fat baby. that's me.

I have gained a pound for every month of relationship happiness over the past 18 months.

Apparently, I'm so happy my ass is busting my pants!

I discovered this yesterday during my annual visit to my OB/Gyn. The nurse kept nudging the scale weight farther and farther to the right until it rested on 243.

I knew those jeans were a little tighter.

So that means tomorrow I'm dragging my 243 pound ass out of bed, at 5.30 am, to walk. Every day.
And it means I can't order takeout for dinner when I'm too tired to cook after I come home from work.
And it means my portions are going to be the size of my fist.

In good news, my doctor didn't balk when I said I'd like to start thinking about more permanent birth control solutions. Essure, here I come? Let's hope so!

Here's a picture of a fat baby because that's what I feel like (and this is kind of what my baby pictures look like):

What I Learned This Week

1.  I learned 6 strategies and tactics that should help me on the market this year (through these folks) - and simultaneously learned that I've been wasting valuable time on my jobsearch.  Oh, and I finally learned what 'personal branding' meant.  (Do you have an interview bucket list?  Me neither!!  Do you have your communication strategy in place?  I don't!)

2.  I learned that I have a short fuse when it comes to gathering consensus.  It's so clear to me what an action plan should be and it pains me to have to wait until other, dithering folks come around.  In other words, I don't frakking care.  You want something done, or don't you?  Then *do* it.

A note:  if you are a non profit taking an advocacy position you are afraid your Board will not support, take the time to cultivate and engage them on the issue; not doing this leads to vague, unclear, ineffective communication,  your advocacy efforts die on the vine, and your Board becomes a hindrance rather than a help.  They individually may not be 'for' tax increases, but the services your agency delivers relies on increased state revenue - which comes from taxes and which impacts the folks you serve.  Effective issue advocacy can't happen unless you have a Board willing to 'get' it.

3.  I've also learned that we (i.e., the U.S., the 'West', France, the industrialized world) have royally, historically screwed over Haiti; the teeny bit of aid we're sending over there is a drop of relief in a vast ocean of FUBAR we (the U.S.) have left them to drown in.

For example:
However, due to the fact that France and its allies (including the United States) forced Haiti to make reparations to French slaveholders in 1852 in the amount of 90 million gold francs ($21 billion today), Haiti was forced to pay France for the next one hundred years for its independence and has subsequently become the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. (here)

100 years to pay rich countries $21 billion.  What the HELL is that?!

4.  I've learned how important it is to be authentically You.  (This isn't about me, but about folks in general, and women of color in particular, so maybe this is about me. But it isn't really.  It really was prompted by something happening to someone else. Really.)

I thought being an academic was my authentic self; but my years with a coach and a therapist showed me how it never felt authentic to me at all and was a burden to me for a long time.  For years, thinking about being an academic, and then not being an academic, gave me panic attacks.  Authenticity isn't supposed to send you into panic.  Sure, am I a smarty pants?  Yes.  But this right now is my authentic self - a self that couldn't exist without that other one.

My 66-yr old father is finally discovering his 'authentic self' and it has nothing to do with being a pastor, father, grandfather or whatever other box we've put him in.  (His journey has made me closer to him and I can only hope my sister can make it through her journey of finding her authentic self - beyond 'Good Wife' or 'Dutiful Daughter.')

5.  It's also freaking hard to eat only 1400 calories a day - especially during a Chicago winter.  And having a boyfriend is great but hanging out with him watching old horror movies. LOST and Dr. Who is making my ass spread (hey! don't be dirty); add to that the stress of work and the few pounds I'd shed creep back.  Dude.  I need to get back on track.  Deciding how to spread 1400 calories over a full work day without feeling ravenous by the time I get home is fucking hard.

But I also have to be ok with myself.  Getting to the other side of 200 will be a long-term commitment.  I'm not going to get it right all the time but, eventually, I'll get there.

6.  Speaking of M-, I've learned that I've chosen my choice.  He's on my team now.  I'm learning what it takes to be One instead of Two.  And, yes, it's just as wrenching as I thought it would be.

Shit.  I'm going to be late.  M- is coming over for movies and whatnot.  Gotta go and pick up some beer.
(Damn! There go my 1400 calories.)

precious wrecked me and i don't even know why

just saw Precious.
wow. this is not going to be an analysis - just my first impression. but still, wow.

the bus was packed with a bunch of african american teenage girls and i just thought it was because school was out and they were going to the mall. nope. they were all going to see Precious. the theater was full of these young girls. and the theater was pin-drop silent.

