The cure for what ailed me.

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.) Read more on this article...

This is who I am.

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.

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Girlish notions.

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.
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