats to ever walk the earth. But if you’re going to kick off a potential relationship with fear-based fudging, what good is that? Where’s the honesty in it? And it makes me think: what else aren’t you telling me? What else am I in for?

Look, I’m absolutely a huge proponent of the inner being more important in the long run than the outer. I would hope whatever man that might dig me would be hot for my brain and my carcass. But I’m not willing to hide myself or disguise myself because that is what we are told to do every single fucking day. All of us, not just the fats. The message is clear every single day that our basic selves, with the zits and the rolls and the receding hairlines, will not do and that we must change, change, change in order to meet that ever-elusive standard of “good”. Instead of aspiring for that mysterious good, I’d love for everyone to show themselves, and show themselves without the self-deprecating commentary (“uggh, I look terrible in that picture/it’s 50 pounds ago/I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep the night before/I’m so old”) that we’re conditioned to throw down.

Show yourselves.

(in comments, even!)

*true story...(didn't happen to me, but to someone I know)

Loving one's body when it feels like no one else will.

2008-10-15T18:48:00.004-05:00

It's an unsavory thing, being reminded that the body type one inhabits seems so universally loathed. Especially on a day like today, Love Your Body day. On a good day, I embrace every inch and every pound of myself, and on a bad day...well, like today, for example. On a bad day, every single shitty, stupid comment ever made about the way I look is in the forefront of my brain. Every single, shitty, stupid comment that can be made on the internet about how awful fat people are seems to be in my view. Everything that I feel I'm not -- beautiful, attractive, worthy of being loved back -- crashes on top of me. And it just gets harder to surface from beneath the ignorance, the hatred--the societal as well as the self-inflicted.

All I want to do today is completely retreat from the world. The world doesn't care for me, and I don't particularly care for it. Like the Beach Boys sing, "I just wasn't made for these times". Even the anger I have (I have plenty and that's why I'm single, according to an anonymous commenter) isn't sustaining me. All I've got is resignation with a heaping helping of apathy at present. So I'm open to suggestions: what helps you get up in the morning? What keeps you going? What do you hang onto to make anything worth it?

Just call me 'Squatch.

2008-10-08T17:19:00.006-05:00

So I'm reading about this Australian teen* who has decided to compete as a sumo wrestler, which is awesome. Pictures of her can be found here, and as always, if you treasure your brain, don't read the comments. I discovered the story at another website, and the thing that kept causing synapses in my head to continually misfire were the vehement assertions that there's no WAY in shrieking hell that this girl could be healthy, and that if she's 280 lbs. at 14, her legs are going to crumble and she's yet another ticking time bomb.

Thing is, though, when I was 14? I was 260 lbs., and 'Lantic Ocean, I'm still here. Which is, apparently, a miraculous, borderline fictitious thing.

I topped out at 5'9" when I was probably 12 or 13 years old. I was always taller than most of my classmates, and certainly larger than most of them. Being built like a brawler was a distinct advantage when I went through my "Kissing Monster" phase. No, I wasn't 31 at the time--for whatever reason, when I was five or six, I decided the best game in the world would be to run around the playground and try to kiss as many boys (and girls, I was an equal-opportunity Kissing Monster) as I possibly could. A teacher, Mr. Rossi, would eventually put a stop to my kissing by telling me (not unkindly) "the boys don't like it when you do that!"

Oh, irony.

But I was a bruiser from birth. There isn't a photograph of me in existence where I'm not fat, either as a child, adolescent, or adult. I never had a glorious, storied "skinny" time in my life. And what struck me most about Samantha-Jane Stacey when I looked at photographs of her was Jesus H., she looks like me. She's got more boob than I do and bless her hamstrings and flexibility, she can crouch so beautifully. But yeah, Samantha-Jane's got some Nolan in her for sure. The other thing that I dig is that she isn't sitting back and being the sad fat kid in the corner like society would prefer her to be. She is out and rocking all 280 lbs of herself in a male-dominated sport and she is aiming to win.

I've seen commenters getting tight about her competing in an "adult" sport. If that's so troubling, then I'd like to see some hand-wringing over kids playing ANY sport whatsoever. Sports injuries among kids are an ever-increasing problem as kids are being pushed to compete harder and harder long before they're physically (or mentally) ready to handle it. I can't help but feel a vibe that there's far less hang-wringing about the notion of kids being involved in such sports as baseball, football, gymnastics, or track because those are sports where 98 percent of the participants "look right". Sumo is a sport dominated by men (and perhaps one day, women) who aren't going to be on the cover of GQ wearing an Armani suit while fashion models are draped over them. Sumo wrestlers are seen as walking punchlines, not muscular warriors of sport.

And, since everyone on the internet has a medical degree, over and over again the following is declared as True Facts:

*It is simply IMPOSSIBLE that she's healthy
*It is simply IMPOSSIBLE that she's going to be able to walk by the time she's an adult because there's NO WAY her leg bones could POSSIBLY carry 280 lbs
*It is simply IMPOSSIBLE that she can't lose weight

As I mentioned before, I was probably clocking in at 260 lbs. at 14, and I'm obviously a mythical creature like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster because I can ambulate just fine. I can jump, I can skip, I can dance the hootchie-koo. Even when I was 320 lbs, I could walk, jump, do stairs, all the benchmarks set by the Internet Doctors as being signs of health. It seems like a DUH at this point, but just to remind the planet: you cannot determine what someone's health status is by simply looking at them. Unless you have superpowers that include being able to analyze a person's innards and outnards with a mere glance, when you open your yap and declare in dramatic, operatic tones that so-and-so CANNOT POSSIBLY BE HEALTHY, you sound silly (and not fun silly). The unfortunate thing is that there are so many people thinking they are in possession of those superpowers, opening their yaps and asserting they are able to determine on sight who is healthy and "good", the ones who do it don't realize how silly they sound. It's hard to when you're surrounded by similarly silly people.

So, rock on with your very bad ass self, Samantha-Jane. This Jane is cheering you on (I won't say "rooting" since, in Australia, it definitely does not mean "cheering you on").

*Hey, UPI, thanks for categorizing this story under Odd News, you fucking doucheweasels.

A smattering of nattering.

2008-09-22T19:37:00.005-05:00

My brain’s all over the joint so, as a result, this post will probably cover 18 katrillion topics and I’m not 100 percent sure it will make any sense, let alone come to any sort of point. But hey, Monday's almost over. Let’s roll the dice and see what comes out of my idiot head.

I’ve been ruminating on this comment I read over at Jezebel a couple of weeks ago:

...do we ever tell single men to just suck it up and be happy alone? To me, it seems like we just want these older single women to shut up because there aren't any solutions.

It rang my bell something fierce, and since then, I’ve been paying slightly closer attention to the various message boards and whatnots that I peruse and it really is rather striking how older single fellows bemoaning their single status are given the “keep yer chin up, buddy, she’s out there/don’t give up, man, Ms. Right’s right around the corner!!” platitudes and rah-rahing, but us older single women…yeah, why don’t we shut our traps and be happy with what we have, huh? Be grateful that you have friends/family/a roof over your head/a job to go to/two legs to stand on/two eyeballs to see out of/the sun shines/the wind blows etc. etc. etc. and fucking on and on. You don’t NEED a relationship, you know. So BE GRATEFUL, and you’d damn well better keep any of those stupid thoughts about how it pretty much sucks being the third wheel/ignored/alone to yourself so the rest of us aren’t bummed out.

If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. Bitter and kind of furious at times, actually. I know I trot out this song-and-dance more often than anyone really gives a rat’s ass about, but as I’m preparing to embark on one last ridonk attempt at online dateage, perhaps I’m trying to pump out the last remnants of bitterness from the lower decks of my very large failboat, the U.S.S. Chunky-n-Doom’d in order to embark upon this project with some semblance of optimism. Or, at least, the ability to put on a convincing show of it. But I think we all have that moment of “bwuh!!!” when someone tells us of a double-standard and then we see it in practice for ourselves. And mercy, am I bwuhing my ass off lately. I think it’s the most hurtful when it comes from people who you’re close to, be they family or friends. When my mother trots out the old saw about “Life Lessons” and “Everything happens for a reason”, I would like to put her in the shed because I’m waaaaaaaaaaay over Life Lessons Happening For a Reason. I’m at the point in my life where I would much rather just be presented with a list of all the Reasons the Life Lessons are happening and what I could do in order to pass the next exam. Someone tell me where I can pick up the Cliff’s Notes and I’ll study up something fucking fierce.

**********

I had this thought many times today: JUST FUCKING EAT FUCKING EAT FUCKING EAAAAAAT. No, not directed at myself, but overhearing co-workers getting tight over calorie counts and dress sizes and being "disgusting" and "pigs" and the usual foorahrah, accompanied by oohing and aahing over a co-worker just back from maternity leave. The same woman that insisted I'd lost weight while I was overseas was borderline frothing as she told New Mom she'd lost weight ohyesyouhavethebabyweight'salmostallgoneohmygoodness! I really loathe how diet conversation has become a lo-cal substitute (har har) for CONVERSATION. That discussing one's diet/exercise regimen and how many calories are consumed and what "bad" things you avoid eating and how "bad" you've been if you had a cookie is considered interesting chat while at work or out with friends. Not that I'm looking to have a deep, philosophical chat with my co-workers, but good gravy, could it be chatter that isn't a competition to see who can come up with the most colorfully hatey ways to deride oneself? I suspect I may be repeating myself, but it's appalling to me that self-loathing has become a rite of passage. It's absolutely acceptable for a person to participate in a conversation that consists primarily of which body parts of ours we find to be horrifically disgusting and how we HAVE to get in shape (the only appropriate shape being thin) and coveting bodies that it is downright scientifically impossible to have. I think about Dara Torres, the 41-year-old Olympic swimmer that made so many headlines because she was coming back to compete at *gasp* the ancient age of 41 AND *super-mega-gasp* after having had a BABY! You know goddamned well millions of women saw the photographs of her and her washboard abs and muscular thighs and immediately thought themselves shitty because they didn't have those abs and muscular thighs--never mind the fact that Dara Torres' job...is being a SWIMMER. She spends $100,000 a year on a head coach, a sprint coach, two stretchers, two masseuses, a chiropractor, and a nanny. That's why she's got friggin' washboard abs and muscular thighs--because she can devote every friggin' free moment to flopping around in the friggin' pool, friends. But that kind of logic doesn't penetrate our brains because we are so caught up in the magic being sold to us each and every day that our lives will practically turn into a never-ending utopia of awesome and unicorns if we could just stop being such out-of-control hogbeasts and GET. THIN. Oh, I mean, GET IN SHAPE.

**********

Lastly, I do wish to report I'm in love with something shiny, pretty, and with a blinky light. I bought a 500GB hard drive tonight and it's...it's a delight, frankly. A couple of years ago, I had a massive hard drive implosion that ate much of my writing, including 15 or so completed screenplays. Yep, a LIFE LESSON if there ever was one. Not that I've been able to write shit since then, but I suddenly came over all "must have external hard drive now" this evening and trotted out to pick myself up my new best friend. We'll just overlook the large amount of surge-protecting power strips I have in my Bachelorette Lair (a.k.a. my room in my parents' house) *cough* because it's important that my bass amp be at the ready at all times in case I feel a need to jam, or it only take mere seconds for my PC to leap to life because dammit, I NEED TO KNOW WHERE CHRIS MAKEPEACE IS.

Strike 193,882,093, Alton Brown.

