Fat Bride, Pregnant Bride

So thanks to Kate Harding's great post I am now hooked on InfoMania. (Seriously, I think I've watched all the segments twice now.) Last night was a new episode with a new Target: Women section about bridal shows. Go watch now, then come back and I'll finish. Go on, scoot.

http://current.com/items/88988193_target_women_wedding_shows

OK, back? I would like to discuss the part about the show Bulging Brides. First of all, the name is beyond ridiculous. Nothing like a little shame to get a fat girl motivated to fit into her wedding gown, am I right? Second of all, the woman they refer to as a "chubster"? I'm not the best at guessing dress sizes, but I seriously doubt that woman is more than a size 8. That's fat? (And why is her wedding dress a size too small? Generally speaking you order your dress or have it custom made, why not just get it in the right size?)

I'm not really comfortable with bridal shows--partially because there seems to be a large percentage of the population that think it's OK to act like a total bitch if there's a camera on them--but also because there is this whole message that you, as a woman, are Not Good Enough to get married. You must be skinnier, more tanned, with better hair and the perfect dress or your prospective husband will realize the error of his ways and call it off. It makes me appreciate my husband more, who still loves me as much as or more than the day we met even though I'm easily fifty pounds heavier than I was when we got married. And even though our wedding was something of a disaster.

For my second item, I would have you refer to the June 2008 issue of Redbook. (Don't worry, I'll type it out.) On page 28, in the "What's on our Radar" section, there is a story titled "No Way!: The Bridal Bump," which reads "We're not suggesting that you need to be a virgin to wear white at your wedding, but a white maternity gown takes the chastity speculation out of the equation altogether. Sister stores Motherhood Maternity, A Pea in the Pod, and Mimi Maternity are now offering wedding dresses for their shoppers who are 'marrying and carrying.' Shotgun sold separately."

Yes, Pregnant Brides, for shame! How dare you marry after getting pregnant! Don't you know you are supposed to hide your shame and not show your face in public once that little bastard starts to grow inside you? Then you pass the baby off as a younger sibling or a niece or nephew.

Set aside for a moment the mistaken assumption this article has that white wedding dress=chastity,* why on earth shouldn't a pregnant bride wear whatever the hell dress she wants to wear? Because she's pregnant she's not allowed to wear white? She should wear red instead since she's obviously a big whore? And what is the deal with the shotgun line? Not all women who are pregnant when they get married are getting married because they're pregnant. Maybe this is what I get for reading Redbook. Heads up, editors: some women DO THINGS OUT OF YOUR DECREED ORDER. Some women have children and THEN get married. Some women have children and NEVER get married. Some women get married and never have children. Get off your high horses.

*The white wedding dress trend was started by Queen Victoria. The way I've always heard it is that white wedding dresses are a symbol of wealth. Up to that point most women simply wore their best dress, so buying a white dress that you would wear for one day and could never wear again showed that you were rolling in the dough a la Scrooge McDuck. Wiki has it a little differently, saying Queen Victoria chose white to use some lace she had and that other women honored their queen's choice by also marrying in white.

Shopping While Fat and Other Delightful Tales

Wow, it has been an excessively long time since I’ve been on here. My only excuse is that I am boring and many times I have nothing to say. It’s a character flaw that needs to be addressed. Also, I think the Internet wants to know that at this moment I am eating popcorn with white cheddar seasoning and M&Ms. (Well, between typing.) Also, my husband bought three pizzas for movie night at a friend’s house and 1 ½ came home with them. Therefore I have eaten pizza for I think every meal for the last twenty-four hours. Tomorrow I am going to roast some vegetables and eat them because roasted vegetables are freaking delicious. (Fun fact: I will only eat cabbage that has been roasted. Otherwise, eeeew.)

So, yeah, the shopping thing. The mall was having a sale a weekend or two ago, so DH requested that I go and procure the family some clothing. I did. It sucked. I hate shopping as a fat girl. Especially the specific fat girl that I am, because I have long monkey arms and long legs and a long torso, with a big butt for good measure. Finding jeans that fit ever since low rise jeans became popular is IMPOSSIBLE. And who is the genius that decided that elastic waistbands were a better idea than trying to make women’s jeans according to some sort of sizing standard? (Newsflash: they're not. Maternity pants have elastic waists. Jeans of any size above 3T should not.

