A change in the beholder’s eye August 2, 2009

In February of 2007 I bought my first home. I love it. It was built in 1949 and it only had one owner before me. It is built like a fortress and is perched on top of a hill that gives me a fantastic view of the neighborhood and the trees beyond. I can see the fireworks from the city baseball stadium from my bedroom window. It is a tiny dollhouse of a place and it is perfect for me, in all but one way. Closet space.

I guess in the 40’s people didn’t have very many clothes, because the closets in this house are abysmally teeny. So, among the first things I did when I moved in was convert the office off the living room into a closet. I have no need of an office — my laptop lives mostly in my lap, and goodness knows I needed the closet space. I have a lot of clothes. Of 180 school days last year, I only repeated an outfit maybe 30 times, and that was mostly due to 6am-I-just-need-to-get-to-work-I-don’t-care-what-I-wear-this-early laziness. I have, on occasion, entertained a bit of guilt over the volume of clothes I own, but I figure that everyone has their thing — some people have dogs, some race cars, some produce offspring — I dance and play with clothes. Now I have a fantastic 10×6 closet.

Now for the shameful confession portion of this post — I moved 30 months ago and I still have unpacked boxes. A lot of them, actually. I am ridiculously lazy, and I have wondrous don’t wanna do it skills. Tonight I got inspired to unpack some boxes, namely the ones full of clothes still sitting in my closet. If I haven’t worn it in 2 1/2 years, I probably need to rid myself of it, right?

Mostly right, as it turns out. I now have a huge pile of clothes to give away, but I did manage to find a few things that I had been looking for or wondering about, and a few more things I had completely forgotten about but fell back in love with as soon as I saw them.

The past few years have involved some pretty profound changes for me, not the least of which are a major shift in how I see myself and how I feel about my body. There were quite a few things I tried on tonight that didn’t fit, and quite a lot that I can remember buying as “motivation” items — that thing so many of us do where we buy something too small as an incentive to lose weight, as if we aren’t good enough for pretty clothes as we are right now, but we can earn that right by being thinner. Such disordered, destructive behavior, that. There were also, sadly, quite a few things I bought because I loved them but never wore because of shame — not shame about the clothes, but shame about the body wearing them.

The whole unpacking-sorting-clothes process involved quite a bit of trying on, which any woman, fat or thin, can tell you can be a harrowing experience. We are all so disposed to blame our bodies when clothes don’t fit, instead of just moving on to another item. That’s why I was surprised to find that this evening’s clothes-fest was not only remarkably sane (no crying, no self-recrimination, no shame), it was actually fun. I have some awesome clothes y’all, and the whole process made me excited at the prospect of a new school year and a new 180 days to try and not repeat an outfit. I looked at myself in some of those things I was so ashamed about long ago and thought, “damn, that looks awesome!” Here’s the kicker — I am fatter now than I was when I bought a lot of that stuff. Not a lot fatter, they still fit, but fatter nonetheless. Sane, happy clothes trying-on. Who knew such a thing existed?

There is one discouraging thing though. Now I have to go put all my re-found beautiful clothes away. Wonder how I can put that off?

But is there really more to love? August 1, 2009

I just got around to watching More to Love — yes, I realize it has been a few days since it aired, I’ve been busy, plus, I was not so sure I wanted to watch it. I haven’t been so thrilled with some of the snippets from the teasers. I don’t like the term “normal women” being used to describe fat women, as if thinner women aren’t normal. I despise the forced us vs. them mentality of fat and thin women, when the reality is that women exist in a whole continuum of sizes and shapes and body types, and the ad campaign’s size 4 vs. size 14 shtick played on that artificial division. There were lots of reasons I didn’t want to watch, but after hearing the comments of some friends and reading Lesley’s recap on Fatshionista, I sucked it up and watched.

I will confess I was a little afraid. I am a fat single woman, and for about 20 years of my life I suffered under crushing self-hatred, not just because of my size, but that was a factor. The thought that “no one will ever love me because I’m fat” is one with which I am well familiar. Although I did go to a couple of formal dances in high school, I didn’t go to my prom (I have been to 6 since then, it’s so much more fun as a chaperone), and of course I was sure it was because I was fat. Then again, if I were to catalog and post all the things I have blamed on my fat, the sheer volume would crash these here interwebz. Fat is such a handy scapegoat. I have actually sometimes wondered what thin girls irrationally blame their problems on. Come to think of it, they probably blame their bodies too, since American women are conditioned from birth to believe they aren’t thin/pretty/sexy/otherwise attractive enough. So I was a little nervous about watching because, despite the fact that I no longer suffer with self-hatred, and I have called bullshit in my own life on so many of the lies about being a fat woman, there is always the possibility that something will take me back to that time. When a friend asked me if I was going to watch, my response was “I’ll probably cry a lot”.

