My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

I just watched an hour and a half long TV show on BBC called ' I Want to Change My Body ', which follows 30 young people who have different things about their bodies that they want to change, from their weight (obviously, since that's usually the #1 complaint), to their boobs or noses or skin or receding hairlines.  It basically validated what I've become more and more sure of in the past ten years: that nearly everyone has issues about something to do with his/her appearance, and a lot of us are tormented enough to take extreme measures (define extreme any way you like: surgery, juice fasts, obsessive makeup use) to try to 'fix' ourselves. The show was fascinating, of course (I'm convinced that learning about people's deepest insecurities is far more voyeuristically stimulating than watching them have sex), but it was also really sad to watch.  I feel like our society is getting more image-obsessive and more neurotic by the year – I'm certainly n...

 If you follow me on Twitter , you'll already know how obsessed I've been recently with a show called Say Yes to the Dress, which is a reality show that follows brides-to-be who are looking for the perfect dress at Kleinfeld's bridal salon in NYC.  I got into the show when I was living with my parents in San Francisco a few years ago, and spending a lot of my free time Tivo-ing reruns of What Not to Wear and other TLC shows (like I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant – NOT recommended for anyone even slightly suggestible).  I'm already a bit dress-obsessed, in general, and I have a weakness for reality TV (the NYTimes says that's okay!), so one episode was all it took to hook me.  I love seeing the different styles of dresses, comparing how they look on different body types, gasping at the incredibly poor taste some brides have and the stunning dresses others choose.  I love tearing up when the dads start to cry and yelling at the entourages when they opine too strongl...

Okay, I don't really get the obsession with the dancing/skating/dogwalking with the stars franchise, but I do read gossip blogs and they like to talk about these reality/competition shows, so I've sort of been watching things unfold.  So I've been aware of Kirsty Alley's big comeback, and I've been secretly rooting for her– after the rags have been all over her for her weight these past few years, I figure she probably needs a confidence boost (although maybe I'm projecting).  At the same time, though, I've been sort of holding my breath, waiting for Youtube to explode with videos of her falling and her thighs jiggling in slo-mo and all that terrible stuff people love to make viral. But as my favorite snarkblogger, Michael K , has put it, Kirsty is dancing her Thetans off !  She's been shaking it way harder (and way better) than a lot of the skinny bitches out there, and in a weird, detached, uninterested-in-her-up-to-now kind of way, I'm so prou...

There have been very few fat (ie normal to overweight) people on television in my lifetime, and the ones who did grace my HD were usually the subject of a reality show.  If I saw someone above a size 4, s/he was either on a scary documentary about morbid obesity (I'm not making light of that, by the way, although the fear tactics rub me the wrong way), or part of a competition to lose weight faster than other heavy people (I know some of you really love The Biggest Loser, but I still think it's a bit cruel), or, once and never again (yet), a Bachelor-esque competition to win the heart of a meaty man who digs 'curvy women.' But regardless of how I feel about the portrayal of fat people on television, the shows that pack a bit more poundage must be doing pretty well, since they're multiplying every year.  I can think of at least 4 get-fit shows, where BL used to be the only one.  TLC has upped its number of weight-centric fear documentaries, too.  And now fictional...

The other night, the bf and I were watching this show called “Inside Nature’s Giants,” which we didn’t realize at first involves dissecting the big-ass animals of land and sea.  We chose to watch the episode about whales, because they’re frickin fascinating and also because I love tigers too much to watch one get cut up.  But I wish we had chosen the tigers, because the whole time they were slicing through the whale, and the fatty, slippery flesh was sliding all over the beach, and the scientists were covered in grease, I kept thinking about my body.  How that was probably what I looked like when the doctors were slicing me up and pulling off hunks of my blubber.  How that's still what my body feels like in places: loose, slippery, uncontained . My classmates are always saying I have a very ‘descriptive’ touch when it comes to talking about my body, and my friend N pointed out that I frequently use food metaphors/similes, which is kind of interesting.  But ...

For a couple of years now, I’ve been a big fan of the TV show What Not To Wear.  I find Clinton adorable and Stacy just mean enough, and I almost always agree with their style choices (I seriously spend half the show trying to figure out where Stacy gets her dresses and shoes!).  And I was hooked for life when I realized that they’re not at all sizeist; they don’t even take sizes into account, almost like they’re wearing blinders to the number on the tag (fabric and fit take precedence). I think the moment I realized that my affection for Stacy and Clinton wasn’t just about the dresses (but OH the dresses!) was during an old episode with a woman named Kandis, who was more than usually obsessed with her size.  Within the first few hours of their tutorial, Stacy lost her patience with Kandis’s self-deprecation, and she said something that I thought was so interesting, I actually wrote it down verbatim (really, thank god for Tivo): “You know what worries me? You are only...