Last Splash

Wednesday, 01 March 2006

Self-confidance is a crazy beast. I've been feeling unattractive lately, and I can't really point out why...I haven't gained weight, but I'm not losing any either. And when I try to 'diet' the stress of dieting gets to me, and then I eat an asiago cheese bagel for breakfast and it snowballs from there. I've learned something very frustrating about shopping for wedding dresses...although 62% of women in the US are a size 14 or larger, most "full-service" bridal salons only carry sample dresses in sizes 8-14. So, if I want to see how a dress might fit on me, I have to endure fake sympathy from a size 6 bridal consultant as she brings me size 12 and 14 dresses to try on, most of which don't zip, some of which I can't even get over my lucious birthing hips, and then I have to step outside the comfort of the fitting room into the mirror room, where 3 or 4 people smaller than me watch as my mom and I look at the dress in the mirror, with her pulling it closed in the back so we can get a reasonable sense of what it will look like "in the right size" as the consultant so tactfully puts it. And then I'm expected to order a dress that I haven't even tried on for $800, for the most important day of my life.

On the outside, I'm probably seen as a very self-confidant person. I walk with my head up, take long strides, make eye contact if I see someone looking directly at me, don't fidget with my hair or self-conciously pull at my clothing. When I am in said bridal dressing room, I make jokes about my size, I make my mom laugh when I say things like "let's see how much of me we're gonna fit into this one". But after a day of this I do break down. I cry in the car, feeling frustrated and like I shouldn't even attempt this until I lose 20 pounds.

The most annoying part of being overweight comes from other people. People who are already a great, healthy, beautiful size and complain about all these "fat areas" they have that no one else can see. Men who are my height and weight 180 and complain that they're too heavy. Skinny girls who say "I know how you feel...trust me, it sucks being this thin...I would kill to have boobs like yours." I think that one hurts the worst, because until my freshman year in college I was one of them. I was 5'8" by eighth grade and weighed 115 from then pretty much until my senior year of high school. My nickname was "flatty". Boys seemed to like girls with bodies back then (when did that change?). I broke up with every boyfriend I had in high school because we progressed to the "second base" stage and I was embarrassed for him to touch my non-existent breasts. However, I know these girls are lying because I never wanted to be one of the fat chicks: I wanted to be one of the girls who had skinny waists with a little bit of a booty and some C-cup boobs. I didn't want to be the amazon girl that was already wearing a size 16 and had DD's. Nobody wanted to be that girl. And now I am.

And as hard as it is to admit that you don't have to be fat to be disgusted by your body, that is the way I feel sometimes. I hate hearing people who look good to me complain about their weight, their stomach, their flabby arms, whatever. I feel in a way like I've earned my right to complain. I know what it's like to be a girl that guys check out, I know how it feels to get whistled at and have doors held by strangers and see two guys looking at you while talking to each other across the room, and it hurts to know I am not that girl anymore. I am the observer now...the one watching the perky blond get the door held for her, and watching the same guy walk past me without acknowledging that I exist. (I am the girl who is beautiful in the face, but...)I watch men come into my store to shop for their wives and know that if they're a fairly young, attractive man, 90% of the time when I ask what size they need they are going to say "xs" or "4". I hated browsing the match or yahoo personal ads years ago and noticing that maybe 1 in 10 men used the words "slightly overweight" or "a little extra" when they chose what kind of body type they were looking for. (And "curvy" doesn't count when the other options you picked were slim, slender, thin, athletic, etc...you're just looking for a skinny girl with big boobs.)

None of these things are really important to me anymore, because I know I've found the man that loves everything about me, but it hurts just the same.