2008-09-12T16:52:00.004-05:00

Paul over at BigFatBlog blows shit at Alton Brown waaay better than I can at the moment because when I'm steamed, coherency is not my friend. Instead, it's a lot of gasping, eye-rolling, and "fu-huh-huck YOU"-ing. Followed by a rant that is plentiful with expletives not ever deleted.

I mean, not that I needed an additional reason to call Alton Brown fucking clownshoes. It just boggles my freaking mind that a cat would feel so comfortable displaying his utter contempt for the people who PAY HIS GODDAMNED BILLS. Well, I should say, the FAT people who pay his goddamned bills. I can only hope that any fat person in anything resembling a non-self-loathing space that is a fan of his stops being a fan of his, stops buying his shit, and stops lining the pockets of this ginormous, throbbing, overrated doucheweasel.

Then, join me in penning a lovely letter to the Food Network. Their physical address appears to be:

75 Ninth Avenue
New York, NY 10011

And what makes it even more kneeslappingly laughable (in that "I really want to kick the world in its ass right about now" way) is the "Core Values" blabbetty blah on their website (parent company: Scripps).

I'd love it if Alton Brown didn't have a job anymore. I'm dreaming big, I know. But for fuck's sake, Food Network shitcanned the dude from "Dinner Impossible" for fudging his resume'. However, Alton Brown's dish of hatred and contempt is delicious? Yeah, no. Time for Food Network and Alton Brown to be on the receiving end of some major pushback.

(Anyone who has better contact info for Food Network, lay it on me in the comments.)

Romper stomper bomper Pru.

2008-09-06T20:33:00.007-05:00

Dear Prudence (real name: Emily Yoffe),

I read your advice column every Thursday on slate.com. I'm an avid reader of advice columns, in fact, from Dear Abby to Carolyn Hax to Miss Conduct. I'm always curious to see if they're presented with situations similar to any I may have (or may be) going through at any given time, and I like to see the responses to fat-related scenarios as well. It's not often that an advice columnist surprises me. More often than not, when someone writes in with some sort of fat-related query, it turns into a polite screed about The Evils of Fat: while it's not okay to haterate against fat people, well, they sure do need some fixing is the usual tone. Basically, save the delightful Miss Conduct (a.k.a. Robin Abrahams, who is a friend of Fat Acceptance), advice columnists generally demonstrate Concern Trollesque behavior.

And this week, I knew I was in for a doozy when the video question was titled "Heavier and Hard Up" (a transcript follows after the cut):

Dear Prudence,

I've been living with my boyfriend for a year. I'm 23, and he's 35. He's usually a very gentle and caring man, but two weeks ago he dropped a bomb on me. When I asked him why we don't have sex as often as we used to, he told me he no longer finds me as physically attractive because of my recent weight gain.

I know I've gained weight - I went from a size 16 to a size 20, and I'm not happy about it either. But it didn't bother me much until I found out about his true feelings. He swears up and down that he still loves the person inside just as much as ever. But I can't help but feel that if he won't accept me physically, he doesn't really love me. Now I feel like if I want this to work, I need to change. But I haven't tried to change him. So how is that fair?

Signed, Confused in the Country

Now, Prudence, if I had been presented with this question, I would be dying for more details. What was her activity level like prior to moving in with her boyfriend? Had she been ill? Any major life changes besides moving in with the boyfriend? What is the general relationship like, since there is a sizable age difference? Basically, I'd be hard-pressed to fire off a response without having more information. But we don't want to let human curiosity or the natural inclination to have more facts to go on get in our way of doling out some terribly "fine" advice, do we.

Dear Confused,

You're only 23 and you've gone up two dress sizes in a year, to a size that by any measure puts you in the plus category. (oh god OH GOD NO NOT THE PLUS CATEGORY) It's not unreasonable for your boyfriend to be concerned about this trajectory (sweet mother of Christ YOU ARE GOING TO END UP 500 POUNDS AND BEING TAKEN OUT OF YOUR HOUSE BY A CRANE). Of course we all want to be loved for who we are regardless of what we look like. But hey, people care about what they look like and what their partners look like (so SHAPE THE FUCK UP, FATTY!). Try to separate this issue out from your relationship and instead take a look at your relationship with food (I CAN SENSE YOU SIT ON THE COUCH ALL DAY AND WATCH TV AND EAT DONUTS BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT ALL FAT PEOPLE DO). For the sake of your future health (YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, CHUBS), join Weight Watchers (it's not a diet, it's a LIFESTYLE!), get into an exercise program, try to do something to get this problem under control (BECAUSE YOU ARE OUT OF CONTROL FAT FATTERSON).

I strongly suggest watching the video, because my transcript (or even my, uh, editorial whimsy) cannot possibly communicate the kind of...pompous disdain that drips out of Emily's mouth. Of COURSE if you're fat, you've got a fucked up relationship with food. What made my jaw drop a bit more was the "tough shit, people are superficial so get with the program if you want to be loved" tone. Like...it's not cool to be superficial, right? So...why on earth would you endorse asshole behavior? Oh wait, of course, we're talking about OMG KILLER FAT KILLING KILLING KILLING RUN AWAY. And that point's nailed home with the deathly serious "For the sake of your future health". For the SAKE of your FUTURE HEALTH, Confused, JOIN WEIGHT WATCHERS.

*record scratch*

Yeah, that'd be the last thing I'd prescribe anybody, really. If I wanted to teach someone how to be neurotic about what he/she puts into his/her mouth even more so than just regular old-fashioned no-cost dieting does, then yeah, I'd tell them to hop on the Weight Watchers train.

As for the "my boyfriend doesn't want to fuck me because I've gained the weight" thing...well, I'd be inclined to say "then he can go find someone else to fuck and you find someone who wants to fuck you", personally. But of course, let me add on the disclaimer of never having been in a relationship, blah blah blee blah blah. So I've been lucky enough never to be on the receiving end of such a proclamation. I can only imagine what I, at my frostiest and best, would do. Most likely, I would crawl into the nearest liquor cabinet and not come out for a few weeks. Shit, I've crawled into the liquor cabinet for far less emotionally devastating things. And I would be hunting down the nearest Weight Watchers meeting if I wasn't in the mindset that I'm in now, which is "I am who I am and I look the way I look, and it's not my problem if you can't dig on it".

I think about the woman who wrote this letter in the first place. You have to figure she must be a fairly avid reader of ole Prudence, and must think that most of the advice Prudie's dispensing is sound and fair. She must have been thrilled to see that her letter was going to be published AND to discover it was a featured video--! That is ZOMG level of excitement right there. I'd wager she hoped Prudence might assure her that she's not being unreasonable to WTF her boyfriend a little bit for his stance. I'd wager that once Prudence was done informing her she was an out-of-control, lazy sack of unlovable shit, she had a full-snot cry, maybe a few shots, and immediately got rid of any "bad" food in the house. She's probably started "cutting back" and "behaving herself", tracking every single bit of food that goes into her mouth, counting every calorie, every fat gram, every second spent on the treadmill or the walking track.

She is going to be good and worthy of love just as soon as those 20 pounds, those 30 pounds, those 50 pounds come off. You'll see.

A sweet mouthful.

2008-08-21T19:49:00.004-05:00

First off, if anyone's interested, here's a link to photos I took at Lollapalooza 2008, and some links to videos I took:

The opening of Rage Against the Machine's set

Radiohead doing a bit of "Airbag"

A super-wee bit of Gogol Bordello

The conclusion of "March of the Pigs" by Nine Inch Nails and

Love and Rockets doing a bit of "No New Tale to Tell"

It was my first experience with any kind of music festival and I have to say I was pleased overall. Sometimes, the bleedthrough from other bands' sets was annoying and the volume at the Rage show was way, way, way too low. Sunday brought a virtual sellout of pop-based products, so I was extremely nervous that Grant Park (and Nine Inch Nails' set) was going to turn into an alcohol-soaked nightmare of 75,000 drunkards (of course, they still had plenty of beer and wine and, to be fair, water remained plentiful). A return trip for me would hinge on what kind of lineup they manage to assemble for next year and if I could sucker someone into going with me. While I can certainly operate on a solo basis without any problem, it was annoying having to pack up my blanket and gather up all my crap in order to go on a bathroom run or get something to drink/eat. The super-bonus was discovering that Grant Park has FLUSH TOILETS. Since they had so many porta-potties, the lines at the flushies were quite mellow. I touched Perry Farrell, that was rather exciting. I'd been lurking around the DJ area and Perry was slated to do a set. I was standing on the sidewalk and turned around to see Perry and his people getting out of a golfcart at the curb. Somehow he was coming in my general direction and in my usual "smooth" fashion, I touched his shoulder as if to guide him past the unsavory rabble (i.e. anyone but me because I'm the RAWK). We exchanged big smiles and "Hiiiiiiiiiiii!"'s. I've been a Jane's Addiction fan for quite a long time (couldn't tell you how many times I've been asked, "Jane, what's your...ADDICTION? HURRHURRHURRHURRRRRR"), so having a little Perry moment...very neat.

And now for something completely different: fudge.

I was enjoying a bit of fudge from North Carolina this evening, a little slab of plain chocolate fudge and a little slab of orange-and-chocolate fudge, and for whatever reason it made me think about "Fat Monica" on "Friends". Every time she made an appearance, she was almost constantly eating. It was rare she was without a candy bar in her hand--not that it stayed in her hand very long, since lord knows us fatties can't stop ourselves from stuffing candy in our yaps the second it crosses our palms. I always found Fat Monica to be fairly galling for several reasons: the make-up job on Courteney Cox was atrocious, the fat girl cliches flew fast and furiously, and "Friends" co-creator Marta Kauffman certainly was far more sizable than the women employed on her megahit show. It would have been such a plum opportunity to blow up some Fat Girl Cliches, but instead they relied on the same old song and dance: Fat Girl eats constantly, Fat Girl wears appalling, ill-fitting outfits, Fat Girl can't get a date. Even a flashback episode revealing that Chandler would have hooked up with Monica regardless of her size smacked of jerkwater bullshit. If I remember correctly (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), the day after they sleep together doesn't she start craving vegetables or something? I swear that the super-brief-semi-positive body moment (as rare as a sighting of Bigfoot) was completely shat upon with a "NOW Fat Girl is going to get herself UNDER CONTROL!" footnote.

I got on Fat Monica because I was enjoying my fudge and thinking about how I wasn't snarfing it down or double-fisting it or stuffing my face with it. I wasn't inhaling a full fucking pound, I was having enough to satisfy me. I can't help but laugh (as well as quietly rage) at how mass media loves to portray fat people as beasts incapable of controlling themselves when it comes to food, particularly anything sweet or classified as "unhealthy". Have I squirmed a bit with delight when eating something particularly delicious? Absolutely. I've actually skipped with joy when tasting something yummy. But I've never found myself writhing on the floor in sweaty ecstasy, a ring of chocolate or fudge or whipped cream around my mouth because I live in REALITY. And it makes me even testier when I read/see fat people who are insistent on perpetuating the notion that we are all batshit walking Hoovers sucking down every foodstuff within our grasp, that we are these less-than-human monsters with insatiable appetites, usually in the name of "humor". Or trotting out the old chestnut "well, they're just going to make fun of me, so I'll make fun of me first". I used to drive that bandwagon, but then I started to realize that even if I *did* make fun of myself first, it wasn't going to change anyone's opinion that I was a walking fat-laden time bomb of obese epidemictude. If anything, it only reinforced beliefs that I was worthy of mockery. To me, doing the "beating them to the punch" routine meant I was giving them permission to blow shit at me. That gets old after a while, especially if you're already in self-loathe mode. So, you know, quit it.

