I have spent most of my life in a love/hate relationship with my body. The picture that I have on this blog, me at 17 in an orange bathing suit top and low slung jean shorts, is the only picture I could find with me in a pose WITHOUT my hands in front of my stomach. I thought it was huge.
If only I still had that body now....... Hmmmmm, if only what? Would my life have been different if my body mass had been smaller? Does a jiggly stomach make a person less worthy of love and affection? Would I be rich if I had breasts that didn't require steel in the under wire and a stomach flat enough to bounce a quarter on?
Sounds like the housewives of New Jersey doesn't it? Blahhhhh Those women I have no desire to be like. We need to ship them off to... well, I don't know to where but not here.
There is a place in my mind that believes that if I were thinner my problems would be smaller. As if problems and body size went hand in hand. I know it doesn't work that way, but still.....
Why do we all put so much stock in our weight? I realize health is a big issue; but it is so much more than that.
Society does it's part for sure. Watch any show, any commercial and any ad. Thin women sell cars, jewelery and perfume. Heavy women sell garbage bags and diarrhea medicine.
Calista Flockhart is too think but Audry Hepburn was perfect. I don't see the difference in their bodies. And what's more, who cares.
Jessica Simpson is a beautiful woman who happens to be curvy but she is labeled fat. What the hell are we doing?
I really don't give a rats ass that Kirsty Alley is fat again and still as vulgar as always. Can I get a show every time I loose and gain weight? If that's what it takes, show me the money. I am a pro, a champ at yo-yo weight and dieting.
Big men on the red carpet are described as classy and sexy while a woman weighing in at over 110 is "putting on weight" and "looking puffy and hefty". It makes me crazy.
I believe that Kelly Osbourne said it best. I'll paraphrase. “People were more upset with my weight then my drug abuse. They spit on me, called me names and hated me for the weight but not the drugs.”
And ladies and gentlemen, I must buy right into it at some level because I put the same pressure on myself.
I see men, big men, feeling all sexy and hot with their beer bellies hanging over their bathing trunks, all the while drooling over sexy women on the beach. hmmmmm yup, they want you dude.
I guarantee you these same men are complaining that their wives have "let themselves go".
It's the double standard my friends and I do it too. Men can be over weight but not me. The world puts that shit on all women, I only put it on myself. I personally believe women can and are beautiful regardless of size; just not me.
I came into this world at a whopping 5lbs. You would never know it now to look at me. It's like i hit the air and expanded. You know those wafer's you can eat with a glass of water to make you full. Yup, I puffed up like the Stay Puff Marshmallow man.
I wasn't always heavy. When I was in high school I had a nice body and didn't know it.
My mind said that if you aren't thin, which I wasn't, you must be fat; which I wasn't. I was curvy. For me there wasn't anything in between. Fat or thin, those were the options.
I couldn't understand why guys wanted to sleep with me? Apparently they liked my tunas. Yup, breasts were called tunas when I was in high school, among other things, of course.
Tunas, tits and tatas. What's with the T's??
It was during my marriage to Gary that my weight ballooned to numbers that I never thought I would see. The 200's.
Now I'm just lumpy.
I have always tried to live my life treating people the way I would like to be treated. I have been complimented on my personality and kindness to people all my life. I am very proud of that, but on a superficial level, I would love to be told that I was the most beautiful, sexy woman to ever live. Screw the personality... hehehehe not really.
I wonder if I could bribe someone to say that. I have always wanted to be called sexy. Alas, most people call me mama or mom now.
My yearbook actually has several comments written in there about what a great personality I have and not to ever change. You would think that I would have taken that as a compliment. Nope, I took it as you are a nice person with a dog ugly face and a blubber butt.
I tell you I am certifiable.
What is it that just the thought of having more flesh then someone else is enough to put us over the edge. We are ridiculed, stared at and mocked; all because of the amount of skin we have. If nothing else, we are all those things in our own minds if no one elses.
For me, my lack of confidence in my face has led me to live my life believing that I am less worthy of other women solely due to my weight. Ugly face, fat body equals not worthy.
That's bullshit but it still creeps into my mind.
If I see people from my school days, especially guys, my first thought is to turn and run the other way. Well, maybe not run; that would trigger an earthquake that would put the 1960 quake in Chile to shame.
I'm older and fatter than I was in school. Wait a minute, aren't the guys I went to school with older and heavier also? Did everyone from the class of 1974 stop aging but me? Did I miss the meeting where everyone got into a time machine.
Of course they didn't.
I actually saw two guys I graduated with over this past summer one of them being the man I was madly in love with in the seventh grade. I went out of my way for 20 minutes not to make eye contact; my God I might actually have to talk to them. My heart was pounding in my chest; they might notice that I had aged, gotten heavier, had wrinkles.
As it turned out, I did speak to them and they never laughed or asked me why I was so huge. It was a nice 20 minute exchange.
And come to think of it, why would they care if I did get fat? My mind is a strange place.
I amaze myself sometimes with my mindset.
Of course I had aged, so had they. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS. In all honesty it wasn't that I had aged, it was because I had gotten fat.
The pressure that I/we put on ourselves is nothing less than self destructive.
My mind tells me that it is ok for men to get heavier but not for women.
Take my husband for example. I got heavier, he got heavier. Although he would like to loose weight for health reasons, he doesn't feel that his weight defines him. I, on the other hand, feel it defines me. I am not
I don't love Matt any less due to his weight but I fear that he will love me less due to mine. I forget that we have a life together that was built on laughter, tears and enough ups and downs to entitle us an award for not giving up.
