My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

I made a new friend the other weekend, and yesterday he made me a surprising offer. I was thanking him for introducing me to a couple of new writers and inspiring me to write more frequently, and he suggested that, as repayment, I could model for him sometime (he’s an amateur photographer). Nude. Now, I don’t know what your reactions to this offer might be, but I almost stopped breathing. First of all, I haven’t known this man long, and he’s significantly older than I, and I’m not sure where our friendship stands on the gray line between ‘just friends’ and ‘awkward sexual attraction.’ But even disregarding my (and needless to say, my boyfriend’s) discomfort with the offer from a relationship standpoint, I was thrown by the revulsion I felt when I imagined standing naked in front of someone with a camera. I’ve been working on the self-image / photos standoff for years. When I was fat, I almost never let anyone take photos of me, which actually cultivated an interest in photography ...

I have a bone to pick with the medical community, although it's probably well hidden beneath layers of fat. Yes, I'm talking about the way that doctors and medical professionals deal with weight. A few months ago, I asked my friend if she liked her 'lady doctor,' because I needed to go in for my annual check-up and I don't have a doctor in SF. Her response was something along the lines of "yeah, I like her because she doesn't talk a lot. I mean, except to tell me to lose weight." At this point, she shrugged, as if this is par for the course. For the record, this friend, while not slender, weighs less than I do. So I went online to Yelp (otherwise known as the bible), and I chose a doctor who gets rave reviews. He's a man, unfortunately, but I figured I should just suck it up and give him a try. And I liked him, mostly. The only thing he did that bothered me was that he talked a little too much. Oh yeah, and that he kept slipping in comment...

Tonight, I lost it. I was supposed to go to a friend's house for dinner (and eat some very comforting Jewish food), and half an hour before I was due at the Caltrain station I made the mistake of getting dressed. Now, it's really cold right now in SF, so I had to put on tights. This doesn't usually concern me too much, but when I put on my go-to pink dress (the one I'm wearing in that photo in the earlier post, about how confident I was), it was tight. And not good tight. I looked disgusting. All of a sudden, when I looked in the mirror, all I could see was fat, rolling and spilling like a lidless latte in an SUV. And so I lost it. I went back to a mentality I do my best to avoid; I was furious, disgusted, and, worse, hopeless. I wanted to break the mirror. I actually wanted to scream, or throw things, or punch a wall. Another part of me just wanted to crawl into bed and give up. Mostly I just cried. The worst part was that I had to cancel on my friends. This...

Well, I promised you an update, but don’t come crying to me if it bores you. I have this dress. It’s adorable. I love it to pieces, not least because it has huge pockets and cost 8 pounds (Primark). But there’s a problem with the dress. Well, not with the dress; it’s with me. This dress, like so many of my favorite/hated dresses, is strapless. Now, putting aside for the moment the difficulty of finding a good, comfortable strapless bra, the issue is this: I have wings. Not just wings, but striped wings. Did anybody watch The Real World, Hollywood? If so, did you notice Joey’s fatty stretch marks? That’s what happens when you work out too much or you allow a tiny parasite to invade your uterus: you get silvery lines of ‘oh god WHY’ messages from your skin. Incidentally, it’s also what happens when you gain a ton of weight. And when you lose it, you keep the lines, as a sort of ‘fuck you’ lack of forgiveness from the body’s largest organ. Me, I have these things all over. Actu...

watch this space! i promise, as soon as i send out the queries i need to send on monday, i'll update.

To anybody who actually reads this blog (Derek), you have my apologies. I know I haven’t written in forever, because I was waiting to be inspired to humor and wit, but now instead I’ll just be updating the black hole of cyberspace on my life and my angstiness. I left London in mid-August, which sucked because I had to leave my boyfriend behind, but I figured I’d be coming home to a land of a slightly more normal body scale. Women in London seem defined in class by their weight, much like Postal Packages. The thinner you are, the wealthier/better educated/generally classier you are. Or at least that’s how I felt there. The only women above a size 4 (US) were big, apple-shaped messes of fake blonde hair and loud offensive voices. Usually they didn’t live in London. (Of course I’m generalizing. Broadly. But I’m going to continue to do so, hiding behind my secure belief that hardly anyone reads this anyway, and Derek knows I’m not really an asshole!) San Francisco, on the other ha...

So I went to the gym today, like a good little chubster, and while I was sweating it out on the bike I tried not to stare at the perky, everslender asses bouncing up and down in front of me on the elliptical. But I couldn’t help it, and here’s why: I have a problem with staring at other people’s bodies, especially tits and ass. I think maybe I’m part frat boy. Or I grew up with a bisexual older sister and a vocal older brother, and was trained from an early age to check out other women (although sadly I get no tingles down below from kissing them or touching their boobs, which is as far as I went with my only girl-fling). But this is not a post about my inappropriate staring. This is a post about thongs. Ok, ok. I get it. I no longer rail for hours against the thong; I no longer state outright that I’ll never wear one, or that it’s better to just go without. Windy days in SF have taught me that they are better than nothing, and I even own about ten, a few of which are favorites...