I want to be one of those girls who is cold all the time. You know who I am talking about. The slender girls who are always saying things like, “It’s freezing in here.” And then they slip on a slouchy sweater. The kind of sweater that hangs elegantly off their thin shoulders and their sleeves hang well past their wrists. Their sweaters seem to swallow them in comfort, where my sweaters just seem to merely fit.
I want to be able to sit in a chair like skinny girls sit. I have always envied the effortless way they fold themselves up in a chair, drawing their knees into their chest and tucking their heels on the bottom of the seat of their chair. There is something innocent and interesting about sitting in this coy fashion. When I attempt to do this I look a little bit like Chris Farley pulling in for a cannonball.
I would like to shop in a store that does not have slogans such as, “Real Woman,” “Curvy,” or “Fierce and Fantastic” anywhere on the walls. Not that I don’t appreciate what these stores are trying to do. But everything feels a little qualified. I want to be “fresh” and “fun” like the other stores get to be. Plus sizes clothing stores have come miles from what they use to be but those slogans always make me feel two dimensional. Maybe they are just trying to reach a demographic. Maybe this is all a lot to ask of a clothing store.
In general, I just want to fit. There is nothing worse than the feeling you have when someone is offering you a seat you know you won’t fit in. Whether it’s the backseat of a car or the “come on, we’ve got room for you on this couch,” you are stuck doing the awful calculation of the space you are being offered and the surface area of your backside in the seated position. And the math is never on your side.
As a mother I have to do this new equation on the parent-child rides, i.e. the kiddy roller coaster at the zoo, the train at the mall. I just want to be able to ride with my child without the fear she might be smothered in my underside arm fluff.
I want to no longer hide. I don’t want to put a pillow on my lap when I take a couch picture. I don’t want to put people in front of me in a group shot. I don’t want to keep tugging at my clothes or tucking in the “extra bits”.
I want to be comfortable and confident. And I want to like what I see in the mirror.
Then I think of all the times I have seen pictures of myself and at the time I hated them only to look back on them several years later and comment, “Wow, I was so thin back then.”
I also think of my time working with the personal shopper at Neiman Marcus. Many of these affluent women were very fit and for many of them it came at great cost. There is lots of ways money can buy thin, either with plastic surgery, personal trainers or weight loss doctors. And there is no judgment here. With the resources I might have done the same. These women had put great money and effort into feeling “confident and comfortable.”
I would see them look at themselves in the mirror. They would still push in that little bulge of their lower tummy. They would still tug and pull and tuck the “extra.” They would still talk about how they have five more pounds to lose.
I guess what I am saying is that weight loss may not be the key to liking what I see in the mirror, or feeling comfortable in my own skin. That problem lies under the extra bits, and I don’t know how to fix it.
Sorry but I am not a girl with answers this week. I am just going to ask the Lord to fix this problem in me. To help me see what he wants me to see in the mirror. And maybe, when I lose a few scores of pounds, I can think about this whilst delicately folded in chair wrapped in a slouchy sweater.
Taffy the Great 