My Fantasy of Thin.

Kate Harding wrote an excellent post called The Fantasy of Being Thin. It got me thinking.

As I've said before I've been to the magical Land of Thin and far beyond it to the Scary Land of might have a fucking heart attack anytime now. A lot of it was very unpleasant.

And (don't mind me poking my head out of the closet for a moment) I have a history. I've intimated and I am not yet at a point where I am comfortable or ready to start talking openly about it in public but there you have it. In case you've wondered.

I wondered for a long time if I'd really let the whole Thin Fantasy go. Shockingly I did a long time ago.

However for me this wasn't really any great feat of body acceptance. It was mainly something I arrived at because I caught a good long look at myself and realized that I looked fucking weird. All those "when I'm thin" type thoughts pretty much vanished under the far larger thought of, "Holy SHIT I look like a fucking alien."

My fantasies about being thin were all just that. Thin. They could not hold up under reality.

Along this same train of thought I read an article in Heart And soul Magazine a magazine aimed at black women that finally turned me off to it.

I had a subscription for about a year and a half and learned to gloss over the Christian articles. And the frequently after school specialesque articles about drug addiction but, their list of reasons why thin is so great pissed me right the hell off.

Each of their reasons was so thin. Essentially if you lose weight they promise you'll get laid, wear nice clothes, have friends and not die. Okay. sure.

But what they don't say is that if you're a fat asshole you'll probably be a skinny asshole and therefore your popularity will probably suffer.

They actually put in that stupid fucking Oprah quote about how "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" or whatever it was. Are you fucking kidding me?

Are you SHITTING me?

Do these people seriously think that shedding those magical pounds will suddenly turn you into the black belle of the ball? Do black women not have enough mother fucking problems you have to introduce this kind of blatant asshattery?

For fuck sake.

So I wrote an angry letter and will not be reading that magazine ever again.

Also I have to say I've not slept in awhile and my temper is really short. So that contributed but it is still bullshit.

And while I'm talking about things I think are janky can we discuss some things? Me to you.

Please put an end to cullottes. Please. We can all work together to make them just go away.

Also, can we finally just agree to disagree about ruching on boots? Ok.

In other news. Christina Aguilara is SO fucking cute all pregnant. So cute. Cute cute cute.

And, Mac lipglass in the color Bare Fetish is the bomb fucking diggity.

I'm wearing a Torrid sweater material cami that is seriously made of fail. I got it a few clearance sales ago and haven't worn it. Why is one of my boobs almost falling out? I think 50% of the problem is that the straps are not adjustable and are too long. Big boobs doesn't equal saggy boobs.

I'm really still very tired.

Also the tights I have on are doing something weird and slightly pinchy in the crotchal region and I don't approve. it it wasn't so cold I'd just take them off.

Also the skin on my face is still really unhappy and I think the Cover Girl powder I'm wearing is making me break out. I'm mysteriously itchy.

But I do actually look pretty goddamn cute.

I'm wearing a long black Lip Service skirt, the cami of doom and my long black sweater coat, burgundy Docs.

Make up that's supposed to be gold and black but this shade of gold comes way close to being a duplicate of Mac pro pigment chartruese. I'm a little unhappy about that since I wore that and another shade of green yesterday.

And can I just say to the DJ's out there. You do some cool stuff but seriously not everything needs to be fucking remixed. Some things remixing just ruins.

Ugh I think I'm done. My "writing" is not going well at all and I'm depressed about that. For comfort I ate some very tasty sushi earlier and have two organic red pears for later and a salad.

It's not helping entirely I am meh. Discouraged.

So yeah.

Also pictures coming soon. I had to return another fucking broken camera but have a nice one on the way.

That is all.

Homo Out.

Tags: annoyed fat girl, culture, body image, random

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Weight, loss, genetics and other things.

I was reading TechnoDyke's journal this morning and she posted a link to an NY times article about obesity and genetics.

I think it's an excellent article and everyone should read it. Fat or not.

What it brought to mind aside from a twittering of OH SCIENCY GOODNESS type feelings are the far more complicated feelings I have about my weight.

First off, my perspective on the issue is I think an odd one. I have been under and overweight and everything in between. I also have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to shuck myself of the way it's put out there that one is "supposed" to think about weight.

I want to work from the past forwards here. I might start rambling I don't know. You have been warned.

Since first hearing about genetics and how they think it all works (let's face it, it's still a large mystery) I remember being very young and feeling not quite bad but close to it because I knew from the get go I would not be built like the women in my family who I had access to. My Mother, Grandmother and Great Grandmother all have body types far different from mine.

I am short, broad shouldered, short legged, short torso'd, big tits.

My Mom and Grandma are both tall and spent a majority of their lives being very thin, very very thin and after age 40 somewhat less thin.

My Great Grandmother (R.I.P Nana I miss you) was about average/tall height and prior to getting old very curvy. Classic hourglass.

Until I was about 12-15 I had no idea that I was built like all of my Great Grandmother's Aunts and cousins. It wasn't until I saw a photograph of a Great Aun taken sometime in the late 60's early 70's that I understood this. I understood it immediately and viscerally because I thought on first glance that it was a picture of me taken from the side. She had on a short black dress, no shoes and her hair was big and wild. The photo had been taken after some party or another.

I finally got it after years of feeling a little out of place. I saw the woman I might grow up to be physically and for awhile, I was damn excited.

In those days though admittedly sometimes I longed for the flat bellied lithe look of my peers, I actually kind of enjoyed my body. I was still in that space where my body was this fantastic thing that I could use to dance and walk and (surprise surprise..at least to me) look and feel desirable.

Though I spent far too much time exeercising, trying to maintain what I felt was my "best body" to steal a phrase from womens magazines I wasn't really happy still. I did learn some things though.