As I was walking around the store, trying to figure out which of the 40 women’s clothing vignettes I’d visited and which of them had clothes that would fit me, I got this sudden urge to throw things on the floor and kick and scream. I hate shopping. Even when I was thin I hated shopping (because of the aforementioned monkey limbs) and obviously being fat does not make it better. I also wanted to put everything I’d picked out down and run away from the mall. But I sucked it up and purchased a hoodie and a few shirts. No pants—nothing that looked good was on sale.

As for the other tales I promised you up there in the title: I saw this the other day. (And yes, I know it's old, but it's my blog and I'm going to talk about it, damnit.) Basically, a sex columnist for the New York Press used some old Dan Savage questions in her debut sex column, as she had no reader questions of her own. (BTW, Dan Savage doesn't think it's plagiarism.) It’s not totally clear from the way these articles are written if she just took the questions or if she used both the questions and the answers. The first one, bad but kind of understandable. Second one, very bad and not at all understandable. I am going to guess that she took only the questions and made up her own answers, because I would hope that she planned to do some writing on this column. I have no legal training or anything, but I would say that was misguided more than it was plagiarism, although still a fireable offense. Here’s my thing, though: when I was a relationship columnist in college (ooh, kinky) and I didn’t have any questions*, I MADE THEM UP. Seriously, how hard is it to hypothesize a sex column question. My girlfriend wants to tie me up and I’m not comfortable with it, how do I talk to her about it? My boyfriend wants me to use a dildo on him and I’m not comfortable with it, how do I talk to him about it? See, there you go. Done and done. Open communication in a relationship is a must, kids.

As a final parting gift, I will tell you that potty training sucks. And pretty much as soon as I’m done with Kid One I have to move on to Kid Two. I don’t know what my son’s deal with the potty is but apparently he has decided it is a Very Bad Thing and is acting accordingly. I want one of those kids that just decides—preferably as close to the age of 2 as possible—that they’re not going to wear diapers anymore and never has an accident again. I think they’re a myth, though.

*I never had any questions. Well, I got one the whole time I did it, which was from another columnist. We either had apathetic readers, readers with very healthy relationships, or I sucked. I shall leave the deciding up to you.

Obligatory Whining

I love not dieting. I do. And I am a bit shocked that it's not taking any effort to eat vegetables or salads, because--shocker--I like them. There is a but, though.

I never imagined letting myself have full reign over what I eat, without consulting anyone else about it, would be so hard. On the surface this seemed great--the aforementioned freedom from consulting books on what I should eat, no running on a treadmill unless I wanted to (that's not going to happen). Just freedom.

Have you ever seen "The Shawshank Redemption?" Where the prisoners talk about getting out and committing another crime to get back in because they're lost without the structure of prison? That's the closest example I can think of for this feeling. I want the freedom but I'm scared of it, too. I have no idea what I want to eat 90% of the time, good or bad. Some days after I've been staring hungrily into the refrigerator for half an hour, trying to decide between one thing and another but not really wanting any of it, I feel like collapsing to the floor in a gibbering mess, rocking back and forth until a nice orderly comes and puts me back in my room.

One thing that I always used to do was make lists of weight-related goals. Eat eight servings of fruits and vegetables each day--and the good ones, too, not potatoes and corn. Exercise six days a week at least an hour a day. Weights three times a week. Don't eat more than X calories. And so on and so forth. At first I didn't miss that; now I do. I have goals for other parts of my life, but I have had to follow a plan for eating for so long that I feel like something's missing now. And it sucks, not because I really want the lists back (I don't) but because it's making me feel like any decision I make is the wrong one.

There's also this guilt I have because I still want to lose weight. I still read diet articles and watch diet shows. I still weigh myself, although the number on the scale no longer makes me want to delve headfirst back into disordered eating. I accept that dieting is unnecessary and almost certainly harmful to my body, but I can't accept the weight I'm at now. (For the record, I am about 65 pounds overweight, and that number is based on what I consider to be my set point.) So does that make me a SA fraud? I don't know. I wish I did.

