My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

This post is just a quickie as I'm dying from a chest cold and swamped with admin stuff, but I had to share this super weird tidbit with you guys: according to The Independent , the inventor of the Segway has applied for a patent for a new invention that essentially sucks food out of your stomach after you've eaten it, before you can digest it.  The article claims this is an alternative to gastric bypass, to which I say: not only is it GROSS but it's totally opposite the point of weight loss surgery!  It basically encourages people to stuff their faces without consequence, while the point of GB and its ilk is to impose harsh consequences on the patient, thereby (at least theoretically) changing his/her behavior through conditioning.  Ugh.  Gross.  And how very dehumanizing of fat people to think this is what we need.

Writing all these chapters about my life and my body is kind of intense.  Last week, I wrote about a panic attack I had over my body three years ago, and I could feel my pulse racing as I wrote it; re-living the experience actually made me have another mini-attack.  It's amazing how much I seem to have blocked from memory.  The smell of surgery recovery, the pain, both emotional and physical, that I've continuously put myself through in the fruitless pursuit of bodily normalcy... but I've forgotten good things as well. Today I was writing about my recovery from plastic surgery, specifically abdominoplasty and brachioplasty (arms).  And I was remembering the horrible, excruciating pulling at my stomach, and the fear that if I made one wrong move my belly would split open and all my insides would tumble out.  But I was also surprised to remember how happy I was after those surgeries, and how confident. The accompanying lipo made me retain so much water, I wa...

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...

I just finished a yoga/pilates/ballet workout, and I felt the need to vent. I feel like yoga is supposed to make me more centered, more peaceful and one with my body, etc. And it does, when I can manage to not look at myself while I’m doing it. But when I do succumb to the temptation to look at my body in the poses, as I usually do, I feel the opposite of what I should. Instead of peace and harmony I feel rage and frustration. This is especially true during downward dog, when I can’t help but look at my legs, the contracted thigh muscles lost under a rippling, hanging sea of excess flesh. I know, I know, I shouldn’t do yoga in shorts (or undies and a tee, which is usually my lazy at-home workout outfit). But it seems to me that covering up the problem is only a short-term solution. Of course, staring furiously at the problem and fucking up my chakra (or whatever) doesn’t seem like any sort of solution at all. What I really want is a quick-fix (or a slow, guaranteed fix), but I do...

It’s weird. My scars haven’t even faded yet, except in miraculously transparent patches, and I’m already forgetting they exist. Now, when I raise my arms to tie up my hair (something I would never have done in public just a year ago) and the man at the next table looks at me a little too long, I feel an urge to make sure I’ve shaved my armpits. It’s only when I not-so-slyly slide my fingers into my shirt that I feel the abnormally smooth stripe of skin and realize what the man was staring at. And I’m so much less strict about hiding them. Last week at work I wore a sleeveless dress and one of the nurses asked about my scars, and I realized I hadn’t told anyone there about my weight loss and all my surgeries. Even the other receptionist, to whom I feel fairly close. And so I told the nurse, because I’ve always maintained that if I hide my history with surgery then I don’t deserve the benefits of the procedures. I promised myself that I wouldn’t be ashamed of my plastic surgery, a...

Raggedy Anne: Secrets of a Parts-Jumble Princess (This is the original, from which "Ongoing Process" was created) My brother’s name is Andrew. We never really called him Andy, and the coincidence was unintentional, or so my parents claim, but I’m sure we must have cleaned out the KB Toys stock of Raggedy Sibling dolls by the time we reached puberty. Puberty, incidentally, is about the point at which my weight became a problem, “a concern” to me, my family, and random strangers on the street. Unlike most fat kids, I was pretty popular. I was even the object of a crush every now and again. Of course I had my moments of miserable reality-check, but generally I was pretty happy, shockingly carefree. Most of the time. I grew up in a small suburb of LA, where I lived a sheltered enough life that my only tormentor was my brother, and even he wasn’t half as bad as he could have been, in retrospect. When I was ten, and just getting past ‘chubby,’ my parents moved us to San Fran...