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!'