I know that's not much of an ending, but I'm still recovering from being on vacation, with part of it spent in Vegas. Damn fucking straight I ate at buffets. And went up for seconds.

If this blog's rockin'...

2008-08-03T11:39:00.005-05:00

...it means I've spent the last two days (with one more to go) in Grant Park at Lollapalooza. I tend to make poor clothing choices when I go to outdoorsy/semi-activity-centric things, and for the last two days, I've been in long shorts that are just a mite too big. I generally wear clothing that's a bit too big because I don't like that "tight" feeling. I like to be flowy, like...a...flowy thing. Anyway. So I wore shorts that were a mite too big, which resulted in me, while walking to the train, hitching up my drawers every few steps. Today, the shorts fit properly, dammit, and should not fall off when I'm doing my weird gesticulating/dancing that I do when it comes to Nine Inch Nails.

I mean, they may fall off from excitement, but not from jumping/dancing.

I touched Perry Farrell yesterday. That was quite neat. I've been a Jane's Addiction enthusiast for many a moon, and it was one of those "I turned around and holy fuck, it's Perry Farrell" kind of moments. So, as he was making his way toward the DJ tent, I touched his shoulder ever so delicately as if to guide him where he needed to be (I'm such a douchelette). We exchanged very chipper "Hiiiiiiiiii!"'s and then I proceeded to text pretty much everyone in the universe that I knew would know who I was talking about.

Tonight, I'm just grateful I have a hotel room downtown so that I don't have to deal with the 45-minute train ride home with 19,000,000 of my closest friends. I work downtown as well, so I won't have to roll my very sore, very tired ass out of bed until 6 a.m. That will be so delicious. Once I get all my picture ducks in a row (along with a smattering of videos), I will be sure to post some up for your reading and listening pleasure. Of course, I'm about to head into two super-busy weeks, with a friend coming in from out of town and going to Vegas...could someone please put 48 hours into one day so I can get some crap done? So your guess is as good as mine as to when that's going to occur. Let's just call it...soon-esque.

Eat it.

2008-07-22T19:56:00.003-05:00

Or, In Defense of Food.

I'm super-cranky today. I'm having one of those cranky days that involves tears, loads of self-loathing, and the Anger (or Angrrrrrrrrr!) that is my constant co-pilot is off the motherfucking charts. So, there will be a lot of obscenity ahead. Lots and lots of (borderline nonsensical) obscenity. Let's fucking talk about food and stuff we love to eat without ANY hang-ups or fears or fat content or calorie-fucking-counts.

I had salmon today. It was awesome. I had this flatbread fold-up thingy involving eggs and cheese and sausage and mushrooms for breakfast. It was awesome, too. Felt like a Twix bar. Goddamn if I didn't enjoy that Twix. It hit the spot and helped to soothe my savage beast (that is not a euphemism). Pork chops for dinner? Hot damn, those were good, too. I'm feeling the urge for a good caesar salad tomorrow. I'm lucky in that my workplace has a righteous cafeteria and a staff of fabulous Hispanic dudes who salute me with, "HEY MAMA!" and give me shit about not liking super-spicy things in my eats. My aversion to spicery stems from having gallstones at 17 and a sure-fire trigger for an attack was pretty much anything containing a kick. I was de-gallbladdered in 1998--oh hell's bells, I have to tangent on this for a moment.

The Final Attack came on the weekend "The Negotiator" starring Kevin Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson was released, and I remember watching the movie while feeling hellacious thanks to the wretched, spasming gallbladder from Hell. I was living on my own in the city at the time (why I wound up moving back home with my parents after being on my own for 13 years is a tale for another day), and I'd pop out to the 'burbs on the weekend to see how the seniors were getting along, visit with my three siblings, etc. etc. blah. My oldest sister and I are movie buddies and of course we had to see "The Negotiator". I started feeling funky Friday night, but figured/hoped it was just wicked indigestion. Once the vomiting began, however, I knew after a years-long hiatus that an Attack was in full swing. Usually, if I chucked, things would calm down and I'd be feeling fine. However, hurlage was not doing the trick. (Sorry to bring up vomit - har - in a post about food, but I've got a strong stomach. Remind me one day to tell you about the Christmas Vomiting.) I went to the movies the next day and was still in pain...sat up most of the night, still in pain, and finally...I broke down and said, "take me to the E.friggin.R".

Long story longer, once the Demerol kicked in, life was so good. And the g-bladder stopped spasming. However, my very mysterious doctor whose name I can't recall was insistent it come out, which was fine by me because hey, time off work! He preferred to work at night, so I didn't go under the knife (rather, the laparoscope) until Monday evening. I remember really enjoying anesthesia a whole bunch. I liked how I couldn't mark the passage of time. A curtain dropped and then it came up and everything was all done. I was fascinated by the feeling of my organs shifting to fill the space left behind by my non-existent gallbladder. And I was delighted to have two full weeks off of work, despite only really needing one because by the end of the week, I felt like a million bucks. Ten years on, I still regret not milking that shit a little bit more. /tangent

ANYHOO. I <3 my workplace cafeteria because the selection is massive. You can have sandwiches made, salads whipped up, a full-metal salad bar containing two of my favoritest things: mushrooms and artichoke hearts. Ohhhhh, artichoke hearts. If I want a beef or a turkey burger, I can have it. And not just because they *make* it, because I am allowed a fucking cheeseburger and fries whenever the hell I fucking want it. If I'm in the mood for a salad, by gum, I am going to have a got-damned salad. It's not part of a "plan", I'm not counting friggin' Points, there's no exchanging, there's no guilt, there's no shame, there's just me making my choices to suit what my bod is telling me it wants. I wish we (the Royal Fat Acceptance We) could convince the masses sooner rather than later that holy fucking SHIT, food is good. That spinach is tasty as hell and so are those Nilla Cakesters (srsly--a nice sweet treat that can't be beat), to stop seeing eating as a Shakespearean tragedy that unfolds three times a day (or when the hell ever) because the risk is so high that you might be...BAD. That nourishing ourselves is so totes superior to dieting ourselves.

I do have to bring down the room for a mo', though, because my body's pissed (yet adorably so, much like Jennifer Aniston) because I've been a slackhound in the activity department. I've been wrangling with a particularly shitty case of ennui the last few weeks (*cough*years*cough*), and trying to tend to my surly brain has superceded my trotting to the gym. It infuriates my logical side because my logical side screeches, "YOU FEEL SO MUCH BETTER BRAINALLY AFTER YOU WORK OUT, JACKASS", but my dumb-dumb far-too-sensitive-lately emotional bits just want to go home, curl up in bed, watch Animal Planet, sleep. I need (and I say that in a low, urgent voice, shaking my fist) to get back to the shiny gym and my strangely belov'd treadmill because I've got some songs on my iPod that are perfect for strutting on it. (And I need to recharge my freaking iPod because it's damn near spent, now that I write/think about it.) I'm going to Lollapalooza in a mere two and a half weeks and I have GOT to be on my game for flailing, jumping, and weird dancing/gesticulating to Rage Against the Machine and *happy, happy sigh* Nine Inch Nails.

I'll explain the weird dancing/gesticulating another time.

My, it's...moist.

2008-07-18T18:41:00.004-05:00

The greater Chicagoland area is in the throes of a typical summer day: hot and humid. The humidity is unruly, almost...evil in how it blankets everything and makes my upper lip sweat so uncontrollably. I mean, not to say that all of my sweat glands are concentrated in my upper lip so as to render it a fount that gushes forth endlessly as if I was a walking water feature. My sweating is equally distributed around my generous carcass. But it's annoying. Just constantly wiping my mouth on my sleeve like a six-year-old.

I had my hair cut last Saturday. The cut's fine, nothing terribly transcendent, not that I was looking for anything particularly transcendent this time around. Last time I got my hair cut was probably in January, and I took off a fuckton of hair to end up with a very short 'do. Then...I let it grow for about, um, seven months, and wound up sporting a faux mullet that was not doing anyone any favors. The thing that kind of amused me about my hour or so in the fancy-dance salon/spa -- well, before I get to that, let me just say there are few nicer feelings than having someone else wash your hair really, really well. The scalp massage action...ohhhhh yes. If I could have been drinking a Coke Slurpee while it was going on, I may have very well had a brief glimpse of Nirvana. Anyway, the thing that kind of amused me about my hour in the fancy-dance salon was the barely-disguised look of horror the stylist had when I explained to her that last time I was in, I'd gotten something akin to a pixie cut. Someone with my facial features (FAT) isn't supposed to have super-short hair, you know. I knew I would have to fight her to cut it that short, I really wasn't in the mood for a brawl (Saturday morning at 8 a.m. = not all right for fighting), and I'm ridiculously casual about my hair. So I let her do her "texturizing" and her "razoring" and whatever, knowing full well that all of the "product" she was foisting upon my coiff was going to get either combed or pushed out of my hair (as I'm always pushing my hair off my face with my hands). And it turned out fine, I'm pleased with it. I just have to pick up the box of dye at the Target and get it all one color again. Since I'm not monogamous with hairstylists, we'll see what the next person does...whenever I'm arsed to go to the fancy-dance salon again. I'm thinking...Christmas.

I have to say, I've always been pretty lucky with hairstylists. I had one woman I went to from third grade until I was in college that was always game to let me be goofy with my hair. Even if it sometimes resulted in the most tragic hairstyle ever recorded in my history:

Seriously, I look like a roadie for Def fucking Leppard. 1983 was the year I got tagged to start seeing a social worker (diet books and hand puppets FTW!)--is it any wonder I was moody? Thankfully, I swore off perms for the remainder of eternity not too long after that.

Then, I started swearing by Sebastian hairspray and backcombing because I was super into the Cure, dammit!

My routine for the vast majority of my senior year of high school was ratting the everloving fuck out of my hair every morning (I was shaved on the sides and the back), spraying as much CFC-loaded muck upon it as I could stand, and then, each night, combing it all out. My hairstylist loved having the opportunity to take the clippers to my head. She never lectured me about having a haircut that was "suitable" for my chubby funster (tm Ricky Gervais) self, she just listened to what I wanted and went to town. I was so grateful that she didn't give me shit and, really, my family didn't either. Well, whenever I went with a short cut in my younger days, my father was always quick to proclaim, "Be sure to wear earrings so you don't look like a guy!" Sorry, Pops. Even with the earrings and hair down to the middle of my back, I'd get mistaken for a guy.

The last seriously extreme hair I had was in 1994. I was living with a gay man who excelled at make-up and thought it would be super-cool if I went platinum blond. I wasn't sure it would be quite as super-cool, but I was a gamer and wanted to please him (augh, my Achilles' heel for eternity), so I went to the salon that he worked at and proceeded to platinum myself...which took FIVE HOURS (I had old dye still in my hair, so that had to be stripped out), burned the hell out of my scalp, and by the end of it, I would have welcomed death. However, I'm still fond of how it wound up looking:

Within two weeks, roots were already visible and there was no way in hell I was going to drop $50 (if not more) every couple of months to maintain the shit. Three months later, I was back to mousy brown if, for nothing else, to allow my scalp to simply REST...and weep silently from all the abuse it had suffered over the course of about five years.

Before I close out, here's a couple of things that are pleasing me.