Cheeeeeeese

Yes, it's picture time. Tomorrow my boys go to my best friend's mother's house to see the Santa Claus that she hires every year for the four boys her daughter and I have between us, plus her brother's girlfriend's daughter. (Get all that?) There will be pictures there; Santa makes the adults sit on his lap. Which weirds me out for a whole different non-fat-related reason.

The day after that I get to go to my mom's house and have a family portrait taken for a bound book my sister is making for my mom's Christmas present. I have four siblings; why is it only me that needs a family portrait, you ask? Because there was a group portrait session months ago and the photographer took no pictures of me and the boys (together, that is). My husband was at work, so I don't know if the assumption was that I wouldn't want any pictures of me and my kids together without him or if it just honestly did not occur to her to make sure she got pictures of everyone. I'm so glad I'm grown up now--in high school, exclusion was free. Now I get to pay for it. And yes, I'm a tad bitter.

Anyway, the point of this post, once you get past all my bitching and moaning, is this: I am not afraid of pictures this year. In years past I have managed to be in the background or on the fringes of any picture including me, of which there were few. I am not photogenic, and that plus being fat made me want to skip all events where a camera could theoretically be present. I have decided that this year is not going to be the same. I'm not going to seek out the camera, but nor will I avoid it. I am what I am; I'll be the same whether or not there's photographic proof. And I like having photographic proof--we have thousands of pictures of our children, but there are approximately three total pictures of me while pregnant. That makes me sad; that's an opportunity missed that can never be gotten back. There are even fewer pictures of me--intentional pictures, that is--when I'm not pregnant.

I am of the personal opinion that our portrait Saturday will look ridiculous in context. Everyone else's portraits were taken outdoors in August. Ours will be taken indoors in December. It will be quite obvious that we were not included in the original portrait session. But whatever; it's done. Now I just have to make sure that I don't make a weird face in this picture.

Shopping While Fat

Normally I don't, but as I posted here I decided that owning a pair of jeans that fits again would be nice. A new Steve and Barry's just opened here, so I went out. I am hugely attracted to the idea of Steve & Barry's--it's like Old Navy, but cheaper, and with cuter stuff. I first heard about when I saw a piece from Sarah Jessica Parker's line Bitten, which goes up to size 22. (I discovered when I got there that SJP's line was the only thing that went up to size 22. The rest of the store did not even have XL. I'm not kidding; everything else only went up to a size L and the biggest I saw in pants was a 14.)

So I got my fat ass over there and picked out four pairs of Bitten jeans in three different sizes. As expected, one was too small, one fit, one was too big. I didn't buy any of them. In fact, shopping made me reaffirm my belief that homemade clothes are best because of one thing: tailoring.

I am, in addition to having a big belly and a big butt, gifted with freakishly long monkey arms and legs and a long torso. Try fitting that commercially. I dare you.

Every pair of jeans I tried on, low waisted or not, exposed at least two inches of underwear and, one would assume, buttcrack. Definitely not the look I am going for. So I purchased nothing. And for once I'm not blaming myself for being too fat to fit into the clothes.

A Decision a Decade in the Making

I know that I am not unique in this, but I am schlumpy. Slobbish. I do not take the time to do my hair and makeup before I leave the house. I do not wear pretty clothes. I do not put my best foot forward. Because I am Fat.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve made plans to buy a whole new wardrobe (or make one, since I love to sew and can rock it) when I was Not Fat Anymore. The last time I was Not Fat was in 2001. Before I was married or had children. It was a pretty short period of time, and even then I was not Not Fat enough for myself. I did buy a few smaller items that were necessary, like jeans (slow down, don’t get crazy!), but I didn’t go balls out like I planned on doing when I got to that elusive goal weight. (Back then it was 135 for 5’10” me. I chose that number because I read in an issue of People that that was what Tyra Banks weighed, and that was enough for me.)

And now I have decided that this is pretty ridiculous behavior. The whole thing, not just the Tyra Banks goal weight. I never understood why, on What Not to Wear, they would tell people who said they were going to lose weight that they should look good whatever weight they were at. Not that those fat people didn’t deserve to look good, but what was the point of buying a whole new wardrobe since you knew, for reals, that in mere weeks or months or whatever you were going to be hott with two Ts?

