One Fat Mother.

I love chips.  I love TV.  I'm a size fourteen when I should be a size ten.  I also have a tummy I sometimes have to cinch into my jeans by pulling on my belt a little harder than I'd like to, thanks to the eight and a half pound male tenant who moved out of there almost fourteen years ago.  According to designer Karl Lagerfeld's definition of the term, that would make me a Curvy Woman, were it not for one tiny thing:  I have never called anyone, be they large, medium or small, ugly in my life.  Yes, I have been known to shake my head when I see pretty young girls walking stony-faced down a runway, ribs poking out through dresses that hang on them like living room curtains, but I don't disparage them.  Far from it; I worry for them.  I worry that they are making themselves ill in order to fit someone Else's definition of the word 'Beautiful.'  I worry that they feel they have to live up to the standards of elderly fashion designers whose opinions should actually resonate with them at their age about as much as a fly fart in a hurricane.  I also worry that they hate themselves for going balls out and eating a cheeseburger.  Mainly, I worry about what will become of their self esteem when they are batted around like tennis balls by the sharply contrasting appraisals of people who have no idea what they're going through; it's just as hateful and ignorant for a person in the street or in a club to dismissively tell them to 'eat something, for fucks sake,' as it is for their bosses to guilt them into staying thin.

'What would you know about it?'  I hear some of you ask, and rightly so.  Being thirty nine years of age and having a kid in high school, one would think I had more important things to worry about than how my butt looked in a pair of jeans, but the fact is, I do still struggle with insecurity over my appearance.  I sometimes worry that the sight of me naked might send potential suitors screaming for the exit, which is categorically insane, because I'm only two sizes above what is considered 'normal.'  When you add this to the myriad of issues I already have with my self worth, it's a wonder I'm not posting this from within a rubber room.  Despite this, I'm happy to say intermittent, lack of self esteem, Lagerfeld's assertion that people did not want to see Curvy Women didn't make me hate myself. 

I did, indeed, scream obscenities at my TV the night Lagerfeld's wretched opinion aired on the news, but it wasn't at skinny models.  It wasn't even at Lagerfeld.  It was at myself.  The words of an octogenarian fashion designer caused me to drop what I was doing, go to my room, strip down to my undies, look at myself in the mirror and say:

'Shit; I'm hot!'

Whatever ruffles your pantaloons, I guess.

I'm a veracious reader.  If the sun was to burn out, and the world supply of electricity inevitably ran short, I'd still be happy as long as I had my books and a torch.  Hell, I'd sit outside and read by firelight if it came to that, but something that has often perplexed me about fiction is the types of male characters we get what I call 'Book Girl Crushes' on.  Three of the top five votes in a British pole conducted in 2009 on the most romantic male characters were surprisingly telling in terms of what women are willing to put up with from a man and still allow him to drape his breeches over the foot of their beds every night. 

5.  Rhett Butler from Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind.  As long as I live, I will never comprehend why even the most desperate southern belle would get her pantaloons in a twist over this man.  Sure he's charming, but so is a door to door salesman, and for the same reason: to get you all swoony so you'll throw your front door wide open, make of that analogy what you will, and give him all your money.  And call me picky, but I don't get hot and bothered at the thought of being raped every time my (metaphorical) man gets a visit from the green-eyed monster.  The only male character who comes off worse for me is Stanley from 'Streetcar named desire,' and that's only because he's so irredeemably evil.

4.  Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.  This is one of my favourite books of all time, and Heathcliff is definitely the character with whom my sympathies lie; for the first half of the story.  To endure years of abuse and torment at the hands of an impossibly cruel adoptive brother, and have your best friend and co-conspirator, the only person you've ever loved and had love you in return, taken away from you and returned years later a polished shell of her former self would be unbearable.  I get it.  But does that justify marrying your sister in law to make her your emotional punching bag, and forcing the girl that should have been your daughter to marry your half-wit nephew in order to keep her as a slave?  Love's a bitch, I get it, but did he have to turn into one?  

1.  Edward Rochester of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.  If there was such a thing as an illustrated phrase book, and you were to look up the definition of  Treat them mean, keep them keen,  this dude's picture would be above it.  Let's consider his rap sheet.  He has a 'ward' (ahem) for whom he provides everything but fatherly love and seems rather bitter towards; he stashes his poor mentally unwell first wife away upstairs like a caged bird that's embarrassingly lost all it's feathers; and generally makes everyone feel inferior compared to him, when it is clearly the other way around.  Into this mess arrives the plain and unpretentious Miss Eyre, who carries a truckload of emotional baggage herself but, unlike Rochester, chooses not to swing it around and whack people in the head with it.  He engages her in conversation, playfully baiting her, but soon realises she is more than a match for him, and is not the dumb country mouse she appears.  He starts to have feelings for her.  So what does he do?  Sits her in a room full of gorgeous society maidens and watches them play keeping's off with her self esteem. 