My fears were unfounded.

I’ve never watched dating “reality” shows, with the exception of some Bachelor/Bachelorette viewing parties hosted by friends, and I mostly attended those for the same reasons I go to playdates despite having no children — to hang out with people I enjoy and drink wine. Ok, so there’s no wine at playdates, more’s the pity. The point, though, is that I don’t watch dating shows. They are not my style. My DVR is filled with teen soaps like Gossip Girl and old episodes of Star Trek. I don’t do reality TV. This was my first foray, and so I have no idea of my observations about MtL are standard on this sort of show or not. Feel free to enlighten me.

I’ll start with what I liked. The dresses. Oh, the dresses. I want them, I want them all. I actually looked on Fox’s website to see if they had any info on the dresses. They don’t. The girls were all beautiful, and they were portrayed in a pretty positive light, particularly for TV.

I started with what I liked because it was shorter. Now for the stuff I didn’t like.

From the beginning I was struck by how silly all the women seemed to be. I understand that they may have just been edited to look that way, but I saw very little of substance. The way I see it, they all had the opportunity to meet 19 other potentially fabulous women. Obviously you don’t spill your guts to strangers, and yeah, yeah, let’s meet the guy too, but I seriously would have been putting together an email list and talking about where to buy clothes. For most fat women, connecting with other fat women is hard, and so I would hate to pass up the chance to have so many on one room. Once again, I know they could have been doing that too and it just wasn’t shown, but it mostly looked like they were talking about how desperate they were to be picked and swooning over “his eyes!” giggle giggle.

That brings me to another observation — the desperation. In so many of the interviews, the girls talked about how this was their only chance, how they just wanted to find love, how they couldn’t believe he was being nice to them, how great it was that he was willing to “look past” their appearance, etc, etc, ad nauseum. The whole ring thing blew my mind too — they all seemed to act as if it were an engagement ring or something. I know we all love sparkly jewelry, but it’s the same ring he gave to 19 other women, and I am pretty sure the show’s producers picked up the tab.

Look ladies, desperation is nobody’s friend, except for maybe the skeezy guys who are looking to take advantage of you. It’s fine, and normal, to want to find love, but in the meantime, have some self-respect. This guy is not the only one on the planet, this isn’t your “last chance”, and really, do you want to be with someone who just “looks past” your appearance? A good relationship is one in which a guy loves all of you, including your body, and dismissing appearance altogether is just as bad as dating someone just because of how they look.

Here’s another fact to remember: Yeah, dating sucks for fat girls, but dating sucks for everyone. For every fat girl crying about being alone, there is a thin girl crying about the same thing, and 3 medium sized girls. Attraction and love are about so much more than the way you look, and have a heck of a lot to do with luck, and being alone doesn’t mean there is something fundamentally wrong with you — maybe it means you should enjoy the perks of being alone.

Remember the skeezy guy I mentioned earlier? The one taking advantage of desperation? Well, as sweet-sparkly-eyed-cuddly-teddy-bear-y as he may be, I am greatly afeared that Mr. Luke is one of ’em. I actually liked the guy until he used the whole “you know, I have to cut five people tonight” tactic to get one of the girls to kiss him. After that I pretty much wanted to kick him in his neck. We’ll see how it goes, but I predict a lot more of those sort of tactics in the future, just like the guy in high school who told you he would dump you if you didn’t do whatever it was he wanted you to do that you knew you weren’t ready for. That guy wasn’t worth your time then, and he still isn’t.

I didn’t cry the way I feared I might. I yelled at the TV a few times though, and there were some things that made me sad, not for myself, but for the women on the show who seem so fragile. I want to have them all over and hug them and tell them that it will all be ok, and that the key to being happier is to love and accept themselves as they are, man or no man.

So the jury is still out on this one. I am going to keep watching, if for no other reason, to see if my predictions about Mr. Sparkly Eyes are true. I am also curious about some of the women — Bonnie, for instance, with the rockin’ hair and tattoo — I think we could be bffs. We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, if anyone wants to get me those dresses, I will love you forever.