The Fat Chick Diaries

Sometimes I just don’t get fat haters. Not the hating part– I understand the world is full of biggots and people who just need to feel superior by knocking other people down. I get that part. It’s that I just don’t get what it is they think we ought to do about ourselves. Let me explain.

In 2005, I gave up my car. I figured it would save me enough money to get through grad school without loans, it would force me to exercise more, and it would just feel really good to thumb my nose at Bush’s blood-for-oil foreign policy. All three things proved to be true. Because of a particular flaw in the public transportation situation where I was working at the time, I could get directly TO work by bus, but to get home I had to walk two miles from the office to the nearest functioning bus stop. So I was walking two miles a day, five days a week.

This is what the skinny people want, right? Aren’t we all supposed to be out there exercising all the fat off?

Apparently not. On a frequent and regular basis, carloads of young, skinny assholes would roll their windows down and shout abuse at me as I walked from my office to the bus stop. So…. let me understand. You don’t want people to be fat, but when you see a fat person out exercising, you will discourage them from doing so by shouting abuse at them? I just don’t get the logic. Unless… oh wait, I think I get it now– they want us to shut ourselves up in our homes and jog in place where nobody has to see us, until we have burned off enough fat to be acceptable to them. Then, and only then, can we be seen again in public. Got it.

I am still carfree, and I still take public transportation, and I am still fat. (Oddly enough, all of that walking did no lead to the loss of a single pound.) So in the past few years, I have developed an interest in the attitudes of people about fat people taking public transportation. One of these days I will finish my epic post on fat people who ride the subway and the people who love to hate them. But for now, let it suffice to say that a simple web search shows there are a lot of people who just hate, hate, HATE it that there are fat people on subways and buses. They don’t want us to sit next to them. They don’t want us to stand near them. In short, they don’t want us there at all.

So once again, I must ask–what is it that they DO want us to do? Run through the tunnel behind the subway train until we have burned enough calories to be acceptable as fellow passengers? Quit our jobs and stay home, locked in our houses and apartments starving ourselves until we are deemed thin enough to be seen out in public again? What?

So now comes the latest “I just don’t get the logic” occurrence. I am a long-time subscriber to Newsweek, but I’m almost always at least a week or two behind. So this week I’m working on an issue from the beginning of May, and I came across this quote on the Perspectives page, which you can find on their website here.

“We’re on the Titanic and, rather than forcing our children into the lifeboat, we’re telling them to join the band.” –MeMe Roth, president of National Action Against Obesity, on new clothing lines aimed at plus-size teenage girls from retailers Target and Forever 21

Once again, I just don’t get it. Roth objects to CLOTHING? Or is it just that she objects to attractive, fashionable clothing for fat girls? Is that it? She doesn’t want them stuck at home with no clothes to wear– she just doesn’t think they should be allowed to dress fashionably, because that might cause them to… what? Feel good about themselves? Not feel disgusting? Have good self-esteem? Heaven forfend! We can’t have fat chicks feeling good about themselves– that would undermine Roth’s plan to make them hate themselves so much that they will do whatever it takes– healthy or not– to conform and become thin. No, fat girls should wear burlap bags with a big scarlet “F” stenciled on the front.

So it really is just all about hate after all. Nice.

Daily pug count: Three, plus a brace of puggles in front of the laundromat.

I haven’t done a Daily Pug Count in a while, so here’s today’s figure as of 4:04 p.m.: Four pugs. One in Queens, three in Manhattan. I’m telling you, NYC is Pug City, y’all.

Anyway, back to business. I saw Megan McCain on the Rachel Maddow Show the other day, and Rachel mentioned Megan is on Twitter, so I went and checked her out. Having seen images of Megan throughout the campaign and having just watched her during her interview with Rachel, I was very surprised to see among her Twitter entries (I guess they’re called “tweets”) a statement defending her own curves and encouraging the rest of us to love ours, too. I thought… did somebody make fun of her for being fat? If so, how is that possible? She’s not rail thin like her mom, but she’s certainly slim. Have we really gone that far over the edge that we’re fat-bashing Megan McCain now?

As it turns out, the answer is yes: Megan McCain, who is a size 8, got fat-bashed by her own fellow Republican. Tara Parker Pope writes about it on Well today.