After much to-ing and fro-ing, PAGES and PAGES of it, he confesses his love for our Jane and proposes.  But wait, I hear you say, didn't he forget something?  That's right, poor old Mrs Bats in the top cupboard.  At first everyone, including Rochester, makes Jane feel like she's losing her mind whenever she tells them of the nocturnal visitations she's been having.  Then they blame it on a servant.  Jane only learns the truth when wifey number one nearly burns the Rochester joint down a second time (she saved his life the first time, just before the painful meeting with the society maidens; Cheers Ed, glad I rescued your arse before you were roasted like the Christmas goose you are).  There is a happy ending, depending on your perspective.  Finding her control freak former fiance is not dead, as she was lead to believe, but has been horribly disfigured, and in an uncharacteristic act of altruism decided he did not want her to be his nursemaid for life, Jane comes running back into his chicken-fried arms and they live happily ever after.  I suppose what women love about this guy is that he tosses his tyrannical ways after succumbing to the love of a good woman, and all she did was raise his, ahem, 'ward', put up with his crap and save his life on two separate occasions.      

This is 2012, not 1952; surely this ridiculously masochistic attraction we have for rich bad boys and charismatic alpha-males has to wane at some point.  I've dated a Mr Rochester.  He didn't have a first wife as far as I know, and wasn't horribly disfigured in a fire, but he burned his bridges with me, and incinerated my taste for manly misogynists, the day I discovered that I was, to quote a song by Alicia's Attic, 'Worth more than he put on my boots.'       

Diver or Dipper? Why we keep dating, even though it sucks.

So, you're single again and ready to enter the eel infested waters of the dating pool.  There are three ways to go about it.  The traditional method is what I like to call the 'Dive on in and pray' approach.  This is when you don the brand new outfit you spent this weeks rent money on and allow yourself to be dragged to the ultra-cool nightspot your best friend assures you is loaded with eligible men.  If you're like thousands of other single women over thirty, chances are your night will consist of ingesting lethal amounts of mojo juice, dancing with the confidence of a young Esther Williams in a water ballet, despite the fact that your ninety dollar shoes are filling up with blood, and patrolling the perimeter of the dance floor to search for passables (not possibles; there is a difference), before throwing your hands in the air and boarding a lifeboat with the first guy who gives you more than an appraising glance.  The most you're likely to get out of this experience is an evening of mediocre sex you won't even feel, thanks to the anaesthetising effects of tequila, and a hangover that renders you socially toxic to everyone but your equally ill best friend, to whom you are now not speaking.  


A perennial favourite is the blind date, or the 'Trying to find treasure in the Ganjes' approach, whereby you dive bomb to the bottom of a murky body of water and grope blindly for gold.  If you're anything like me, and you're reading this so you must be, what you'll find upon surfacing is a well-worn boot carrying a stench of failure that even industrial strength odour eaters won't banish, and a wicked case of the bends.  With trepidation, you have now arrived at the world of online dating, the water park of social interaction, standing at the gate in a bathing suit that would look better on your daughter and staring with wide eyed wonder at the attractions that await you.  You browse the electronic map, confident in the expertise of the management, who have thoughtfully divided the park into two sections for you to choose from, based on your mental age and stamina.  If you are one of those brave few willing to scale the towering ladders of the biggest slides in the park, operating under the adorably deluded belief that you can snag a lifeguard while wearing a pink polka dotted floaty tube and matching swim cap, you'll want to head on over to Lifestyle Lagoon, where the big kids play.  If kiddie pools are more your speed, slip on your flippers and toddle off to Tadpole Pond, a safe place to play for those of you who aren't comfortable in deeper waters.  Note: management requires swimmers in this part of the park to be accompanied by a responsible guardian, lest they should wander off and become lost - maps and signs are useless to someone who can't read and can only communicate in two syllable blocks.


It's been eleven years since I first waded back into dating and all I have to show for it so far is a set of swimmers muscles an Olympian would be proud of, and a case of hydrophobia that comes and goes.  This has lead me to wonder what it is that makes us keep plunging in, despite the fact that we'll probably sink like a stone.  For some it's the belief that there's someone out there just for them, reclining in a sun lounge by the pool, a mohito with two straws on a table beside him.  For others, it's the hope that someone will swim out and rescue them before they drown in depression and debt.  I don't think I fall into either category, but if a sweet, handsome, stable guy with a steady job and capacity for romance beyond cheap petrol station roses should be standing by, tandem jet ski at the ready, I'd rather be a diver than a toe dipper.