smart, sexy, fabulous

every time i’m in a store that sells magazines, i always look at justin and say “one day i will look like that” as i point to the latest issue of vogue, glamour, mademoiselle (which are all ironically owned by the same company).
i always see this breathtaking beauty with boobs out to here and legs so long even that drives me insane with my 34 inch inseam. i look at what i’m holding in my hand, whether it would be a can of diet coke or a bag of something fat free, and suddenly start chastising myself for not being the chick on the rag.
okay, i know that something like 8% of the population is that model-icious, however, whenever someone hears that i’m 6′ tall, the impression i always feel is that they expect me to be -that- small. and i’m not. and there is no way on this earth that i could weigh that little and not be in the hospital.
it angers me, on many levels that i feel this way. it angers me that i, after 26 years, can’t feel comfortable in my own skin. it angers me that i can’t accept myself as i am, and it also angers me that i can’t be the chick on the mag.
living in a world, at least in my mind, that feels so image driven, my personalities are always at war with each other. i could go out with friends and have guilt trips about eating pasta. on the other hand, i attempt to try and find solace in something and eat my fat free ice cream drowned in hershey’s syrup (which is ironically, a fat free food). diets, pills, self-hypnosis, i feel like i’ve tried them all.
to me, i feel like a freak. justin says i’m beautiful (and i quip he’s only saying that because he is sleeping with me), and every man i’ve met thinks i’m beautiful (again, because i feel that they are saying that because they are with me). getting a man has never been a problem (“lisa,” justin says, “you have a big ego.”), but feeling good about myself has been.
i’ve always felt that i’ve been at war with myself because of that. i have always feel that i either do one of two things:

• lose weight
• gain weight to wear lane bryant clothes

my body is in this in between stage: too big to buy ‘regular’ clothes and too small for the ‘fat stores’.
this past summer, justin and i found several stores that catered to the ‘plus’ size woman. i found the funky clothes that i liked without feeling awful about the size. so i thought. one time, i grabbed this really cute long blue patterned skirt, and it said it was a size 3x. i tried it on. a tad too small. the skirt was on sale, and i figured i was just bloating so i bought it anyway. i took it home and showed my roommate who put it on. now, my roommate wears a size 9/11, and the skirt fit perfectly. she and i started laughing about the irony of a size 3x skirt that was made for ‘my size’, and fits my roommate instead.
t’s a joke.several months ago, i made plans to meet sonya and group of friends for a night of bar hopping. justin and i had been driving with michael all over scenic highway 1, from sf to santa cruz. we had gotten home really late, and i was planning on just jumping in the shower and getting dressed. after picking out my clothes and laying them out, i started drying myself off, and started getting dressed. my shirt felt tight, my skirt even tighter. when i did my hair, my face looked bloated and unreal. i felt totally disgusted with myself and started crying about how fat i was and how miserable i felt. i quickly got undressed and put my clothes away. i put my fav sweats on and sat in front of the computer, doing nothing but moping about my lack of self-esteem.
justin keeps telling me how much of a beautiful body i had. what wonderful skin, and how curvy i am. he keeps telling me, over and over, about how great i look in certain outfits and how men react to me. he’s just saying that cos he’s fucking me.
i recall this one time, alan and i had gone bra shopping. we were wandering around this store looking at all the pretty bras, when alan said to me: “with your face and cindy crawford’s body, you could make a lot of money (modelling).” i grew so angry at that, and to this day, i can still us in my hindsight, in the store and how i felt. and how his words haunt me to this day, six years later.
i guess the stigma of being the ‘fat girl’ in my younger years have never really left me. of all the times i’ve been set up on blind dates to be dumped later on because i was ‘too big’ (or too tall or too this or too that). or that when i was involved with someone, that i could never really feel comfortable being naked with them because i was always conscious about my size. it never mattered to me what they thought (honestly), it was what i thought they thought about me that made the difference (in my mind).
i’ve always tried to be honest with myself and my body image. the days of wanting to be a size 6 is long gone, and i’m comfortable with that. i just want to feel and look good, to my own design. but when i see magazines, that cater to my generation, showing 6′ models, with size 2 body, it piss’s me off. and i still don’t get why, after 20 years of feminism, that those magazines are still talking about ‘how to get the man you want!’ (which ironically still applies to those ditz’s who are too insecure with themselves.) or some other crap about this that or them some. it always has pictures of these super-skinny models with their model bf’s. real life isn’t like that.
nearly a year ago, i lamented about the same thing, and i had started a section on my web pages called ‘life’ that was in tuned with the more current issues at hand then my usual blathering. i had included an image from the body shop (which promotes beautiful women in all ages and sizes and has a great skin care products to boot) and a rant similar to this one. the image showed a ‘big woman’ and the face looked like barbie. the makers of barbie were pretty indigent about how having that ‘similarity’ on the body shop’s page, and the body shop was forced to put an x in the middle of the doll’s face. the doll was called ruby btw.
i got a lot of email from strangers telling me how great it was to find something so positive about being a ‘bbw’ (i hate that acronym, and what it stands for. i always feel like i should be weighing 300lbs and be called bertha). and it’s not that i was feeling positive about the whole, it just piss’s me the right off that we can’t just accept each other for who we are and not what we are.
i won’t kid myself and think that everyone thinks i’m beautiful, because it’s not true: i mean, this is what makes us all induhviduals is the fact that what we like is all different. it just pisses me off that magazines, retailers, clothiers, and everyone in the fashion industry keeps trying to push down our throats that we need to all not be larger than a size 6. it’s fucking ridiculous and no one should have to stand it.
but we do stand it, and it’s sickening.
recently, a new magazine is in town, touting to the plus sized women (starting at size 12 and above). so far, from what i’ve seen, the magazine has been a success and people are clamoring that it’s been a long time coming. thinking along those lines, i subscribed to the mag, and i’m going to see what it’s all about. will it actually cater to fashion that i like (the high falutin crap/trendy crap) or is it going to be the retread of the now defunct mag BBW that pretty much showed big ass women wearing clothing from omar the tent maker?
i guess we will wait and see.