OW my brains.

I sort of have the dumb today and can't really brain in the fashion I'm accustomed to so stay with me in case I start to wander.

So far this Monday (it's totally Tuesday now) I have decided to no longer go to a favored online community because, I see a little too much fat hate and I just don't have the energy to argue with people I think are fucking stupid.

I have also spilled tea, discovered I did not actually bring the correct vitamins etc with me nor did I remember to put my pedometer on my pocket.

From yet another fancy LJ community I got a link to get myself a free pedometer because I could not find the fancy one I had. I got it in this silly Dole sponsered kit thing with a pamphlet and lots of literature extolling me to eat more of their products. However the pedometer has led me to some interesting things.

I discovered that even on a "lazy" day I typically walk about 3.5 miles all together. That is actually a bit more than I thought honestly. I thought I'd top out around maybe 1-1.5 miles and was pleasantly surprised. On a busy day I tend closer to about 5 miles all together.

Not bad for a fat girl with a bad back and shitty knees.

I am still in the process of figuring what my body thinks is too much. For me it's a very fine line as to what will leave me limping and unable to sleep because I'm in pain and what leaves me feeling good.

I really don't want to ever again have the experience of exercising myself to the point of constant pain whether or not I "look" good. Never again.

I found this article via Kate Harding and ye gods. This is the second British lady I've seen do this, the other was a TV show I watched on youtube but good lord. That poor woman.

Just goes to show you, thin doesn't mean good at all. Seriously.

As I said i can't really brain today so I want to share this pair of shoes that I want really -really- bad right now These. OMFG. Holy HELL those are frigging hot.

Where was I?

Everyone go read Heidi's guest post at Shapely Prose. I applaud her for sharing her story. I also really appreciate that someone has a platform to say what a lot of people in the Fat World just do not want to hear.

I hate to say that last bit but it does strike me that all too often those who are in fact debilitated by their fat are shushed or silenced and shamed into not speaking out in their own defense. Or if not defense then maybe on their own behalf because all too often any mention that isn't "positive" gets that look, the "that's not fat.size positive" etc. I worry about that. I worry because isn't that the sort of moralizing and um..(sorry still a little brain dead here) proselytizing for lack of a better term that a lot of people want to get away from?

I really wonder sometimes how many people there are like Heidi but who don't have somewhere like Shapely Prose to speak. Or who don't have connections to the "name" blogs or blogging communities. Where are you? What do you need to say? Who are you? Are you all right?

I want to know.

I have no idea who actually reads this anymore so feel free to remain anonymous if you want to.

What else?

I am as I have always been I think more interested in the stories people tend to not tell. The things they don't say for whatever reason. Especially when it the less popular view of something. I don't know why I've always had that soft spot but it's there.

OH I wanted to tell you all about one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen up close bar none. There was a lady who used to go into the library my Mom worked at for years who is, really astonishingly beautiful. Beautiful in the way that people stare gawping because she is gorgeous. And she is, yes fat.

I saw her dressed up fancy in business suits, and kicking it casual in sweats and no make up and she is just stunning. I met her when I was 18 and was so instantly smitten with her it's just not funny. Even now I get very shy and nervous around people I think are insanely beautiful and I was so cowed by her I'd sort of skulk around so I could peek at her through the shelves at the library.

It too me probably a good six months of covert staring to finally work up the nerve to talk to her. I waited for her to leave the library, marched up and sort of blurted (it was very teen movie-ish) something like "you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and um, yer pretty by" at which point I turned to try and scuttle off, blushing like a school boy.

She stopped me and said thank you, and she blushed which killed me. We had a really nice conversation where I made very clear I wasn't hitting on her just that I thought she was beautiful and should hear it. Often. The one thing that stands out in my memory about her was the gracious way she handled the effusive compliments. That was a huge lesson for me. Prior to that compliments I viewed as probably sketchy and not generally warranted when directed towards me.

From her I learned to take them with a smile.

I ran into her a few years after that and met her equally gorgeous husband and she gave me a hug and told me how I'd grown up to be gorgeous.

While I'm on the subject of beauty. The very first person to ever make me feel truly like a thing of beauty was a drag queen I met randomly during pride week when I was 19.