*"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog": In the last two days, I have seen more blogs touting this...so of course, I must join in. The final act goes up at midnight eastern tonight (maybe? Details are not my forte). I have such a warm and lusty feeling for Nathan Fillion that seeing him play such a blowhard douchebag of a "hero" pleases me. And what more can be said about the myth, the man, the legend that is Neil Patrick Harris? I love that he managed to survive being "Doogie Howser" and is made of 100 percent grade A awesome. I'm not a huge Joss Whedon-head (though I powered through all seven seasons of "Buffy" after it went off the air and carry an eternal love for Anthony Stewart Head O.M.GGGGGGGGGGGGGG.), but I enjoy how damn smart his stuff can be. And "Dr. Horrible" is no exception. Some of the stuff he pulls out from who knows where, the subtle stuff, stuff that one might consider throwaway, pleases me so much. "Bad Horse - the thoroughbred of sin?"

"The Venture Brothers": Season Three is ridiculously loopy and I'm loving it. I love that adultswim.com puts up Sunday's episode on Friday-ish, and I love that it's a show that is made by two guys that aren't in their early twenties. It's made by two guys that are in MY PEER GROUP. That's a huge thing when you're staring down the barrel at 40 and have little to no patience for those who haven't cracked 25 yet. You know you've reached some sort of bizarro milestone when you realize that 18-year-olds can be kind of douchey and irritating because they think they know everything...and then you realize that oh sweet mother of God, you were that douchey at 18 as well and you thought "old" (you know, anyone over 30) people were stupid and were full of crap when they'd say things like "yeah, fighting about people's opinions on music or movies is pretty damn dumb and a waste of time" because there is NOTHING more important than telling someone their opinion about "The Dark Knight" is fucking weak sauce and that they truly don't understand the inner turmoil of Batman quite like you do.

I just happened to be a douchey 18-year-old that dressed like Robert Smith and douched out at the import record store every weekend, buying Inspiral Carpets records because I was going to be CUTTING EDGE with my love of the Manchester sound. Rolling Stone, Schmolling Stone! Poseurs. I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel ON THE INSIDE. And Andie should have picked Duckie! Blane was a TOOL!

Show me the way to go home.

2008-07-14T19:09:00.003-05:00

It’s an unfortunate aspect of my personality that I think way, way, way too much about various things. I think about things that have been said to me, experiences that I’ve had (more often the missteps and humiliations than anything that’s pleasant), and I chew on it all like I’m chewing on my own cud consisting of bitterness and bafflement. It’s an irksome tendency because I feel like I’m being childish because so much of what I chew on revolves around my being alone. I feel ashamed because I should be dedicating that brainspace to something more…important, like issues in the FA movement or politics or philosophy or working on an actual creative writing-type project or any number of things, but instead I walk around in a state of almost perpetual irritation with the entirety of the universe because I just DON’T GET IT. I don’t get why I’m alone and I don’t get WHY I CAN’T STOP CARING ABOUT IT.

I bagged my match.com profile about a month and a half ago, because that was just dumb. Gave a fat-centric dating site a whirl, and that was even dopier. I actually pinged a guy and never got a response. So that certainly did wonders for the bountiful wonderland that is my stupid head. Today, I peeked at a place that someone had touted somewhere and I had to physically back away from the screen in a bit of horror, as it does not seem to be, uh, my kind of place (that is, a festival of people wanting “intimate relations” and that’s…about…it). The thing is, I know what I want. I also know that at the end of the day, I’m not about to change fuck-all about me. I am fat. I will not diet. I am plain. I rarely, if ever, wear make-up because I don’t like how I look in it. I dress like a fucking 14-year-old boy (well, one that occasionally does drag). I am smart, I am cynical, I am funny, and I will not play stupid in order to soothe someone’s ego. I would rather be alone for the next 40 years than compromise anything I believe in just so I can say “well, I had a boyfriend once upon a time”.

However.

It is kind of a blow to the ego (and mine is decidedly healthy in certain areas, believe me) to think that-—rather, to pretty much KNOW-—I am nobody’s bag. I am not anyone’s idea of a good time, unless it’s within the realm of “wacky fat girl sidekick”. I am not the girl that gets the happy endings I used to write so fervently. I’m not walking out of the church to see Jake across the street, leaning up against his red Porsche. Edward Ferrars ain’t showing up at my door to FYI me that his heart is mine. Two words: MR. DARCY. (Sorry, I’ve been on a Jane Austen novel kick over the last few months. And my Colin Firth kick is eternal.) Not that I think life should be one gigantic romantic comedy/dramedy or that it’s any way to live a realistic life, but for CHRIST’S SAKE. Could I have at least ONE moment in my life? One moment with a male human person that, when I look back way too many years from now, I could nod and say, “hot shit, now that was something else”? I’ve done a lot of stuff in my time, stuff that was pretty cool, seen some amazing things. I know how to eat fire, for example. Okay, pull up a chair, it’s tangent time:

Back in...oh, let’s say, 1991, I was rather enthusiastic about Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame (as you can see here). One of Penn’s skills is fire-eating. Because I have a few synapses that tend to misfire, I decided I wanted to learn how to eat fire as well. Funny...it’s not something on which you can pick up a how-to book. Perhaps it’s due to that whole risk of burning your fucking face off thing. After much research that went nowhere, I resigned myself to the belief that I would never learn (short of becoming BFFs with Penn). Then, one day, a flier appeared on the bulletin board at my fine arts college from a guy who would teach juggling...and/OR HOW TO EAT FIRE. I was so mega-stoked. I called the cat, he happened to live in a suburb near mine, and I arranged to meet him at his house. He wore a very jaunty knitted beret and, of course, worked weekend at the renaissance faire in Wisconsin. Of course. For liability purposes, I can’t go into specifics regarding what I was taught (though I’m sure at this stage of the game, you can google “fire-eating” and get the general mechanics of it), but within an afternoon, I was eating fire. I was sticking fucking flaming torches into my mouth on purpose. I’ve got scars on the back of my right hand from learning the lesson that polyester doesn’t burn, it melts (kids, no matter how tempting, don’t practice eating fire in your bedroom). I mean, I’m sorry, not to toot my own, but that has to earn me some cool points, right? I can light a torch off my tongue!! Shouldn’t that entrance some male on some planet?? I just found this disclaimer on an old website somewhere, for Christ's sake--how does this NOT MAKE ME COOL?!?!

Fire Eating and particularly Fire-Breathing is possibly the most dangerous and potentially injurious art to be found in circus, theatre and street performing.

DAMN RIGHT! Sheesh. Anyway.

I do take pride in the fact that I’m independent, so much of the stuff I’ve done has been done on my own, completely self-sufficient, not needing anyone. So it riles me, it makes me downright scrappy, to be so immensely bothered by my state of being. I would like a list of things that are wrong with me so that I could work on them. Maybe I chew too loudly. That’s something I could actually improve. I’m kind of sucky with details. I tend to miss details in conversations so that when I have to report information back to someone, I blank out a bit unless I take copious notes. That’s something I could work on. A bit of a procrastinator, most certainly (as evidenced by how often I update this bleedin’ blog). You know, all sorts of things are probably wrong with me...THAT ARE WRONG WITH 99.9999 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION (except George Clooney. Or Colin Firth. NOTHING is wrong with either of them...especially when they are shirtless, and I will not have Clooney-Colin negativity here).

I want to not care that I’m alone. I want to not be irritated by the platitudes I mentioned in my far-too-willing-to-be-honest post (perhaps another failing of mine—my tendency to overshare). I want to get to the point where the thought of being the 35th wheel doesn’t make me take to my bed and cry for an hour and I can ably pretend that I’m having a good time while the couple-conversations whirl around me at a social event or wherever I happen to be. I want to feel like I’m not being ripped off.

Just one moment. Just one that makes my heart stop and tears come to my eyes...out of happiness. Just one.

When Miss Manners bans your ass, you know you're in trouble.

2008-07-02T17:53:00.003-05:00

This letter in today's Miss Manners column was so chucklelicious I knew the second I read it there was no way I couldn't put fingers to keyboard. It's rare I come across something that puts a skip in my step--actually, not just a skip, but a full-metal skip, hop, and a half-twirl in this case because I get what the letter writer is trying to say, but hoo boy, it's just so...dammit, it's downright loopy. It's like the first sentence got my arm up in the air to give the writer an imaginary high-five, but as I continued on, my arm slowly fell back to my side with every subsequent bizarro conceit. Basically, the letter is a textual LOLcat of "UR doing it wrong".

I have to break it down because it's just that yummy.

Dieting in public is a serious etiquette problem in a society that has made saints of women who wear a size 2. Okay, all right, I'm with you. I mean, I can't quite tie it to an etiquette violation, per se, since the "if you're not dieting, it is YOU who is the ball-licker" attitude is so widespread that it's perfectly acceptable and considered quite normal to spend a dinner out with friends talking about all the food you aren't going to eat. While certainly the pressure is most high on women to adhere to an unattainable perfection, it's getting harder and harder for men to dodge the bullet, so dropping it all on women is fairly douchey. I also think "saints" is something of a push. The sainthood is temporary -- just ask anyone who's lost weight and gained it back and then some.

It is rude and offensive for a person to attend a joyous food-related outing and spoil the trip by ordering "a small salad." Well...I...um...I mean, salads are yummy, you know. Sometimes you feel like a nut (a steak) and sometimes you don't (a small salad).

Public dieting casts a pall of misery over any such occasion. Actually, let's shorten that a bit to simply dieting casts a pall of misery.

This is where the train completely derails in a massive fashion (and had me rolling):

If the dieter wants a diet soda, she should ask for it quietly, as though requesting something with which to take medication and have it poured into a glass to ensure that the nature of the drink is not obvious.

*whispers to waiter* "May I have a...:: narrows eyes and checks the perimeter :: diet pop, please?" I mean, seriously. Believe me, it makes my asshole close up when I hear or read things like "I ran five miles in 90-degree heat while wearing a sweatsuit in order to lose that last half a pound" or "I was SO BAD because I had three cookies" or "I can never eat _____ again!!!!!" But to get bent over someone ordering a diet pop? This person would clout me about the ears because 99.999 percent of the time, I'm only drinking diet pop because I just...do. Undoubtedly, I started fueling myself on it when I was 13 or 14 in some attempt to lose weight, but now, I like the taste of the shit. Every so often, I get a jones for a full-metal pop (or, in the case of Flesor's Candy Kitchen in Tuscola, Illinois, an old-school cherry Coke made with soda water and syrup and OH MY GOD IT IS AWESOME). Yes, many fatties drink the diet beverages as much as the dieting dieters of Dietonia do, so do have the decency to shut it.

If a person is on a super-restricted diet that requires she eat abnormally, she needs to stay home, instead of making everyone miserable.

Hear that, you diabetics/keepin' Kosher/observant Muslims/vegetarians?? STAY. THE EFF. HOME. Your insistence on eating abnormally is a BUZZKILL and making all of us MISERABLE. I'm so MISERABLE THAT I AM LEANING ON THE CAPSLOCK KEY WITH ALL MY MIGHT TO EXPRESS MY MISERY AT YOUR ABNORMAL NOT-EATING-OF-PORK-AND-WHATNOT DIETS.