(movie going with teenagers in the audience? it's never pin-drop silent.)

i wouldn't say the movie craft is *brilliant* but it's still a movie that should be seen - with performances that should be recognized:

Mo'Nique (without a doubt, so far ahead of anything she's done before.)

Gabourey Sidibe (for an unknown to carry this whole thing is amazing - this could *not* have been done by a Hollywood actress. no way. they're too mannered, too practiced, too fake, too stiff, too soap opera-y. it would be the equivalent of watching Holly Hunter play a dysfunctional cop from Oklahoma - sinewy and wrong.

my one quibble: i know most of Precious' subjectivity lives in her head but it would have been great to see more of her inner life, her push, somehow made more visible, other than the fantasy sequences that allow her to disassociate from whatever blow she's just received. This is a point that someone else - PostBourgie? - made somewhere and i agree with it.)

the other girls in the ABC class (don't you recognize each of them?)

after i saw it, i walked around for a few blocks wanting somewhere to sit and cry but that would have just looked crazy. it made me look at my aunts, the girls i knew from my church, the girls i see on the bus - differently.

if you've seen it, or read the book (which i haven't) would love to hear your thoughts.

the world needs meds

what the HELL is going on out there?

if the actual shooting at Fort Hood wasn't bad enough, the growing cacophony of anti-Muslim/Islam hysteria is about to eclipse it. on Twitter someone asked for the over/under for FOX News calling for the immediate segregation of all Muslims by Tuesday. why no link? it's unnecessary; just click on any comments section of *any* online newspaper or blog, liberal or conservative.

(frankly, i think the real story here is about mental health support, or lack of it, in the military but that's just me.)

then there's a second shooting today in Orlando and the difference in coverage is freaking startling (no instant speculation about race, ethnicity or religion - just 'crazy workplace shooter' narrative.)

question: why not treat the Fort Hood shootings like any other workplace violence story? or like a random school shooting?

and then the stupid ish i read in The Root huffing all insulted that the actress from Precious has the *nerve* to be all unashamed of her body?! (she must be mentally ill, The Root says. we're all caving to the PC gods if we don't shame her about her weight, The Root says. i say shut the frak up to The Root.)

makes me wanna holler or at least eat some bicuits and gravy. (i've missed lunch, too.)

it's a humdinger of a friday, folks.

carry on, if you can.

um, frak YOU, lane bryant!

dear lord,
thank you for my blog friend Sid who posted this on her blog which led to me seeing it and which will become my future destination for plushy girl fabulosity.

THANK YOU.

Igigi.com

All hail, Igigi.

A Blog Memoir in 25 Things: The Other Side of 200

14. As a toddler, I'd eat my little sister's baby food. Snooze, you lose!

Sitting on the crunchy white butcher paper in my doctor's office, I was worried about butt sweat when I really should have been worried about the little frown on her face.

'Well, Ding, this is where we are.' She pointed to a chart. 'For your height and weight, you are in this area.' Her finger circled a bunch of red squares.

'And does this Red Zone mean I'm going to drop dead in the next couple of weeks?'

Her smile was just as brittle as the paper I was sitting on. 'Let me put it this way. You need to be on the other side of 200 - I don't care how long it takes, that's where you need to be. Your family's medical history contains huge red flags - hypertension, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, diabetes. If your lifestyle doesn't change, this is your history, too.'

I was silent. All I could think of were those tasteless, white, wet scoops of cottage cheese my mother made me eat when I was in the 8th grade.

My doctor continued. 'Ding, this is what my practice specializes in. You can do this.'

'Hypothetically, what if I don't get on the other side of 200?'

'You don't want that. Already, your blood pressure is causing other issues.' She sighed. 'Look. I'm not into skinny minnies. I'm not saying you need to shrink all the way down to a Bobble head. But you need to be on the other side of 200. I won't even give you a number. 199? Ok. 190? 195? 180? Fine. 175? 170? Better. But get on the other side of 200 and stay there.'

It's never good to see you're in the 'danger zone' and, if you saw me, you'd never think, Oh, she is morbidly obese. But, according to a chart in the doctor's office, I am.

Perhaps I'm deluding myself, but it wasn't the idea of losing the fat that made me a little shaky-voiced as I described the appointment to my Roomie and some friends. It was everything else.

Hypertension?
Heart disease?
Diabetes?
Stroke?
Potential blindness? (Because of my high blood pressure, a blood vessel had burst behind my left eye and a portion of my eye's left visual field became significantly blurred.)