Even if I were still dieting religiously, I would be changing my tune. I’m not sure exactly what precipitated this, but I think it might have something to do with a certain habit of mine.

You see, I am a prodigious collector of tear sheets. Pages torn out of magazines for parenting, web sites, clothes, home décor, whatever I think looks cool. These are all filed in a white file box, which I get out every month when I receive a new magazine. I take the old magazine and go through it, tearing out whatever I’ve marked or whatever looks good to me. And I file it. Sometimes I go through the things I’ve filed and throw stuff away, but not very often.

My clothing folder was bulging, as it always is. So I went through it and picked out some pages that I liked. Then I separated those pages into what I would make now, what I would make when I was halfway to goal, and what I would make when I was at goal. Guess how many things were in the “now” pile. Five. And two of those were shoes. One of them was a pair of pants, and the other two were fairly innocuous shirts—with sleeves, of course.

I am in possession of literally hundreds of pictures of clothes that I like, and yet I can only give my fat self permission to wear three of the pieces? Why? People don’t point and laugh at me now; do I think that if I stop wearing giant T-shirts and track pants that they’re going to start?

Some time ago, when my favorite jeans were dirty, and maybe starting to get a little tight, I don’t really remember, I went out in public in pajama pants. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me! I was going to wear my damn pajama pants if I wanted to and everyone else could suck up their mortification! And no one pointed and laughed. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wore fluffy gorilla slippers out once or twice and if there was no pointing and laughing about that I am hard pressed to believe it’s coming due to anything else. So why is me wearing the clothes I want to wear—even dresses!—any different than my rebellious pajama wearing? It’s not, that’s how.

I don’t guarantee that I will be brave enough to post pictures of me wearing said clothes. But I can guarantee that I will be brave enough to wear them in public. And for me, that’s a huge step.

More bloggy goodness

I discovered Kate Harding's blog yesterday and I am shocked that I have lasted this long without it. This post is exactly what I want to say about my food issues, except a gajillion times more eloquent. You can definitely put me in the group of people afraid of what they will do if they have no restraints on their eating. It's like there's a gene that people who eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full got, and I'm missing it. Definitely read the comments on that post if you click on it.

Dealing with food is starting to get easier. I think my biggest issue right now is time/laziness. I really really love roasted broccoli and cauliflower, for example, but I usually make the stupid mistake of not starting dinner until it's time to eat. Roasting vegetables takes time that I don't want to take, so I skip it. And microwaved broccoli is just not the same thing. I don't like most prepared foods (see below for more on that) but they tend to be a go-to food here, because if the kids expect food at 6 and I get busy with other things until 5:50, they're not going to wait an extra hour so I can make something healthy. Frankly, I don't want to wait either.

There are some quote unquote "bad foods" that I used to love that now I'm not that into. I'm like a little kid--I eat something until I burn myself out on it and then it disgusts me. One example would be hot dogs and cheddarwurst, which are like bratwurst, but cheese-flavored. A year ago, when those were things we didn't eat very often because they were salty and full of junk, I could eat two cheddarwurst in a sitting, or three hot dogs. And half an hour later I wanted more because, you know, those aren't the most nutritionally dense foods. Then something happened and we started eating them a lot more, and now they gross me out. All I can taste when I eat them is salt and fat. That actually happened before, when I had my first son. I actually made a concerted effort to cook healthy foods and stuff that had previously been the norm--like Hamburger Helper or macaroni and cheese--was inedible. I hope to get to that point again. I just have to stop being lazy about cooking, I guess.

One problem that I'm still having is that my brain is still remembering that I like these foods. I will see a package of hot dogs and go, "Ooh! Hot dogs! Those sound good!" Then I stop and remember that I don't even like hot dogs. How weird is that that I don't even know what foods I like and don't like? Perhaps I should start carrying a list with me.

E and I went for a walk today. He's at the point now where he prefers to walk rather than ride, which is great because I can get by with one stroller. The obvious drawback is that he's three and tires easily. Our walk today was four blocks each way. In winter that's fine, but in the summer it's nothing. I'd really like one of these but I don't want to spend more than $200 on something that we won't need in a year or two. I hope to make the walks a regular thing. It's November, maybe by spring or summer we'll have worked up to a longer distance.