Thousands of crunches, weight lifting etc still will not make me a hard body.

This body was made for comfort and looking like the plush hotness. Muscles and my body don't get on well.

Cellulite happens.

I took these things and for a few years even after high school when I was lost and scared and felt the most like the weird girl out, I still felt okay with my body and as I found out my fatness.

I was not meant to be a thin woman. After years of abusing my metabolism, abusing my joints with heavy impact exercise, eating crap ass food because it had less calories than whatever else I wanted, all that sacrifice and insanity and goddamn it my body still did what it wanted to.

Can you imagine? I spent the better part of a decade of my teen/post teen/earky 20's in this vicious useless cycle. What for?

Granted for short periods I found that abstract place where I thought my body was perfection dipped in milk chocolate. Looking back I was wrong.

Wrong because I honestly look strange (in a not unique or interesting way just bad strange) when I'm thinner than say a size 10-12. I was wrong because my body was suffering. I was starving and mean and hateful because I was fucking hungry. I was miserable and not cute. Which defeated the whole shebang.

I still believed earnestly that thin=good=happy.

No my equation was way off. thin=kinda shitty=fucking depressed.

That was not good. I woke up from that and spent a few years in a blissful state I like to call I just don't give a fuck. And you know what? I didn't. I felt god, I looked good, I was finally at body/self image nirvana it was fantastic.

That brings me up to now.

Where am I now?

I am not thrilled with my body. Aging I accept, feeling feeble I do not. After a series of falls, mishaps etc I have managed to fuck up my back enough that I have to be very careful with exercise so I don't hurt myself. I have joints that are to put it sweetly fucking crappy and I have to be careful.

Sometimes a normal amount of activity leaves me aching and unable to sleep.

Thus I have become less active.

Thus I feel less healthy and all round icky.

Is there light in the tunnel?

Yes there is. I have rediscovered a love of dancing and have a goal to have learned enough belly dance to go to Tribal Fest in two-three years. I am walking about 1.5-2 miles a day. And I have figured out my body isn't going to change that much so I should enjoy what I've got.

And what have I got?

I have a fantastic, (no seriously) FAN_FUCKING-TASTIC rack. I have phenomenal beautiful boobies. I love them.

I have nice soft skin. I have firm an shapely calves, I have a jiggly slightly protuberant belly. I am learning, no relearning how to enjoy this one body I get. It's hard and I damn sure don't do well at it every day but I'm working on it.

To that end I have decided that this summer I am doing two things that I haven't done in more than five years. I am going to go try on clothing until I find a dress that fits and a pair of pants. I am also considering buying a bathing suit even though I don't swim much.

If you've never had body issues it doesn't sound like a big deal but a lot of you know where I am coming from.

That said, now I am going to eat some fucking chocolate and have a cup of very fine coffee because I can.

Homo Out.

Tags: body image, fat, obesity, self love, body love, big girl love, fatness, NYtimes

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Of Blurbs and Bastards...

I know I said I was done I lied.

I got the book "I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight " as a birthday gift and started reading it last night.

First off I love Margaret Cho like you people just don't understand. She is smart, hilarious, and superbly talented and I think she's hot. I have since the first time I saw her hollering on HBO I think it was and I laughed so hard I almost wet myself.

Anyway.

I was pissed about this enough to actually write to her.

This book is really good. Very personal. And the blurbs ar fucking stupid. One of them says "murderously funny". Which in a way is true. Yes Ms. Cho is fabulously scathingly hilarious. BUt this book isn't about that. I don't want to give too much away but she talks a lot about activism and racism homophobia etc. This is NOT motherfucking comedy.

I actually came about ( ) close to yelling that on the bus on the way home last night. I was su upset I might actually just take the dust jacket off because it's fucking offensive.

I have to say that this feels to me like yet another pat on the head, isn't she adorable, oh how funny bullshit thing. I have this mental image of these "reviwers" sort of chortling away while reading about racism, nodding because they KNOW what she's saying is true but, "Oh well it's just some Asian chick ranting, isn't that funny". See what I'm getting at here?

I don't really know how else to express how I feel about this.

It's the kind of thing I understand.

Maybe (yes I'm willing to consider this) I'm overreacting because of sme of the condescension I've gotten from people. That pursed lip, wobbly head nod "Oh how nice that you do that" type. Their tone clearly indicates rather than "how nice" "Oh you're black and you write" usually followed up by the ienvitable question about whether I'm writing raps or "slam" poetry.

Shut the fuck up.

It makes me angry when people show their cultural biases without so much as a bat of an eyelash.

Along the same lines here are things I NEVER want to hear again:

"You didn't sound black on the phone."
"WHy do you talk so white?"
"I didn't know black people liked (insert thing here)"
"You are really well spoken." (With the unspoken caveat, "for a black")

Anything near to those themes and you can shut the FUCK up and fuck the FUCK off. I've been hearing it my whole fucking life and I'm 30 years old and fucking over it. Do NOT voice your bigoted opinions to me. Do NOT put your narrow views in my personal space. Do NOT fucking act like it's okay because, "well not you, I mean them." I AM them motherfucking and don't think I don't want to stab you in your motherfucking eye.

If honestly deep down inside you have any trouble believing that a black person can be who I am, I don't care to know you. Black, white whatever. Keep it to yourself. I don't care who you think I should be so as not to make your world view seem fucked up. I don't care.

That said, if you want to speak to me about my experience in life as a bi sexual black woman. If you want to know the road I've been walking ask. We can talk about that all day.

Okay, now I'm actually done. I'm going to make some genmaicha and calm the fuck down.

Homo Out.

PS, I saw the sun and had a conversation with a squirrel.

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