Why, I have a blog business note!

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. Read more on this article...

Prepare ye the way of the fail.

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.

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Auld Lang Suck.

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.

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Reminder: There are no rules in loving yourself.

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. Read more on this article...

I'm grateful to be free.

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. Read more on this article...

Where I Get TMI On Your Asses Strikes Back.

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.

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Quick Snits

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

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