That just stuns me. I mean, really? To me, a woman who wears a size 12 shouldn’t be considered plus size, because in terms of her clothing needs, she has a heck of a lot more in common with a size 8 than a size 18. A size 10 looks thin to me. But a size EIGHT??? Come on, REALLY? We’re fat-bashing in the single digits now?

You’d think there are no more pressing issues facing this country right now. Yeesh.

Today’s daily pug count: four, and counting. Now, down to business:

People are sometimes shocked that I use the word “fat” so freely. I guess that word has taken on such an extreme negative connotation that people don’t know how to react when they hear it from me, a bona fide fat person, especially in reference to myself. Here’s the thing: I like it because it’s unambiguous, and everybody understands it. Sure, there are a fair number of sadly misguided skinny people who muddy the definition of fat because they like to torture themselves and/or fish for compliments by calling themselves fat when they’re not. To wit:

Skinny chick to other skinny chick: “Oh my God, I’m sooooo fat!”
Other skinny chick: “You are NOT fat!”

But for the most part, it’s a pretty unambiguous word. In fact, that reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to post about. Here’s how you know when you have become officially fat:

When I was in high school, I was not fat. Like all high school girls, I would whine about how fat I thought I was, and my friends would say, “You are NOT fat!”

When I was in college, I started to actually get fat. I would whine to my friends about how fat I thought I was, and my friends would say, “You’re not THAT fat!”

When I graduated from college and proceeded to eat my way through grad school hell, a serious health crisis, and a bad marriage, I became officially fat. The reason I know I was officially fat is because nobody even bothered to deny it anymore. Instead, they looked for mitigating circumstances to make the fatness not seem so bad. I would whine to my friends about how fat I thought I was, and my friends would say, “But you’re TALL!”

Now, I am in my 30’s, and I am uniquivocally, undeniably a Bona Fide Fat Chick. I have long since stopped whining to my friends about being fat, but I do sometimes whine to my boyfriend about it, and my boyfriend says, “True, but I love you that way!”

Did you catch that transition? First comes the denial of fatness. Then comes the concession that yes, there may be some fat present, but not in an “ewww, you’re fat” kind of way. Then comes the pointing out of the tallness, which is meant to mitigate the fatness. Then comes the point where it really jsut can no longer be denied nor mitigated. So if you’re wondering whether or not you’re officially fat, test it out.

I just like the word fat. It’s descriptive. It’s unambiguous. It’s also short and easy to spell. Yes, it has negative connotations, but only because people allow it. Other than that, it’s a really useful word. Having said all that, I have to tell you that most euphemisms for fat really irritate me. For example, I really cannot stand department stores that call the fat chick section the “women’s” section. Fat chick sizes are called “women’s” sizes, and often have a “W” next to them on the size label, as if the numerical size itself was insufficient to make the point. What are we supposed to learn from this? That thin women aren’t really women? I bet if you asked them, they’d disagree. Just guessin’. Another one that bugs me: Zaftig. As in Salon Z, the fat chick section at Saks Fifth Avenue. Hello… Salon Z? Could you possibly be any more cryptic? Is it THAT scandalous for a highbrow shopping destination like Saks to sell clothing for — gasp — fat chicks that it has to be kept a great big secret not just with a euphemism, but an abbreviation for a euphemism? Come on, Saks. We’re big girls (literally and figuratively). We can handle the truth. Just called it the Groovy Fat Chick Section and we’ll know that’s where we need to go. If your other customers can’t handle the fact that we shop at Saks too, you can take comfort in the fact that if national trends continue, pretty soon virtually all women will have to shop in Salon Z.

Yep, euphemisms for fat kinda bug me. Don’t even get me started on “big boned” or “pleasingly plump” lest I experience reverse peristalsis all over you.

However, today I learned a word for fatness that I actually find quite charming, maybe because it’s so sing-songy and French-sounding: Avoirdupois. I love it. It makes me want to go out and get another fat cat, just so I can name is Avoirdupois. I think tomorrow morning when I run into some work colleagues in the elevator and somebody asks me how am I doing today, I will say, “I’m just brimming with avoirdupois! Thanks for asking! And yourself?”

I can sort of imagine Snagglepuss from the Hannah Barbera cartoons saying, “Heavens to Murgatroid! You have such fabulous avoirdupois!”

Avoirdupois. See if you can use it in a sentence today!

