My jeans zipper now closes on me like the doors of a Japanese commuter train in rush hour. The holidays have taken their toll.
During the holiday eating season, I reworked the definition of ”hungry” from ”feeling hunger or appetite” to ”having the ability to swallow food without becoming physically ill.” And like a baking yeast bread, my stomach rose to the occasion.
I foraged through the kitchen for numerous reasons, none related to hunger. Shortbread and sugar cookies would gently whisper, ”Come hither and eat me”-and I obeyed. The dimmer voice of guilt demanded I visualize my future force-fed body. All I could picture was an extra love handle here or there.
But last week, when the scale rang up the holiday totals, I pictured myself as a fat lady in the circus.
Don`t forget the socks
Hoping a rusty spring had gone haywire in there, I removed my earrings, clipped my nails and stepped on the scale again.
But I no longer can get around the bulging truth: I`m fat.
”But you look fine!” friends insist. ”But I feel fat,” I groan, which is far worse. Feeling fat is a cerebral thing. It presses under your skin in a way no amount of exercise can pump out. It is a constant mantra of reminders. I am brushing my teeth and I am fat. I am playing records and I am fat. I am walking the dog and I am fat.
My boss asks if I finished my year-end reports. ”Yes. I finished them while I was fat,” I grunt.
My mother calls and asks how I`m doing. ”I`m fat,” I reply.
My friend Eddie Fennelly stops by for a Sunday lunch. ”I`m fat,” I announce.
”So?”
”I have 15 pounds to lose. It spells out ice cubes and colored water for no less than seven years.”
”Really? Interesting. If I skip a few meals, waammmpaa! It`s off. Guys lose weight fast, ya know. Do you have any cookies left-the ones with the chocolate globs in the middle?”
Fat follows
I contemplate suicide but envision the wake.
”How did she look?” Eddie`s mother would later ask.
”Fat.”
I seek refuge in my fat wardrobe-large tops and stretchy sweatpants. With this armor, I conceal my love handles gone wrong and even feel less fat. Except when I sit next to a thin-legged friend, four thighs in a row, matchsticks next to fireplace logs. Like a puppet, I perch as if my knees were being pulled up by strings, tiptoes dangling, barely touching the floor.
My social life is dealt a death blow while I hide from significant others, waiting to thin out. For pleasure, I pore over back issues of Bon Appetit.
”The full-figured girl is back in,” one magazine states consolingly.
”Let your figure be just what it wants to be. The mold has been cast.”
But what if it wants to be a blimp, I wonder.
”Not all babies are plucked from cabbage patches,” the article continues. ”Some grew in sugar cane fields.”
It`s all so confusing
For a member of the ”Thin Is In” generation, this smacks of mixed messages: I was born with a barbell in one hand and a Big Mac in the other. And while my bonding process was carried out with blueberry buckle baby food, I was lullabyed to sleep with ”Ninety Days to a Beautiful Bottom.” Thus, in later life I constantly find my body hovering between clothes sizes. Should I diet and squirm into a smaller size, or expand to better fill the larger one? Wily clothes designers have solved this dilemma by adjusting the sizes. Today`s size 7 is yesterday`s size 9. So I can gain weight and still slide into the smaller size, I realize with delight. But will the clothes in my closet follow suit?
For a moment I continue to sit on the fence: on the left, a field full of Richard Simmons clones; and on the right, a pasture of Pillsbury Doughboys. I could starve myself or let Mother Nature take her course. I am petrified that if I give Mother Nature the go-ahead, I`ll inflate incontrollably, like a Miracle-Gro dinosaur sponge that expands in water.
Finally, I swallow the truth and chase it down with one last glass of chocolate milk. Thin will always be in. –
