As this wedding approaches, I have been more or less obsessed with my appearance. I haven’t seen these aunts and uncles and cousins in nearly five years; many of them have moved from childhood to adulthood, or adulthood to middle-age during that period of time; there are connections to renew, memories to reminisce over, and in general warm familiar love to spread. So I am of course focused entirely on my waistline.
An interesting (read: depressing) thought hit me the other day, as I considered changing my wedding-day outfit for the 3,089th time: I don’t think I will ever think of myself as anything other than fat. At the moment, I am a size 6 on a good day and a size 8 on a bad day (I am moderately tall); by any reasonable, objective standard, I’m in shape, or at least not overweight. This is not even new to me — I’ve been around a size 8 since last fall, and though about ten more pounds have come off since then, they all seem to have come off of my ass and my breasts (which is not where I wanted those pounds to disappear from, I might add). So by now, you’d think I’d have at least gotten around to the idea that I might have a body that I don’t need to be ashamed of.
Yeah, no. Fat is the adjective I have always associated with myself, and fat I will be until the day I die, even if I wind up with size 2 jeans over my (now officially concave) butt.
Is this a woman thing? Is it a low-self-esteem thing? Or do we just fix ourselves with certain traits at a certain age, and we remain with those words stamped on our souls no matter how inaccurate they become?
Very annoying. And this does nothing to make me feel better about my clothing dilemma.
(I apologize for my odd cadence and overabundant use of semi-colons. I have been reading Jane Austen.)
That’s a yes, to both. It is a woman thing (I know VERY few, if any, women who do not obsess about their weight plus a multitude of other physical “defects”), and it is also a self esteem thing. However. I think that it’s a “normal” self esteem issue, not one that will send us to a bathroom sobbing for days on end, or whatever.
I’ve been the same way this summer, too. Wanting to look great, and thin. I’ve put on more weight than I would like, about a size 8 but pretty short – I’ve always been a little more athletically built than not (read: thicker).
The good news for me was: most of the people at the wedding had also gained some weight, so I still looked pretty damn good.
Oh, excellent on other people gaining weight. I’m praying for the same thing.
Yes, I am a petty, petty bitch, but at least I’m pretty much aware of that fact.