First of all, let me just say that it’s only 11:06 a.m. and today’s pug count is already up to four.

Having said that, le tme say this: I absolutely love voting. It’s one of my all-time favorite things to do. Even in an election when the choice is between the lesser of two assholes, voting is empowering. There are people in this world who don’t have the right to vote. That we have it here and many people just can’t be bothered to do it astounds me. Thousands upon thousands of people have died to provide and protect our right to vote. For us women, thousands of suffragettes endured public and private scorn as they fought for the right of women to vote. That was LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO. Let me say that again, because it’s important: LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO, when my grandmothers were born, WOMEN WERE NOT PERMITTED TO VOTE. The brave women who stood up to society in general and often their own husbands and fathers so they– and we– could have the right to vote to determine who our leaders will be. When you show up to vote, you honor that sacrifice. You also participate in democracy. You choose your leaders. You send messages. Yes, politics is annoying, and well-oiled, well-financed political machines do everything in their power to manipulate voters, up to and including voter supression tactics. It’s morally wrong and unfair, but not voting is not the way to fix it.

I have voted now in five presidential elections in four different states. I have voted by absentee ballot, by punch-card ballot (they of the chads), and now that I live in New York, by traditional pull-the-lever voting machine. I LOVE these machines. Not only are they reliable, but there’s also something inherently satisfying about these machines. There’s the feeling of being ensconced in a curtained booth, truly alone with your ballot. There’s the extremely satisfying ka-chunk the big red lever makes when you pull it and it records your vote. But most of all, I think I like it because it looks just like the voting booths in the Preamble cartoon from Schoolhouse Rock:

Speaking of which, if you’re one of those really bizarro people who is still undecided about the presidential election, remember this: Barak Obama was a professor of Constitutional Law. Unlike the current president, who has in all likelihood never even read the Constitution and clearly considers it a nuisance to be circumvented whenever possible, Obama has read it and studied it in depth. He knows the articles. He knows the amendments. He knows the major cases that have gone before the Supreme Court, how they were decided, and why. If you’re looking for one last factor to help get you off the fence, here it is: Constitutional erudition. ‘Nuff said.

New York City is FULL of dogs. So much so, in fact, that the sidewalks in Manhattan pretty much perpetually smell like dog urine. It’s one of the reasons why a good rainstorm is such a wonderful thing in New York, as long as it doesn’t happen while I’m outside. The rain washes the pee off the sidewalks, you see.

But I digress.

There’s dogs, y’all. Thousands of them. I once sat for about an hour and a half in the Starbucks on the corner of 9th Ave and 59th St. doing homework for a grad class, and just for the hell of it, I tallied up all the dogs I saw walking by. There were about 60 of them. No lie.

Given the limited size of most Manhattan apartments, it’s amazing the number of really big dogs you see. Somebody in the neighborhood where I work has two very large labrador retrievers. WTF? Labradors in a Manhattan apartment? Somebody else has some sort mastiff, and yet another person has an Old English sheepdog.

But the little bitty dogs are really the most popular ones. In particular, Manhattanites seem to be obsessed with pugs. Some days it seems like I can’t walk two blocks without seeing a pug. Even Queens is full of them. I guess they’re ideal for apartment dwellers, plus they are cute in an ugly sort of way. But the pug obsession is out of control. Just to amuse myself, I count the number of pugs I see each day. Today’s pug count: three. The most ever in one day: seven. Seven pugs, y’all. That’s a bit much, don’t you think?

What’s really amazing is that the pugs grown on you after a while. I used to think pugs were hands-down the ugliest dogs ever. Now, I find them oddly adorable. I’m also getting into French bulldogs. It probably doesn’t hurt that I started out obsessed with Boston Terriers, which are also in that same squished-face-little-doggy category.

Something else I’m starting to count as I acclimate to living and working in the big city: famous people. So far, the list includes Jonathan Alter, Lou Dobbs, N’gai Croal, and John King. You can kind of tell I walk past the Newsweek and CNN buildings on my way to and from work each day, huh? I’ve also seen Andie McDowell, Melissa Leo, and a character actor who has shown up on Law & Order at least twice, but whose name I do not know.

So I’m thinking I may add the Daily Pug Count to the bottom of my blog posts from now on, just so you can understand how pugly the city really is.