At that age I was single and as they say fancy free and had bought this killer slightly absurd outfit for Pride. I had these fantastic black jean cut pants that I wore to goddamn death because they looked amazingly hot on me, paired with a cami style tank top in black lace with an actual brown skin color lining (that is so hard to find you'd think nobody ever heard that brown can be a skin color too but that's a whole other entry) with wait for it.....huge maribou trim all around the sweetheart neckline that then trailed down the half open back. And it had a very subtle bit of shiny sequin ish things to it. I paired this with these fantastic platform heels I had, and huge almost afro like hair. The hair was only accomplished by spending about a week before hand in very tight and uncomfortable corn rows.

I will suffer for fashion.

I was also super into glitter on my face. Don't ask.

So all decked out I wandered up to Capital Hill to shop and mingle. I was stopped dead on the sidewalk, twirled and groped by a probably 7 foot tall drag queen who pronounced me the most beautiful actual girl in the vicinity and gifted me with sparkly sunglasses and a fairy wand thing.

It was silly and I was still essentially a baby but, I really felt wonderful and beautiful and probably for the first time like I'd done the whole femme thing right.

The following summer was also the Summer of the Magenta Sequined Mini Skirt.

No I'm serious. You're very own bat cave dwelling supa Goth wore the hell out of a sequined bright magenta mini skirt. I found it crammed in a purse at Good Will (a trick I've pulled myself to save something to get later on). I imagine it was probably a home made part of a drill team or dance team costume. Short A line with this cute keyhole ribbon closure on the front. It was pretty atrocious. Tacky and bright and I wore that shit frequently. Usually paired with a black tank top and my trusty black platform walkin sandals.

There are times my friends, when I make absurd fashion choices mainly because they make me happy and I could really give a fart what any one else thinks.

If I like it, I will probably wear it. Although I am really thankful Uniballer talked me out of this fugly fucking dress I was obsessed with. Does anyone really need a dress with neon colored candy print?

Not really.

Ok enough yammering.

I'm going to look for winter boots. I will report tomorrow. Also, if I find the right pair of boots I may give this whole skinny jeans thing a try. If I can find a pair that will accommodate my ham. I may jam out with my ham out but I refuse to have my ham be uncomfortable.

Homo Out.

Tags: fat, affirmations, body, WTF, hotness

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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

Stumble It!

What don't I feel fabulous?

The sun is shining and there's enough of a little breeze to feel really nice.

I also am wearing some hot ass pink and purple eyeshadow that looks damn good.

I'm in a mostly comfortable outfit. Jeans, double row pyramid stud belt, beater style tank top with safety pins along the top, hoody.

My hair is clean and soft.

I also just started some tasty French Press coffee.

And I am very consciously trying to feel good. Without reserve or cranky.

Granted, it's been hard going today for some reason but I'm working on it. I think most of my persistently dark mood is (as usual) financial worry. I also kind of hate that I've become that grown up.

I remember years ago when I got a job that paid 8$ an hour I thought that was serious big pimpin. Ahh to be a little irresponsible and still pay the bills. I mourn thee oh my misspent youth.

However I am trying, (no seriously) to look up.

Part of the problem is reigning in my rampant ambitions. There are SO many things I want to start doing. Most of them revolve around crafting and DIY clothing. However it will take time and patience. The latter isn't something I posses in overlarge amounts.

What do I want to do?

I want to make strange clothes. Pin up clothes, fairy princess clothes. I want to make myself purses.

I want to make fairy wings.

I want to make myself corsets.

Huge voluminous taffeta fluffy skirts that I will wear with purple chucks and a Tshirt that says, "Go Screw" or something.

What I'm doing here is making a tangible promise to myself. Call it visualizing or whatever you like. All I know is that if I keep these things right in my top brain, right where my heart can tug on them and mold them I won't just give up.

Giving up is very tempting. It's hard not to just say, "Fuck it I'm poor and don't get to have hobbies" but I'm trying.

I do have one project I can start. I can fix up my poor broken Goddess bag to use for summertime. Hrm..note to self scavenge closet for good straps.

That's all I think.

Homo Out.

Stumble It!