Dieting is not something I do anymore. I don't cheerlead when people I know and often love (if they haven't crossed me) do on a frequent basis. They know that I am not the person who is going to rub their butts with praise when they've lost X amount of pounds. They also know that if we're out to breakfast/lunch/dinner and they start going on and on about what they "can" and "can't" eat or start the air-raid-siren whine about "feeling fat", they're going to get the John Belushi eyebrow of "Really?" from me. But the nature of the beast is that unless you're very lucky and you're at a table with like-minded FAers or you're with people who don't feel it necessary to inform the universe constantly that THEY ARE WATCHING THEIR FIGURES, you're going to be participating in social eating rituals with someone who is actively dieting--probably multiple people, in fact. And the odds are quite high that at some point, they will engage in diet yammer. In my way of thinking (which might not be yours, of course), if they don't comment on what I'm ingesting, I'm able to muddle through the evening. However, the second any sort of shade gets thrown at my particular meal choice, I simply have no other option than to be a vengeful, snotty child and order the most bodacious, luxurious dessert imaginable (think deep-fried cheesecake with whipped cream, hot fudge, and vanilla ice cream) and make the most rapturous yummy sounds I can manage while I lovingly spoon each morsel into my mouth. It's how my rolls roll.

I was at a wedding once where a person at the table was very pointed about making sure everyone at the table knew she was on a diet and that she was being VERY bad for eating pretty much anything off the scrumptious buffet. What made it even more appalling was how, as she was eating a slice of cake, she made sure the BRIDE was aware that she was breaking her diet to have that slice of cake. It's that sort of mania, among many other things, that helped seal my "I will never fucking diet again" belief. And what's so utterly sad is that that almost nobody at that table blinked an eye (my eye, on the other hand, was blinking like I'd just had a contact slip behind my eyeball). They praised her for her restraint. They assured her that a brisk walk or time on the treadmill would quickly take care of that sinful, terrible, life-taking buffet and cake. And whenever I see things like that or read stories along those lines from people who are so devoted that they flagellate themselves for having anything that isn't on their "plan", it only makes me more determined to be as vocal as I possibly can about HAES in the hopes that it might turn at least one head for even a millisecond.

Anyway, back to this very special episode of Miss Manners. The letter writer isn't done yet--he/she has to get in one last bit of snark before ten-fouring Miss Manners:

Perhaps she can join the group later for a concert or movie if she is not too weak to stay out past 8 p.m. Now that's just bitchy. Admittedly, I chortled a bit, but still. Miss Manners shuts the shit down with her version of "STFU", manages to wedge in a little tsk-tsk at dieters who would blow shit at someone for eating in a non-Weight Watchers fashion, and all ends firmly and yes, as ever, politely.

Letter Writer, there are so many awesome ways you could have gone with this. Instead, you came straight from Planet Bwuuuh?, and blew an opportunity to say something good and biting about the dieting culture. On the flip, however...thanks for putting a spring in my bloggy step.

I'm completely someone.

2008-06-22T18:16:00.006-05:00

Interesting post over at Shapely Prose today. That Kate Harding always manages to ring my bell when I least expect it, particularly this quote:

So many of us go through our lives as fat people doing our very best to ignore our bodies entirely, to pretend they’re just not there, because thinking about these shameful vessels we live in is so painful. (Which is one reason why exercise can seem like such a daunting task when you’re new to it. It means actually acknowledging your body and inhabiting it, instead of keeping your mind — the good part of you — comfortably separate from its housing.)

I spent years disconnected from my body. Dialogue from the movie "Impromptu" starring Judy Davis and Hugh Grant summed up my attitude almost perfectly. Hugh Grant plays Chopin, who was reluctant to enter into a love affair with French writer George Sand (Judy Davis) primarily because he was chronically ill: "...my body is such a great disappointment to me, that I've already said goodbye to it, I'm... not really in it any more, I'm just... happier floating about in music. And if I should come back inside this miserable collection of bones, then I am afraid that it would probably collapse altogether." My primary interest was my brain and the development of it. It was my refuge from a world that I didn't feel a part of--to trot out yet ANOTHER quote, this time from the Beach Boys: "I just wasn't made for these times". My twenties were essentially spent writing screenplays and spending as much time inside my head as I possibly could because my head wasn't a disappointment to me. Of course, the kind of world inside my head was as Fantasy of Being Thin as you get. In my head, I was thin (or, at the very least, just merely "chubby", since it seemed like the chubby girls were able to get something of a pass, socially speaking), even though the main characters in my screenplays were always fat girls who managed to get The Guy. But they were never fat like me, they were Showbiz Fat, girls who were maybe, maybe clocking in at a double-digit size. They had "problem areas", but they certainly didn't have problem areas like me with my big belly and my wibwobbly thighs and stretch marks and varicose veins. Think America Ferrera or Kate Winslet or Toni Collette (in "Muriel's Wedding"). It was utterly inconceivable to me that a girl that looked like me could ever, EVER get The Guy, so I certainly wasn't going to write that way. I felt I was doing my part simply making it clear that the lead female wasn't a cookie-cutter starlet.

As I've gotten older and become more invested in fat acceptance and the amount of kick-ass shit my body is capable of, it's now my brain that's developed problem areas. It's almost like my brain's a bit pissed off that I've stopped spending as much time inside of it. So every time I make some sort of a step forward in my own personal affection toward myself, the brain is determined to amp up the voice that tells me how completely stupid I am for thinking I'm worth anything. Basically, my brain is the most poorly-trained yappy dog you can imagine, and no amount of scolding shuts the fucker up. Like I'm wearing a Pomeranian as a hat and I can never take it off. What makes it super-frustrating is that there's a significant portion of my brain that has remained cool and Spock-logical and tells me when the more irrational, Goofy Spock-illogical portion is kicking in to not listen to Goofy Spock because Goofy Spock is just that: goofy. However, when so much shit in the media and entertainment and life in general is parroting exactly what Goofy Spock is hissing, it's nigh impossible to resist sliding back into my old ways and my old hatred. When you put up dating profiles on various sites and don't get a bite...yeah, a little difficult to hitch up oneself by the bootstraps and be all "YAY ME!" Or seeing people that are appalling winding up in happy relationships...not exactly something to inspire one to whip out the pom-poms (not to be confused with the Pomeranian Hat) and jump around screaming "J-A-N-E YOU ARE FAB AND OVER 30!!!!"

(If you're thinking I'm inordinately focused on relationships and love, why, you would be correct. It's a consistent pain point and has been since I figured out that boys didn't actually have cooties. Though they all seem to think I still do.)

But divorcing my body from my brain, despite all the hiccups, doesn't make me whole and it doesn't make me happy. It simply makes me unbalanced. I'm not fully present. I spent so much time not being present in the interest of avoiding being hurt that I managed to miss out on a lot of things, a lot of opportunities. Trying to avoid being hurt didn't stop me from being hurt. I may not have been getting hurt by unrequited love, but I was getting hurt by any number of other things, whether it was failing to make a living by writing or performing or even having the gumption to try; or failing to avoid having to move back home with my parents at 33. My head is still trying to learn that my body isn't simply here to be a hindrance or a hairshirt. It can be a source of strength, strength that my head may not have at any given time. It can be a source of pride. It can be a canvas. It can be any number of things I can imagine--but instead of keeping it inside my head, it needs to stop hiding. I need to stop hiding.

Girlish notions.

2008-06-03T18:46:00.007-05:00

I am changing my name to Satin. Or Cashmere. Or something as sumptuous because right now I'm feeling a powerful love for Velvet D'Amour, whom many of you might recognize from her doing the catwalk in a Jean-Paul Gaultier show not too too terribly long ago. POWERFUL love.

What kind of stunned me was that Jezebel.com, of all places, is running an article about Velvet today and, so far, the comments haven't devolved into a wanky crapfest about the obesity epidemic and how she must be screamingly unhealthy and OMG WTF ZOMG THE CHILDREN!!!!. And dammit, my much younger self wishes she knew how on earth Velvet managed to keep those thigh-highs up because I know I couldn't do it back when I was in my "I must buy enormous amounts of lingerie even though I'm the only one seeing it" period. It wasn't unusual for me to find one or both of my thigh-highs pooled around my ankles if I walked more than 40 feet. I don't remember if I ever wore them with skirts. There was a sad, sad moment in time where jumpsuits (I think they were called jumpsuits) made a semi-comeback in the early 90's, and...yeah, I had two of them. Looking back at pictures of me in them...ohhhhhhhh no. No, no, noooooooooo. Imagine the scene from the end of "Revenge of the Sith" when Vader does the NOOOOOOOOOOOOO and that's me looking back at photos of me on my 21st birthday, having dinner with the family at Rosebud. Hurtful.

But I digress. I run hot and cold with Jezebel. Sometimes, the articles and analysis is spot on, and other times...my teeth are practically worn down to nubs from all the gritting and gnashing I do. I feel like there's a lot of talking out of both sides of the Jezebel mouth on a variety of subjects. Whenever a fat-related article gets posted, Katie bar the door because nine times out of ten, the Internet Scientists come roaring in with their factoids about killer fat and diabetes and the same old song and dance within 10 posts. Some commenters do their best to provide an alternate view, but we all know how well that works out.

And there are other subjects where all I can do is scratch my head and kind of go "huh" because I can't relate to it at all. There are times where I feel downright alien when observing online conversations both in the Fatosphere and other woman-centric places. The Rotund wrote an amazing piece recently talking about a shopping trip she had in Brooklyn with other members of the FA community and while I dug it on the level where I love stories about women bonding hardcore, I was simultaneously kind of "whuh?" because clothes and shopping and that sort of thing hasn't been my bag in years. I can put together an Outfit with a capital O if I have to and every so often, I'll put on the dog, but in general...I will do whatever it takes to avoid it. It's kind of a drag because a part of me feels like I'm missing out in some way or I imagine myself in that situation and think, "oh jeez, I might have been a massive buzzkill because I'm not a shopper and not a dresser-upper anymore". Although, I have an odd knack for helping others put together outfits, so who knows. I flirt with the idea of trying out a life where I get snazzy every day and see what the reaction would be, and then I get very very tired at the thought of putting on make-up and arranging my hair and wearing clothes that I wouldn't be that comfortable in. But then I see pictures of Velvet or other Fatshionistas and think "fwaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrr, they look so foxy"...and something in my head goes *ping* and I feel the itch to go back to the days where I would do it up every day in my own special way. And then I feel tired again and consider laying down for a quick snooze.

Perhaps my primary lack of interest in clothing and whatnot springs from feeling like even if I *did* engage in jazzin' it up, I'd look stupid and *not* cute. I had an odd moment of that a couple of months ago, where I wore a skirt. My main reason for wearing it was that I'd run out of clean clothes on a two-week-long overseas trip, but I do like to bust out a skirt every so often because I enjoy my gams. The person who picked me up at the airport is almost professionally sarcastic, and our relationship is one based on an odd combination of mutual admiration, true affection and a driving need to be almost brutally evil to each other. He smoked on up to me and said, "a SKIRT?!" in a tone that one part of my brain acknowledged was just him being himself and giving me guff*, but then the other part of my brain that we'll call The Paranoid and Insecure Sector completely went :( and immediately instructed the remainder of my brain that I, indeed, looked quite ridiculous in a skirt that dared to hit above the knee (and has adorable little faux mirrors stitched into the hem that I got at Lane Bryant a lifetime ago and I will never give up because I <3 it). Now, keep in mind I willingly wore jumpsuits with massive floral patterns on them for far too long, so clearly I'm not all that worried about what other people think of what I wear or how I look.

But I'm not quite the same person I was when I was trotting about town in floral jumpsuits or a half-shaved head or big-ass snake earrings. Years of the world screeching "NO BAD WRONG" at you will do that to a girl. Now the challenge is trying to reclaim that person. Just...without...the jumpsuits.

