Do I Look Fat In This?

The phrase ‘Do I Look Fat in This?’ was never originally spoken by a woman. It came from an ad campaign specifically targeting women, to get them to go out and buy a girdle. Which is an archaic fashion torture device that women used to lace and strap and cinch themselves into every single day. It was the original form of birth control.

Thank god, we’ve come past that now. Now that we can go Spanx ourselves.

Yes, people often want to make lifestyle changes because of health issues.

But a blatant corporate money grab by Weight Watchers, under the guise of a “free membership” for little girls, is outrageous.

Oprah spent 40 million dollars to lose 15 pounds. She lost 15 pounds on the Weight Watchers and she got so excited she bought shares in the company and now she owns the joint. In Weight Watchers, you pay them, so you can lose weight. You pay Oprah Winfrey.

There is also Jenny Craig. If you pay her money, Jenny Craig will cook your meals and mail them to your house in envelopes and then call you on the phone and tell you when to eat your envelope. Jenny Craig is not a real person. It is the name of a company called Jenny Craig, a ploy to trick you into thinking that you have a friend. A friend to whom you pay money to be your friend.

There is a diet plan called the 21 Day Fix, where you join up and pay a lot of money and then this lady sends you a bunch of plastic containers. You can buy them from the dollar store but she sends them to you at quite the cost and then tells you what food to fill each container with, and then you put them in the fridge. When you want to eat something you take one out and eat from it.

I filled up all my containers with Cheezies. Then I put them all in the fridge. Then I took them all out and ate all the Cheezies.

There is the Paleo Diet, which says that the best way to eat is how our ancestors ate: meat and plants. My ancestors were Irish so all they had to eat were potatoes.

There is definitely no potato diet.

The fashion and diet industries spend billions of dollars, not even annually, but quarterly, convincing us to compare our bodies to fruit.

We are pear shaped. Or apple shaped. Some of us are inverted triangle shaped. Some of us are rectangular. So that’s geometric. And they try to make it seem like a compliment when they tell us we are shaped like an hourglass.

I’m exhausted from my weight loss ploys of either buying things one size smaller than I need so I can wear it once I lose some weight, or buying a size larger so I will look like I just lost some weight. Plus, it’s expensive. I’m tired of dressing strategically, dressing to hide my physical flaws, dressing to accentuate my positives, which apparently in my case are my boobs and hips, and dressing to disguise my negatives, which are in my case, apparently, all the things that hold my boobs and hips together. Especially, my belly.

My innocent Buddha belly.

Our sacred belly is what gives birth to the universe. If not for her there would be no us. Every single one of us on this planet came from her and yet we are told and sold and brainwashed into believing we must hide her, disguise her, suck it in, tone it up, muffin top.

She is us and we are her.

A muffin is a food. Not a body part. When you go to the doctor with a pain in your stomach she does not say: Let me palpate your muffin. You have an ulcer in your muffin. You do not get diagnosed with a muffin ache.

O, Buddha belly.

Also, upper arms. A lethal weakness. Every costume I’ve worn over the last ten years I have been adamant that there must always be sleeves. I paid almost 50 dollars for a thing called a ‘Sleevey Wonder’ which you wear underneath sleeveless dresses so that the sleeveless dresses have sleeves.

Really, then maybe we should all look like the Venus de Milo.

You know.

No arms at all.

Orange is the new black. Kale is the new spinach. Upper arms are the new vagina. Just another body part to keep hidden.

Procter and Gamble alone spend almost 5 billion dollars a year to convince us that we need to smell better, look younger, weigh less, contort ourselves like a Rubik’s Cube of inscrutable combinations.

The world’s commercialism depends upon brainwashing women, convincing us that we will be happy if we can only change one thing about ourselves.

Come in to the light. Not into the hateful glare of the overhead fluorescents in the department store dressing rooms.

Come into the light of “it’s my body and I’ll eat pie if I want to.”

No more dressing strategically, dressing for success, dressing for one’s age.

After a lot of meditation I decided my body shape is the “frig off” body shape.

I’m starting my own diet franchise. It’s called Eat Something. How it works is: people will pay me money. I will put all the money in my bank account. And then people will call me and say, “Oh my God I hate my body but I’m so hungry, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?” And I will say “Eat something. Eat some pudding.”

And people will call me and say, “Oh my God, I need a snack but like a healthy snack what can I snack on?” And I will say, “Eat a carrot dipped in pudding. Eat chocolate pudding, rice pudding, pease pudding, steak pudding, moose sausage pudding.”

And people will call me and say, “Oh my god, I ate so much, I’m full, I can’t eat another bite.” And I will say, “Aha!”

Some garments are labeled: One size fits all. This means that the same garment will fit someone who is a size zero. And someone who is not.

It is roughly the size of a small sock.

But women are not one size fits all.

I went through my closet.

I donated all the things I didn’t wear, and all the things I was never going to wear again. My Girl Guide uniform. (Oh, that’ll come back in style.) I wept when I gave away the size 5 wrap around dress I had not fit into for 20 years.

But it did not weep for me.

Because dresses have no feelings and do not give a fiddler’s frig what size they are.

Do I look fat in this?

In my life?

With the fatness of self-love and joy and being?

So.

“Do I look fat in this?”

Being an advertising catch phrase.

Is not true.

I made it up.

Because that’s how they get us to buy things. They make stuff up.

We don’t mean, do I look fat?

We mean, do you love me?

So when someone asks me, does this make me look fat?

I reply: I love you.

I hope I do look fat in this: my life. With the fatness of joy and having woken up alive.

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