I don't want these things. I DON'T want these things.

We can talk about 'fat acceptance' but as a now diagnosed, official, Fat Person I am saying that I don't want these things and if it means sacrificing my sociall unacceptable fat on the altar of Not Dying, sign me up. If not dying means losing a tire or two around my middle, then so be it. I have no affection for them. I am not wed to these rings around my middle. If it's going to be a choice between me and my fat rings, I choose me.

The fat rings, and the politics attached to them, can go fuck themselves.

So here I am - trying to get on the other side of 200. And I can't help but think of my mother.
...
The day after my mother died, I stood in my parents' kitchen. It felt so small. Like my head. My head felt like it had shrunk and everything I heard or saw came from a great distance.

I opened the refrigerator, just to do something rather than from any particular desire to eat. Next to the little cups meant to protect eggs, I saw 6 vials of insulin. Scooping them up, I went to my father's converted office in the backyard. As usual, he had a few of his church men with him. Their conversation stopped when I entered the room.

'What are these?' I lined up the vials on dad's desk.
'Your mother's medication,' he said.
'They're all full,' I said.
He was silent. The men left the room.

'She stopped taking her medication. She stopped taking her insulin.' My father just looked at me. 'Why didn't you do something?' It may have been unfair to raise my voice against my teary-faced father but I couldn't help it. Something needed to be raged against. Someone needed to be raged against.

But all my father could say was that she hated it. She hated being diabetic; she hated not eating what she wanted; she hated having a disease; she hated being told what to do; she hated getting up in the morning and pricking her finger and reading her levels and injecting herself. She would cry in the mornings and my father would have to give her the injections while she cried. My big, smart, strong-willed father was tortured thinking he was doing something to his wife that made her cry. But then, the crying - and the injections - stopped. He and I both knew what this meant. We didn't say it out loud, but we knew.

I scooped up the bottles again, went back inside my father's house and put the vials of insulin back inside the refrigerator.

My mother may have been a fast driver but she was a slow suicide.
...
This is me, trying to get on the other side of 200.

In the hipster Dominick's on Chicago, buying the kiddie snack packs of veggies and fruit from the Eating Right brand. If I have to control my portions, and thus my calorie intake, then these smaller versions of food will have to train me to make different choices.

Roomie takes one look at our regrigerator and says, 'We are eating like 4th graders.'

Me, in the morning, eating one whole wheat waffle with a drizzle of honey and a few scoops of low-fat yogurt with some crunchy cereal tossed in while catching a few minutes of Good Morning America.

In the cafe, for the one morning latte I allow myself during the week, to be made with skim milk and, instead of a large, I order a small.

In the later morning, feeling myself get a little munchy, I take out my lunch and eat the piece of fruit I've packed. Or maybe one half of the sandwich I've made.

After lunch, I walk with a coworker for 30 minutes down by the river.

When I come home, I begin to broil a nice piece of salmon drizzled with a little olive oil, some garlic and cracked black pepper. Roomie cooks some spinach with balsamic vinegar.

After dinner, I barely miss the cigarette I would have had with a glass of wine.

As the weather warms, I know I'll have to wave Roomie ahead and forgo the very comfortable and convenient ride home. I'll walk farther to the bus stop or take a different bus route, all to walk a little farther (about 4 blocks out of my way.)

I thought getting to the other side of 200 would have been more mentally difficult than this; I thought I would have kicked and screamed about 'dieting.' But I guess it's all in how you think about it. To me, this isn't 'dieting.' It's living. Not 'living' in the Oprah-sense: all blurry light, white clothing and huge gusts of breath about one's 'best life.'

What I'm doing is less glamorous than that. It's, literally, living - inhaling, exhaling, heart beating.

Fuck the fat. Fuck the politics. I'm changing the way I've been living because I fucking don't want to die like my mother.

oh, oprah

i'm watching oprah's show from this morning, the dreaded show wherein she talks about her (gasp) drastic weight gain to a (gasp) whopping 200 pounds. personally, i think the election pushed her over the edge, the way it pushed most of us closer to the brink of insanity.

but i'm noticing her language: 'fat wins' and 'my life is out of balance' and 'i am ashamed of my body.' she described feeling ashamed and apalled during a show with tina turner and cher, wanting to hide when they called her onstage to sing 'proud mary' with them. (ironic, huh?) she called herself 'unhinged,' 'imbalanced,' 'unhappy,' empty.

she seemed really angry at herself, at her body, and i said to Roomie, 'I have never thought these things about myself.' neither has Roomie, who's a big soft girl like me.