*Note: some two months later, my friend told me that I had, indeed, looked good in that skirt. And then when I explained to him how I felt and it was going into my blog for all the Fatosphere to see, he apologized profusely and begged forgiveness and sent me a present. OH WAIT HE HASN'T...YET.

Hey Subway!

2008-06-02T20:12:00.007-05:00

No no, don't eat fresh, Subway. EAT ME. They have a new ad now that's targeting fat panic at men, where if you don't eat Subway Jared-style and dare to have *gasp* a burger and fries, the following is going to happen to you:

*you'll have to wear the dreaded "fat pants"
*you'll need a seatbelt extender
*you'll have to wear bigger clothes
*you'll have to read diet books
*you'll have to get a gym membership
*you'll have to wear more deodorant (because after all, FAT PEOPLE SWEAT MORE--in fact, we sweat so uncontrollably we walk through life looking like Albert Brooks in "Broadcast News" when he gets his shot at the weekend anchor desk and suffers a massive attack of the flop sweats)
*you'll be more paranoid
*you'll need a therapist

Not for nothing, but having a gym membership in and of itself isn't a bad thing. I have a gym membership at a very swank and shiny gym where the emphasis isn't on health but on how to look better naked. Despite the completely fucking ridiculousness of that whole concept, the folks that work there are nice and I've never experienced any static from other gym members about Ole Fattie hopping on the treadmills or whatnot.

I would also venture to say that if you have a burger and fries when the mood strikes you, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO SUDDENLY BALLOON UP 50 POUNDS. Having a piece of cheesecake does not result in an instant weight gain of 10 pounds. Your heart isn't going to stop, your head isn't going to explode.

As for being fat making you paranoid...well, how ridiculous. Certainly, we've all learned that being fat in society is downright beloved. It's not as if there are stories every day about how if you're fat, you're a lazy sack; or fat people being portrayed in movies and TV shows as gluttonous hogs trying to devour the world; or wank-filled brawls in internet communities about the evildoings of fat people. It's not unusual for me to be walking down the street and suddenly, someone stops me to hug me to let me know how much my being fat is embraced and adored.

OH WAIT.

And as we all know, if you're thin, there's absolutely no need for therapy or any sort of psychiatric assistance. Thin people are never depressed. It's true.

Look, Subway, I dialed out on eating your shit when Jared was trotted out, and the more you've gone the way of fat-panicking the nation into buying your decidedly weak-ass subs, the more I'm determined to mock the hell out of you. Seriously. You'll need to buy more deodorant??

Morons.

I just cut myself on Occam's Razor.

2008-05-15T18:20:00.004-05:00

Obesity tied to risk of psychiatric disorders, Reuters is telling me today (via Jezebel, that is). Naturally, since they're scientists (which then triggers a soundbite in my head of Bill Murray in "Ghostbusters": "Back off, man. I'm a scientist"), they're just plain old baffled and their gasts are somewhat flabbered at not being able to "fully investigate" the reasons why us fats seem to come down with depression, anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and phobias.

First of all, in my head I'm thinking, "well...that's a bit of a half-assed study, then, innit, if you couldn't quite 'fully investigate' something?" Kind of like going for a college degree and then deciding you couldn't fully complete all four years of study. You don't wind up with a shiny diploma for thinking "boy, I'd sure like to have a degree in something" and then fucking off to do something else.

And the other thing, the thing that's caused my forehead to become embedded in my IKEA desk...is it any fucking wonder the fat tend to be more depressed, etcetera? Not because of our fat, but...oh, I don't know...the reactions we tend to get from the outside world because of it? I know it's been hard to put a spring in my motherfucking step when I've been called a fat bitch by a car full of teenage boys. It's a bit of a push to turn my frown upside-fucking-down when almost everywhere I go in the media or on the internet I'm being cheerfully informed that I'm a horrible, disgusting, lazy creature responsible for multitudes of ills in the world, from global warming to terrorism. I'm waiting on the edge of my seat for hysterical stories claiming the food shortage and higher price issues the U.S. is currently having is due, somehow, to the Obeeeeesity Epidemic. Why, it's a never-ending festival of laughter and joy being tagged as something less than human and undeserving of respect and love! As Howard Stern once proclaimed, "a waste of a perfectly good vagina".

Undoubtedly, there will be a cavalcade of articles at various "lifestyle" websites holding this study up as more inspiration to continue dieting yourself silly and doing whatever it takes to reach the miraculous state of thinness that is easily achieved if only you'd just fucking TRY HARDER YOU LAZY, LAZY ASS. If you would only stop stuffing your silly fat face with all manner of cookies and donuts and candy bars and Big Macs and WORK HARD TO BE THIN, you could be happy. Shit, it even insinuates in the article that us bummed-out chubs can't help but reach for the pint of Ben and Jerry's when we're sadclowning, so it's just a vicious circle that perhaps, one day, Very Smart Scientists can break. But only after they get large grants from the weight loss and bariatric surgery industry.

Seeing as I am someone who wanted a college diploma but dropped out after three years so therefore, I have a college diploma strictly because I wished it, I'm going to tighten up what theory this study is trying to put forth:

If you're not fat, you won't be sad.

BOOM. PRINT IT. SCIENCE. Hell, it's as much of a viable theory as this one from Ann Elk (Miss). If you're thin, absolutely nothing bad ever happens to you, you're never sad, you're never sick, and you wake up every morning whistling "Zippity Doo Dah". If you're fat, well...I think we all know just what it means.

I know it's not scientifically sexy to Occam's Razor shit like this, because Occaming studies doesn't get you the fat cash from the weight loss industry. But holy crap, how about taking a step back, donning the ole Thinking Cap, and positing that perhaps a sizable chunk of us having issues with depression just might be having those issues because the never-ending story shoved up our generous rectums is that WE SUCK? And the message isn't coming just from the media or whatever--loads of us get it from the people who are supposed to love us unconditionally, like family or friends. Incorporate the bigger picture into your study, Mr and Ms. Wizards. Then maybe I'd be more impressed and I wouldn't have to lord my clearly superior theoretical skills over you.

It's okay to want more...right?

2008-05-13T19:51:00.005-05:00

So I'm kind of half-heartedly wading through the online dating "scene", just kind of scoping out my options. My general attitude about it is probably not the best, in that I irk easily and I have certain things that I just cannot let go of: my preferences when it comes to religion and children...and spelling and grammar.

I thought it would be in my best interest to head to websites that are specifically geared towards teh fats. I dutifully put up my profile and pictures (I think the one where I'm wearing a hat shaped like a shark is bound to attract scads of fellas), and sat back to await the flood of interested parties.

Because of COURSE there would be a flood, people, COME ON. I'm ME.

The flood...well...the flood consisted of some of the most violent spelling errors I've ever witnessed. Now, don't get me wrong--I'm not talking about a transposed letter here and there. We're talking passages of spelling errors. And apparently, my religious beliefs (or lack thereof, I should say) as well as my disinterest in having children...let's just say it didn't stop me being messaged by a gentleman whose entire introductory profile paragraph was about his love for Jesus and how if I didn't love Jesus, we would not be COMPATIABLE(sic). Dude, it says very very blatantly in my profile that I am an atheist. Therefore...I must say one could conclude that I do not love Jesus. He's a nice guy, we just don't have much in common and don't run in the same circles.

Then I had another message from a guy who loves "weman" and wants me to know that "weman were made for us men". Which is...fine...I guess? I mean, rock on with your bad self, if you want to go with that approach. But the most lolleriffic thing for me was that why yes, he was willing to relocate for his perfect lady love. And why wouldn't you be willing to relocate when you live...IN GHANA.

Of course, there's the voice in my head that says I'm being too picky, that I'm being too much of a snob to be so bent and unmoving about the spelling and grammar, that I'm being a pedant. And someone like me (that is, FAAAAAT) shouldn't be so picky. Rather, shouldn't dare to be so picky. After all, who do I think I am? I'm old, I'm plain, I'm certainly no fashion model--who am I to be such a stickler when I should be grateful that any male is paying attention to me?

Thing is, though, no matter how irritated I get with myself and how downright hateful I can be to myself, there's still enough of an ego in me where I know I deserve better. At the very least, I deserve someone who can write a semi-snappy, well-crafted motherfucking dating profile, for Christ's sake. Frankly, I've still enough of my ego preserved from my teenage years where I thought I was the shit where I'm occasionally genuinely baffled as to why I've been rejected by some of the men I've been rejected by. Especially when seeing what kind of women they wind up with. Back in high school, I had myself a little crushola on a guy that was a year younger than me. My kind of guy--kind of shy, fairly geekish, could play the piano like a son of a bitch, and had a very dry, silly wit that made me swoon. He knew that I found him foxy and didn't seem that perturbed by the concept. Little did I know that a girl that I was mentoring somewhat in the high school radio station had her eyes on him, and dammit if she didn't snatch him right out from under me.

When it all went down, I was truly, truly baffled. I barely thought "shit, it's because I'm such a fat fucking cow"--it was more "what the FUCK??? She's--she's--she's EWWW!! And dumb! And not funny! And weird (not in the fun way, either)!!" I was boggled for months. Even looking back now, I'm having a moment of "BWUH???". But that could be the ridiculous amount of snot that is currently coursing out of my nose thanks to a sinus infection breaking up.

I'm sorry, my sinuses derailed my train of thought. All right. Yes. Got it. Bottom line, I know what I want. And what I want is what I want, and can spell "want" correctly. And at the end of the day, I sincerely and wholeheartedly mean it when I say I would rather be alone (despite my whinery) than settle. Because I deserve what I consider the best, and the size of my ass is not going to alter my criteria.

Talking out both sides of your mouth.

2008-04-30T17:29:00.006-05:00

"Removal of Aussie model sparks up skinny debate", Yahoo informed me today, and the gist of it is that a young woman who appeared to have lost weight since moving to Paris to do runway, and she was briefly pulled from the show so that they could ascertain her health status.

A couple things caught my eye and caused me to "Bwuhhhh?" this morning as I sat at my desk. There was the agency spokeswoman stating, ""She is on a positive track now and is going to relax, take time out, not work as hard and have lunches and dinners." The vibe I catch from it is like, "we'd best make sure people know she's not a complete hog and having *gasp* BREAKFAST" combined with that old PR move of showing Hollywood celebrities who have been tagged by the tabloids as "OMG TOO THIN!" eating absolutely everywhere they go so as to prove, somehow, that Hollywood celebrities are just like us.

The other thing that caused my head to tilt like Nipper the RCA dog was this bit:

Spain and Italy have recommended banning catwalk models with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18.5 -- a measure expressing a ratio of weight to height -- but shows in London, New York and Paris say this index is not an accurate measure of health. Wait wait wait WAIT a second, hold up, hold up, HOLD THE PHONE HERE, COWBOY. Are you telling me...that the BMI...isn't an accurate measure of health? But every frigging time I turn on the T and V or look at the Internets and they talk about the Obeeeeesity Epidemic, the doctor fellas and suchnot are telling me that the BMI *IS SO* an accurate measure of health! Let's take me as an example. According to the Most Blessed And True BMI charts, I have a BMI of 90 bazillion with a side of turkey gravy. (Actually, my BMI is 41.3 - SACRE BLEU I AM MORRRRRRBIDLY OBESICAL!) From a "medical" point of view, my heart should be exploding any...minute...now.