Where the hell is the logic there?
People change as they grow older. Marriages aren't just about what they were when the relationship started.
To grow old together means change; and for many of us, weight gain.
The breasts that I thought defined me as a teen are no longer the delightful melons that they once were. Gravity has taken over and they now resemble partially deflated balloons; put that together with my stomach that I have to tuck into my pants and there you have me.
Saggy, lumpy and droopy.
Shit, that sounds like three of the dwarfs.
Thus my life has consisted of one diet or another.
The scale. I will live and die by that damn thing.
When I succeed on a diet and can see my feet past my stomach I'm elated
Look I actually have toes.
Another good sign when I'm dieting is when my boobs stick out farther than my belly.
The thought of me sashaying across the bedroom in a teddy is frightening. Matt would have to look at my knees to see my tatas. How romantic.
One of my friends said to me years ago that she would like to loose enough weight so she could straddle a man and not get leg cramps. Hey, that works for me.
I am a pro at dieting. I have lost and gained more weight than the national debt if it were calculated in pounds. I can tell you the point value of any food, the fat content and the sodium levels of ever item in a grocery store.
What I can't seem to do is stop eating. I eat to sooth hurt feelings, celebrate an accomplishment or just because; well because I can.
Besides my absolute love for food, I am what you call an emotional eater. If I am upset, sad, lonely or any other emotion you can think of; I eat. When I am in one of my lows I can out eat ny sumo wrestler you put me up against. I kid you not.
Keep the sweets and give me the food; although I do love ice cream.
My love for sandwiches is historical. Growing up my mom would make our lunch for us, always wrapped in wax paper and always with butter on them. Every sandwich, regardless of what kind, had butter. I still make them that way; is there any other way?
Spiced ham and butter on home made white bread. God I'm in heaven. No wonder I am still fighting my weight.
I loose 80 pounds only to gain back 85. It seems like a never-ending battle for me.
As I have said repeatedly, I need to embrace who I am; fat or thin, old or young.
It is how I define myself that will show others how to perceive me.
I know that, I just need to embrace it and do it.
I am my own worst enemy.
If we don't love the skin we're in, we have to learn to at least TOLERATE it.
ReplyDeleteyou are a yo-yo mama
ReplyDeleteIt is very true,how we as women, run our lives, by what the number reads on the scale...I am sure you remember me in high school, always the quiet, short, chubby one. I remember everyone would say, including my family, "You have such a pretty face, if only you would lose weight" WTF was up with that? I remember my sister was the tall, skinny, blonde, could wear those low hip-huggers..remember those? Not an inch of fat on her body, and I was barely 5'...maybe 165 pounds, my mom would remind every year before school would start, that we have to sit down with the Sear's catalog, and order my clothes from the chubby girl section, and YES, back then they had the BALLS to call it "Chubby Girl's Clothes Section in this huge catalog. I would sit for hours, and look at the horrible selection of clothes they sold, maybe 2 pages full, and the worst part was starting my first year of Point HS, wearing these horrible outfits, and shoes, forget it...I don't know if your remember a shoe store, in Point Pleasant Bch, called Tomanio's, they sold wide width shoes, something your great-grandmother would wear..yup, so I would get maybe 2 dresses, chubby girl jeans (1 pair), and, maybe 2 pheasant shirts, (remember those), I was told by my mom, that because I was chubby, my clothes cost more, so I was limited to how many clothes I could get, but, "you have a pretty face"...I remember, the first day of HS, like it was yesterday, wearing my new clothes, my granny shoes, and just wanting to hide, and not be seen...remember the cute girl's with their skinny bodies, their hip-huggers with their shirts tucked in, (BY THE WAY MY DREAM, WAS TO BE ABLE TO TUCK SOMETHING, ANYTHING, INTO MY JEANS, WITH A NICE BELT), the only thing that got tucked in my jeans was FAT! LOL. As I got older, I think maybe our Junior year, the summer before I basically starved myself for 3 months, and got down to 125 pounds, so when I started my Junior year, I looked HOT, but did I have more friends, did I become popular, which is what I thought I would become, NO! So believe it or not, Nancy, I realized then, no matter how "fat" (AND I HATE THAT WORD, EVEN TIL TODAY), or how skinny you were, if you didn't fit in, you just didn't matter! So for many years, like you, I did the diet yo-yo thing, size 18, diet, and get down to size 10, this was just my life, my life revolved around #'s on the scale, 5 pounds up, and I hated the world, 5 pounds down, and life was great..HOW SAD...Now at 55 yrs old, due to stress, heartache, and physical pain, pain that I live with everyday, out of nowhere, the pounds dropped off so quickly, that I thought, maybe I was dying, I went from abt 185 pds to 119, in less than 6 months, wear a size 3/4, my doctor said, don't worry, it is all due to stress...do I feel like that sexy, pretty-faced person? NO!..because regardless of what size I am, inside I am the same person I was in high school. Our weight does not define the person we are,my grandfather told me when I was young, yes your sister is tall, yes your sister is thin, yes she is pretty, but you are pretty on the outside, and beautiful on the inside, and I will remember that 4 the rest of my life, as should you! By the way the popular, pretty, skinny, long-hair flowing girls in HS, have you seen their pics lately? Need I say more?
ReplyDelete