sure, i look at my body and go, 'dammit, i'm not 27 anymore!' or, during an afternoon frolic with the LTF, and he's moving my soft body around, i have the stray thought, 'wow, he just moved my post-Agatha kangaroo pouch out of the way to get at me.' i giggled because the moment was absurd.

i'm surprised at the strength of oprah's shame and anger at herself. oh, i get it (society's messages about aging, weight, the objectification of women's bodies, blah blah blah) but at the same time, i don't understand why she's fighting herself so much.

oprah, maybe you're not meant to be 160 pounds! maybe your body wants to be 200 lbs!

a couple of years ago, i wrote down my weight number and encouraged all 5 of my readers to share theirs and one said that she was surprised to find how hard it was to share it publicly. so i'm going to do it again: i weigh 222 lbs. i weigh more than oprah. my whole life i've hovered between 215 and 220 but i don't think i've ever looked at my body and hated it as much as oprah hates hers.

or maybe i'm just a badly trained fat girl who didn't read the memo that i'm supposed to internalize this shit.

open letter to lane bryant

unfortunately, i didn't write this complaint about a poorly fitting LB surplice top sundress but only wish i had:

I even doubted my bosom, questioning puberty and everything I ever knew about sex. Then I took the dress off and all was right with the world and my breasts.

In order to avoid such traumatic incidents from occurring in the future I’m forced to let you go. I could tolerate the polyester, inconsistent sizing, poor stitching, insane patterns, ill-advised employees, incorrect bra fittings, and discriminate bra sizing. But causing blunt trauma to my ego? Never, that’s where I draw the line.

if you haven't been reading Fatshionista!, you should.

isn't vera wang the chick who also turned her snooty nose up at sarah jessica parker and her Bitten line in an interview with the nytimes?

well, it seems that ms. wang has been bitten (heh) by a slavering need for cash and has chosen to cater to the previously snitted-against middle america masses and created her own line for Kohl's (also debuting in O Magazine).

Inexpensive Shit: Simply Vera Leaves Us Simply, Um, Excited? About Fashion? - Jezebel
...
in other shopping news, i was with my sister yesterday (sniff, she went back to LA) and we stopped in GAP on michigan avenue, where i haven't shopped in a really long time. they changed the place around some and their early fall stuff was already on the floor.

some thoughts:
1-sporty is back. we saw some cute rugby-inspired shirts that we remembered from the early 90s or late 80s but this time they're snugger, less sporty looking and more 'girly'.
2-80s nostalgia isn't always a good thing. my sister, a size 2 or 4, tried on a striped button down that had a ruffle down the middle and we both gagged. we totally wore that same shirt in 1982; remember, if you're old enough to have worn the trend when it first came out, avoid it now!
3-their sizing changed. hard to believe but i think something happened. i found a cute military styled jacket and sniffed that the their XL is never big enough for me. 'why can't they just add another X?,' i snitted. well, i tried it on and it FIT. my arms didn't get stuck in the arm holes, the jacket could close over my boobs (which are a 40D, thank you) and my sister even said, 'looks cute.' (she never says that.) either they changed their fit models or i lost some weight in my whole upper half of my body and i don't think i did.
4-patent leather handbags for fall might just be necessary. maybe. perhaps.
5-their maternity section is totally cute. yes, i said maternity! where else can you get a nice fitted, stretchy t-shirt that hugs your girly curves and goes down far enough so your belly doesn't show? or where can you get a dress or shirt with an empire waist that has enough room for the boobs?

bitten: close but no cigar

it looks like all i do nowadays is write about clothes, huh? no more snappy, angry political criticism, no more feminist screeds...just clothes. well, clothes can be political, too: who gets them, who controls the industry and who decides who gets to buy what - these are 'political' issues. granted, they're not at big as reproductive health access, but for those of us on the margins, it's a fightin' time.

privilege is invisible; in other words, the thing that marks your privilege is the thing you can't see, or you take for granted. whether you buy your clothes from an outlet or a high end store like barneys, if you go in without worrying about leaving empty-handed, this is the manifestation of your privilege as a 'normal' sized woman. i can't speak for other women who have worn sizes 16-20 since high school, but i've never once been able to do that. whatever city i'm in, i am hyper aware that a shopping trip for me will be limited; i will have to shop in specialty stores, will have to compromise on style and quality and whatever i buy will be a begrudged compromise between what i want, what's popular and what other people make for me.