*waits*
*keeps waiting*
*checks watch*
*has a bit of dried pineapple*

So it is quite clear that I'm only moments away from keeling over because the BMI is an accurate, no-bullshit measure of a person's health. Oh, but not if you're a fashion model or otherwise a thin citizen of the world. In order for me to be considered "normal", I should clock in at 125 to 165 pounds. Even when I was food journaling my metaphorical balls off and exercising five days a week and watching every single item that flew into my mouth, the lowest weight I ever achieved in my life (that I can recall) was 225. This is me at 225, when I was 18 years old (I was big into the Cure, so shoosh):

This is me at 280 and 35:

Wow, I can sure tell the difference...can't...you? And I think it's clear that it took all of my effort and energy to kick up that leg in such a saucy fashion. Shortly after this picture was taken, I had to lay down on the walkway for a while. I know the wizard peeking out of that hole up in the Excalibur's thinking "FAT HOG!" But look! I was being "good"! I was drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper, goddammit!

The simple fact of the matter is, no matter what I do (and I have done it over and over and over again, so no need to pass on "helpful tips" on ways that dadgummit, this time around I could finally drop those pesky 120 pounds I've carried since forever), I am NEVER going to see 165 pounds until I've been in the ground for a couple of years. I'd be shocked if I ever saw 225 again, mostly because I suspect I would discover soon after that I had some sort of awful disease that was devouring me from the inside out or that I had an unknown twin residing in me, Rusty Venture-style.

Another thing that caught my eye and irked the snot out of me occurred while I was eating dinner tonight (mmmm, peas)-- that ad for Ensure, which is used in nursing homes to keep old and sickly people from, you know, starving to death because they can't eat for any number of reasons. Now it's being touted as, basically, a meal replacement. There's all sorts of fucked up tied into that sort of shit, but that's not my current bitch. My current bitch is that Ensure should be used by adults who aren't "always eating right", the smarmy voiceover says. So if you're the kind of hateful, un-American asshole who decides you're in the mood for fries versus a small salad, there is all kinds of wrong with you and you had better chug yourself some Ensure immediately in order to undo all the harm you've done to society at large, let alone yourself. That phrase...oh, it sets my spine on fire, "eating right". You should always EAT RIGHT and eat GOOD FOODS and NEVER, NEVER EAT BAD FOODS EVER. It's the Trifecta of Rage for me, in fact, when the "good" food vs. "bad" food bullshit crops up alongside "eating right". And that insidious push in the world that you can simply never, ever have ice cream/brownies/cookies/fries/burgers/pizza or else you're going to spontaneously combust and take out a litter of adorable kittens while you're at it. You don't want to kill kittens, do you? Then you had damn well better put down that cookie right now and hop on the treadmill. HOP ON IT. No, literally hop on it, because it'd be funny. And it's probably make exercise way more fun for you. I bet if you made it fun instead of a horrific drudgery and punishment for being "bad", you'd find it was a lot easier to do it and enjoy it.

Look, all I'm saying is that there are many truths in this world, and here are some of them:

Thin does not equal healthy
Fat does not equal unhealthy
You cannot look at ANYONE, be they built like me or built like a fashion model, and determine what their health status is, so STOP FUCKING DOING IT
"Naturally fat" is not bullshit and neither is "naturally thin"
There are no "good" foods and no "bad" foods
Weight Watchers -- yeah, IT IS A FUCKING DIET

The BMI being an accurate indicator of anyone's health status has never been and never will be anywhere near truth. The fashionistas in New York, Paris, and London have at least got that one right on the nosey.

Non-Entity.

2008-04-28T18:12:00.005-05:00

I'm having a Barbra Streisand moment, I reckon. The joke always has been that in Barbra’s movies (that she’s directed, that is), there’s always a moment that can be pointed at as her proclaiming “MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME I WAS PRETTY!” Think back to “Prince of Tides” and all the lingering shots of Barbra’s immaculate manicure, Donna Karan clothes, perfect make-up, elegantly coiffed ‘do. Almost every shot containing Barbra screams “FUCK YOU MOM I AM MAKING OUT WITH NICK NOLTE FTW” Shit, if I had more money than God and was making a movie, it’d probably be one long paean about how no one ever has told me I’m pretty or beautiful.

What’s so irksome is that it bothers me. It bothers me a lot. It’s not supposed to, if I’m going by the Official Handbook* you’re given when you’re hopped up on feminism, HAES and fat acceptance. I should be completely inured to anyone’s opinion on the superficial. I shouldn’t be craving such trivial things. I think, “well, you’re always on the defensive waiting for someone to take a shot at you because you’re fat, so maybe you’re so defensive that you’re not HEARING the compliments”. Well, no. That would be inaccurate. I’ve never been a major make-up wearing, clothes-horsing, shoe-loving kind of woman. I don’t like the way I look in make-up, I generally dress like a 14-year-old fat teenage boy, and my size 10 boats never were and never will be at home in anything but thick-soled Doc Martens, Vans, or Chuck Taylors. As I do tend to dress in a more masculine fashion and my body shape is not hourglass, I’m often mistaken for a man. Couple that with an inability to behave in a more stereotypically feminine fashion, and I’m an It. I’m not a man, not yet a woman (oh, Britney, thank you for that song and my insane need to use variations on it 24/7). And as a result, “pretty” is not a descriptor used by anyone in relation to me, ever. Certainly my parents must have said it at some point, right? Well...not really, exactly. Not too long ago, my father was talking about how Dawn French would be pretty if she lost weight. Seeing as I’m kind of built like Dawn French (just sans the tits), I think it’s fair to infer that I, too, would be pretty if I just lost the weight. I look “nice”. That’s the phrase that has always paid, that I look “nice”. (I’d like to add that to the clichés and platitudes I never motherfucking want to hear ever again, “oh don’t you look...nice”.)

What winds up happening in my messy brain is that I take the most innocuous things personally. When I witness or read compliments on the aesthetic aspects of those around me, I’m immediately spiraled into a “fuck, I’m ugly, fuck, I’m worthless, fuck, I’m nothing” dance routine (jazz hands are involved) that only gets more spiral-y as I then berate myself for giving a shit in the first place. The thing is, though, in today’s society...I am nothing. And at the end of the day, I made that choice. I made the choice to not be someone who won’t leave the house without make-up, I chose to dress for comfort. I made the choice to stop dieting. If you reject the societal norms, society rejects you. There’s no clandestine wink from society at large that says, “well, we don’t necessarily approve, but...gosh, you crazy kid, we love ya anyway!” If you decide to say no, you must be prepared to handle what may follow: ostracization (note: Dictionary.com says that’s a word, I swear to Christ), depression, loneliness, regret. If you’re lucky, you’ll find like-minded individuals. But that’s if you’re lucky...and we all know just how lucky I am (saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad trumpet). Well, I should slightly alter that to say I have found like-minded individuals...in the platonic sense, that is. (saaaaaaadder trumpet)

So then the question is: do I regret the choices I’ve made? Honestly, it depends on the day. If I was 10 years younger, I’d be quick to say “OH HELL NO”. But being 36 and currently enduring one of the more unpleasant depressive spells I’ve had in many years of depressive spells, it’s harder for me to answer “OH HELL NO”. The one I can safely say 100 percent I don’t regret is the dieting thing. Me on a diet = me being a bigger asshole than usual because I was doing the Fat Girl Tap Dance of making sure the world at large KNEW I was working on being a “better person” and would gladly share with anyone who would listen that I was eating “right” and exercising. Perhaps it was interesting conversation to others, but in my head, I was constantly telling myself to shut the fuck up. As for not being a “womanly” woman...that’s a tougher sell as of late. It does sting when I get “mistered”. It’s hurtful to feel like I don’t belong anywhere, really. That I’m not good enough in a wide variety of areas, let alone in the aesthetic one. It’s not terribly festive being an It, being a non-entity. I’m decent at distracting myself with whatever so it’s not a constant rocking back and forth and dwelling on boo-hoo-poor-me. The bitch is that the pain, anger, frustration, and embarrassment sneak up on me. I can be tootling along and feeling decent, and then KA-BAM, I’m mired in a seemingly never-ending retrospective of my Greatest Misses, pulling up each and every regret, every moment where I’ve felt particularly It-like, every rejection, every misstep, every fuck-up, what a fucking enormous mess I’ve made of things. Then comes the full-snot tears while riding public transportation or sitting at my desk at work and it’s like I’m a walking goddamned episode of “Dr. Phil” without the homespun cornpone advice that makes no sense being screamed at me. “What YOU NEEEEED is something we like to call in Texas ‘a sassafrassin’ ramtambler’!”

I am quite the super special snowflake, ain’t I. Believe me, no one’s more exhausted of my ass than I am. But I’ve decided that soon, I must make one of the most important choices of my life: just how dark I want to dye my hair, because my roots—WOOF. Eighteen miles long of mousy brown comin’ into town.

*note: there is no Official Handbook; but you can choose between a toaster oven or an electric skillet

Going belly up.

2008-04-23T19:41:00.007-05:00

(NOTE: the picture behind the cut might be slightly NSFW.)

When I regard my carcass, I've always had two pain points: my flibbety-flubbety upper arms (despite the leaps I've made in self-acceptance, the upper arms will always be an ARGH for me), and my belly. To be honest, I've always felt something of a disconnect with my entire body, simply because for such a long time, it was a failure in my eyes. The second you get the "you have SUCH a pretty face" line, it's almost impossible not to experience that disconnect. Occasionally, my legs would be admired (even before getting more active, I sported fairly hardcore gams), but other than that...a trainwreck on two legs.

So it's safe to say taking pictures of myself in less than full-metal clothing coverage never, ever happened. Well, until this evening.

Stacy Bias, the founder of Fat Girl Speaks, has a new project, Bellies Are Beautiful, which encourages people to upload pictures of their bellies. All bellies, be they flubbety-jubbety, wiggly-woggly, scarred, stretch-marked, concave, convex, flat, or otherwise. I went through the pictures and enjoyed seeing so many different bellies, as silly as that might sound. And I started thinking, "why the fuck not post up my own". I put it off for a few days, "forgetting" to bring my camera into my room and swearing to myself, "oh, I'll do it tomorrow". Finally, I couldn't excuse myself out of it anymore and spent about 20 minutes taking pictures of my belly.

At first...horrified. I had a certain view in my head of what my bare belly looked like, and what I was seeing in the pictures WAS NOT WHAT WAS IN MY HEAD. Flesh poking out at angles that I never noticed before, for Christ's sake. Flesh...just...EVERYWHERE. MUST COVER THAT FLESH, my brain shrieked. But I resisted the urge to delete the holy fuck out of the pictures I was taking and just kept on truckin' until I started...to dig it. I'm telling you, I was thisclose to ditching the bra and letting it hang, baby. And maybe that'll be another picture for another day as that particular area's another pain point. Fuck, if I can't get one person to eyeball my equipment in private, why not fling it onto the internet for all to see? :-P

I finally got three or four that I wasn't just satisfied with, but that...well, that I loved. I suddenly came over all lovey about something I had hated for so long. It looks all...pretty and soft. At least, it does to me. Which, at this stage of the game, is really all I care about. And I dig it enough to let it make its internet debut.

ETA: I thought I should have encircled it in sparklies and flashy things. Instead, under the advice of a friend, I suggest you make a little trumpet flourishy sound right as you look at it.

BELLAY!!!!!!!!!!

(with a hint of terribly stylish Lane Bryant bra)

The power of "no".

