And now, a message from Your Royal Highness.

(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.

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Self-loathing coated in butter.

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.

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