bouncing between what passes for cute in bloomies, and the pants that fit at old navy, shopping is an event that i don't want to share with anyone because the many steps to shopping is exhausting.

so along comes Bitten, sarah jessica parker's new line of super cheap clothes, that promises to give women affordable style. i was a little excited about the prices and the seeming cute clothes but what really got me was the size range: 2-22. but where can i get it? only through a steve & barry's store and where's the closest one? way out here.

and thus, the problem. no one ever gets it right. if the sizes aren't there, we can't buy clothes; if the sizes are there, but the price point is too high, we can't buy clothes; if the price point is ridiculously low, the sizes are there, there are issues with quality, and you have to drive to iowa to purchase it, we still can't buy clothes.

so here's a big soft girl's manifesto. here's what i frakking want:
i want to walk into a jcrew (because i'm secretly preppy like that) and i want to find my size just like everyone else. that's it. it's that simple. i want to find my size.

repeat it with me: i want to find my size. i want. to find. my size.

can you hear me, big retailers and buyers and designers and bridge label people? i want to find my size.

a great blog i stumbled across has her own take on Bitten: The Budget Fashionista -Bitten by Sarah Jessica Parker on Oprah

shopping: the return of ugly

i had to get an outfit for tomorrow - one that would move from a business meeting, a luncheon and then another business meeting and then a board meeting. basically, a cute lightweight suit-ish thing. (i have a couple at home, but they're more for fall, not spring.)

i was about to write a long, screedy thing, describing every awful outfit i saw in macy's and lane bryant but i'll just keep it simple:

dear retailers,
do you hate us?
because you keep ignoring the pleas and downright demands of plus size customers.

we don't want to wear the clothes you're making for us. they. are. ugly. you are forcing us to choose those boxy skirts in colors that wouldn't find a place in GAP, Banana or JCrew; those shapeless shirts and jackets that our mothers wore are beginning to show up in your stores again and we hate them. and, now, we are beginning to hate you. if you even attempt to foist mom jeans with a tapered leg on us, we might just have to rise up and kill one of you.

hear us: if you won't create a separate, stylish store for us, for the love of god, expand your sizes. don't hide your large sizes in the back of the store, or in the burbs; put them where you put everything else. find a fit model (joy nash is a good template) and, for god's sake, fire your buyers. they hate fat people.

sincerely,
ding

noooo!: Gap to close Forth & Towne chain

Gap to close Forth & Towne chain

dammit!

now where the hell am i supposed to find anymore cute work clothes??!!
marina renaldi is too expensive.
banana, GAP and JCrew don't have the sizes.
H&M is too young.
Old Navy too cheap.
Bloomies still can't quite get the fit and cut right - and they don't have the variety.
Lane Bryant is too...unprofessional.

so, thanks, GAP.
thanks for totally screwing over 30-something women who can't/won't dress like tarts who also happen to be shaped like women.

fuckers!

[wanna share your thoughts? forth & towne feedback can be emailed here.]

found: pants!!

so enough with shani.
not only is the topic edging folks real close to calling me 'bougie' (oh, anonymous, don't think i don't know what you're thinking) it's nothing compared to my new news:
i have a new pair of pants.

they're brown, cut straight and wide through the thigh with a very slight flare at the bottom. i wore them yesterday to the office and they were gorgeous. and you know where i got them?

forth & towne. i know - forth & towne!

it's hard for me to wear brown. it makes me nervous. what goes with brown? more brown. i'm already brown. i don't want to be head to foot brown, like a snickers. but these pants? love them. they cover my weird flat/not flat ass, actually make it look like i'm taller and straighter than i am and hit the top of my foot at exactly the right place, which is a feat since i'm not tall. and paired with the brown/white print jacket (also an object of love) the whole thing just cost a couple hundred bucks. swoon!

here's a word to people who make pants for women over size 14: these pants don't taper! the rise isn't too long! it sits at the waist and yet doesn't look frumpy! everything lies flat!

my only complaint: the pockets are still on the slant on the side of the hip and they pucker just a teeny bit. (i got hips, dude.) they really should have been on the front of the pant and 'hidden', you know?

[i wish i could show you a picture but i think they're afraid F&T will tank and so won't invest in putting their clothes online! come on, people - if you're going to force me to go out to the burbs at LEAST put your merchandise online so i don't schlep in vain!]

sigh. still not it.

For Sweet Size 16, Stylish Workout Wear - New York Times

call me crazy but the zaftique site mentioned in the article still has stomach shuddering ugly clothes for big soft girls. grr. a cute boot cut yoga pant! how hard is that??