2008-04-21T19:44:00.006-05:00

I work a fairly dull-ass job. So it gives me a lot of time to think and chew on things. It's not always the best thing in the world, especially since I have that...crying problem. But today I had one of those mini-epiphanies or maybe just a mental Post-It note reminder that it's okay to say no. It's okay to define my life the way I want to define my life. I don't need to do everything within my power to keep friends that do nothing to add to my life. It's okay to jettison people who are nothing but walking black holes or don't want the best for me. There's no reason to make myself crazy trying to make people like me.

Of course, we all want to be liked, but I think you kind of become a real adult when you realize it's fine to be not liked. Not everyone wants to be in your fan club and no matter how hard you try, they'll never sign up for a lifetime membership. And that's okay. That's life. The only way to make life livable is to shape it into the form you want it to be, and that includes realizing that there's nothing wrong with telling someone they can't be a part of it. It's just a matter of summoning up the courage to say no. Or no more.

Orthorexia is the new black and other random thoughts.

2008-04-14T18:35:00.005-05:00

Rachel at The F-Word takes care of the heavy lifting on this subject, and you should make her required reading anyway for her remarkable insight on a variety of subjects. She threw down a great letter to the editor in response to this reporter's half-assed article--you can catch a link to it at The F-Word.

The reporter's decision to go for the snark rather than, you know, any kind of actual reporting/insight only highlights to me how little people understand eating disorders. What little *I* know comes from having a mother (a retired registered nurse) who worked with eating disordered patients, and the wee bit of knowledge I have could fit into a thimble. But there seems to be a fairly decent-sized contingent of people who believe that if the ultimate result of thinness is achieved, who the fuck cares how you got to that point in the first place or what kind of toll it took on one's mental state. The article put me in mind of an interview I saw many, many years ago on that Judith Regan interview show that was on...Fox News, maybe? She was talking to Marina Sirtis (Counselor Troi on "Star Trek: The Next Generation) and at some point, the conversation turned towards looks and Hollywood standards for women. Marina discussed having been anorexic in her youth and Judith said, "boy, I wouldn't mind catching a little anorexia". It stuck with me so hard because I wanted to reach through the television and shake Judith by her shoulders for saying something so fucking moronic and dismissive. I'm sure she would have said she was just joshing around, and believe me, I like a good chuckle. BUT I'M NOT GOING TO HAVE IT AT THE EXPENSE OF A GUEST ON MY TALK SHOW WHO HAS JUST REVEALED HER EATING DISORDERED PAST. OH, and ALSO? ANOREXIA: NOT FUNNY. Eating disorders: NOT A HOOT.

But nothing matters more than being thin, no matter how you do it or what it winds up doing to your mind, your body, or soul. That is the message being sent, loud and clear, each and every day to all of us. If you really want to see me get bent, trot out any number of the "inspirational" cliches that have been trotted out over the years regarding weight loss:

you can never be too rich or too thin!
nothing tastes as good as thin feels!
a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!
"What? Lose weight."

That last one was my sister's "inspiration". Brief explanation: I have two older sisters, and all three of us were always big, stocky women. They got the boobs, however--I'm not particularly gifted in the knocker area. Anyway. My sister J.M. was fat for most of her life, and shortly after high school was enamored with a fella. She and he got on like crazy, the chemistry was unreal. However, his response to her when she confessed her feelings for him? "What? Lose weight." For a few months afterwards, she taped up pictures of swimsuit models to the wall with "What? Lose weight" scrawled underneath one of the pictures. She lost some weight...and gained it back. And lost it. And gained it. She did Jenny Craig. She did Weight Watchers (back when you weighed every portion of food). She did Sugarbusters, she did Atkins, you name it, she tried it. And in 2001, she had gastric bypass surgery.

I wasn't down with her having the surgery, and I certainly wasn't down with the second adolescence she went through. For about three years, J.M. was kind of insufferable because she was dealing with people's revised perceptions of her (suddenly, she was "good" because she was losing weight) and testing out just what she could do in her "new" body. After all, there were loads of things she simply "couldn't do" when she was fat versus her being thin. Now, almost seven years down the road, she's gained some weight back which happens with almost all bariatric surgeries. While she's still well, well, WELL below her top weight of 374 pounds, the nagging is still there, the voice screaming "you're not good enough, you're not thin enough" remains in her head. She's still "a fat pig", still "lazy", still all those things she was before having her stomach jacked with. But one thing I'm extremely grateful for is that she's starting to get it. She's starting to understand the Fantasy of Being Thin and how it applied (and applies) to her situation. Does she regret having the surgery? No. Does she appreciate how lucky she was that she didn't have any massive complications to date? Oh, yes.

It's not unusual for my sister to tell me that she's impressed that I go out and do things at the size I'm at, that I've rarely not done something because of my fat. I've done a lot of shit fat--I've been on Comedy Central, I've done a one-woman show, I recently traveled to New Zealand on my own, I've spent many nights going out dancing. I wish she could have realized the "old" her was just as good and able as the "new" her. But that she's starting to understand that her "old" self was as good as her "new" self? That impresses me more than she'll ever know.

The one where I get TMI on your asses.

2008-04-06T20:15:00.003-05:00

Strap in, sports fans, because I’m fixing to bellyache and whine. Ohhhh, how I’m going to whine. It’s going to be the kind of whining that borders on subsonic at times, the kind of whine that only dogs and dolphins can hear at certain times. It’s that whine that comes up from your feet and gets trapped somewhere in your stomach for a bit, then finally migrates up into your throat but it won’t shake loose.

What has me in such a state of bellywhining?

I’m a little over being told I should be happy with what I have.

I know that’s vague, but I generally take a long-ass time to get to a point, so bear with me. (Start drinking now, it’ll make it easier.) I’m a wee bit tired of the “life’s lessons” speeches and “well, your family loves you and your friends love you”. I’ve damn well had it with what is the emotional equivalent of “you have such a pretty face!” To say that I’m exhausted…oh, honey. “Exhausted” doesn’t even begin to cover how goddamned worn out I am with so many things.

I’m just having one of those days (weeks/months/years) where I’m tired of the ball never being in my court, shall we say. I’m tired of being the third wheel. I’m tired of being the sidekick. I’m tired of being the comic relief. I’m tired of being the counselor and advisor. I am fucking hell-ass tired of feeling left out and awkward.

I AM TIRED OF BEING A SINGLE 36-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN.

There. Much better.

Part of me wishes that I could tell you I’m a weergin because of Jesus or some other religious/moral obligation only because on paper (and in my head) it probably seems better than just “I am apparently incapable of getting any tail whatsoever”. But I can only tell you that...yeah, I am apparently incapable of getting any tail whatsoever. Not to say it’s something I obsess over 24/7. I don’t spring out of bed in the morning and salute myself in the mirror with, “Hello, fat virgin! Boy, aren’t you going to be terribly virginal today!” Where it tends to become a hairshirt for me is in the arena of “girl talk”, both IRL and online. It’s hard to explain the feeling beyond “disappointed”. I can’t participate. I can’t commiserate at all when it comes to sexuality, intimacy, or relationships. And I struggle enough with my womanhood in that logically, I know that it’s right for me to be the individual I am, dress the way I feel comfortable, behave the way I behave, believe in what I believe. However, when I’m left out of yet another conversation, when I’m the third wheel or fifth wheel or whatever wheel in a social situation, when I feel like I can’t even write fiction or screenplays involving love or relationships anymore because I know nothing about it...it’s those moments where I wish I could fuck all of my beliefs and ideals and hop on that diet/WLS bandwagon and put on makeup and style my hair and concern myself with dressing fashionably and in a feminine style and be “the right kind”, a more “appropriate” woman.

I know it’s completely half-assed and nonsensical. I know there are plenty of women my size or bigger with personalities and beliefs almost identical to mine who have found mates. Fuck, there are downright awful human beings who have loving, adoring partners. Logic would dictate that I should have some luck. I tried EHarmony, which was a big old bust. I couldn’t even get past the matching stage as they kept sending me matches that were completely inappropriate (that is, completely NOT MATCHING ME). When I say I don’t want kids and I’m not religious, and want to be with someone who doesn’t want kids and isn’t religious...I’m not kidding. They’re two things that I’m really not going to change my mind about. I have an account at Match.com but haven’t brought myself to pony up the $100-plus because all I can think is “that’s another $100 towards yet another epic failure”; spending $100 to go through allegedly-matching profiles that state the preferred body type is slender and athletic. And let’s say I’m able to launch myself past that particular hurdle. How do I explain (well, besides on a very public blog—WHOOPS) that I’ve never been in a relationship, have no experience whatsoever with physical intimacy, and not have someone walk away thinking about how much there must be wrong with me? Being almost compulsively honest about myself (hence this post—WHOOPS), I would feel compelled to explain that I haven’t kissed anyone in close to 13 years and the closest I got to sleeping with someone was because the guy wanted to slap one more notch on his belt before getting married. I’ve had people sincerely suggest to me that I should go to a bar and there’d be no way I’d be rejected by the end of the night. First of all, the statement screams “hey, there’s bound to be SOME guy so drunk and desperate that he’d fuck you, fat ass”. And I’d like to think that I’m worth a bit more than a drunk fuck by a guy that wouldn’t normally come near me. Call me an asshole romantic, but I really don’t relish the idea of being nudie for the first time in front of someone else (who isn’t a medical professional) while that someone else is pretty much a stranger and shitfaced to boot.

Unfortunately, sporting the brain that I do, the voice inside screams, “you are not good enough and you need to get a grip on that. When you do try (at anything, really), you fail. And you usually fail in a spectacular fashion. Just accept you are not good enough and move on. Get over it. It’s a life lesson. There isn’t an ass for every saddle, there isn’t someone for everyone, and certainly not you. You are old, you are ugly, and you are pathetic.” At the present time, I’m finding it difficult to summon up evidence to in order to contradict that voice. I used to be able to get angry and tell the voice to go blow. Now...wow, do I cry a lot. I never used to be a big crier. I was borderline stoic for many years. Present day, however, there’s no telling what will set me off or when it’s going to happen. I’ve had many a train ride home that has been a life-or-death struggle with my tear ducts. I can even make something like having a poorly-hidden cry on public transportation a further gateway into my almost-daily downward spirals because I’ve never once been asked by someone if I was okay. Granted, *I* would probably ignore a fat chick in a hoodie having a weep on my train car, but in my idiot brain, it’s one more piece of evidence that I’m a waste of space.

I don’t know why I feel compelled to share this with the general public. Then again, I did a one-woman comedy piece where I talked freely about the times I contemplated suicide. My father was more bothered by my saying “motherfucker” a lot during it. I think I’m trying to find some sort of peace that has been eluding me for quite a long time. Some people would try therapy or yoga or latch hook. Instead, I vomit up what’s bouncing around my synapses onto a public blog for your...entertainment? Well, perhaps not this particular entry. As I look at my past entries, it seems that I try to close with some sort of “helpful hint” or whatnot, and if I had any kind of advice on this particular day, it would be if your friends or loved ones come to you holding their beating hearts out and just repeating “WHY”, fight the urge to trot out the so-called “helpful” clichés we’re been told will somehow make it all better. Just listen. If a phrase like “it’s a life lesson” or “there’s someone for everyone” threatens to fly past your lips, replace it with “let’s go to the zoo” or “it’s raining on my furniture”. Sometimes, it’s okay not to rattle off a platitude. Sometimes, going to the zoo sounds like the greatest idea in the world.