Eat the Damn Cake

Yesterday I looked in the bathroom mirror and I thought, “I want to be like that girl.” It was sort of an out of body experience, because obviously, I am that girl. How could I even have that thought? (I spent the day before fasting and singing from sundown to the next sundown, so that might have something to do with it.)

“Cool!” I thought, a millionth of a second later. “I am her!”

And then I felt proud of myself.

Good job– you thought such a nice thing about yourself. As though my subconscious is a kid who just shared her favorite toy with another kid.

She snatched it back again.

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Through the world of body image blogging/tumblring, I met a woman named Erin who just came out with a book called How Much Do You Weigh? The book features pictures of women, posing,  with their weight listed on their images. I thought the project sounded interesting. I asked its creator to talk about it with us here. This is Erin:

I know a lot of people.  I have quite a few close friends, and nearly all of my family lives close by.

I have no idea what any of them weigh.  Even my oldest and dearest friends, because this is just not something we’re supposed to talk about.

I only know what I weigh, because the experience of stepping on the scale is an isolated moment,and  my eyes are the only pair present.  And I never see anyone else’s scale during the moment that they step on it.

So I have no gauge.

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Dear Three-Sided Dressing Room Mirror,

I couldn’t let it go. I know I said I would. But I can’t. We need to talk.

OK, you’re supposed to be helping me, here. Right? Isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that your job? Maybe you don’t like your job, but in today’s economy, you should probably be a little more grateful. And a lot nicer.

I’m not trying to accuse you of outright lying, but I think that you might be bending the truth a little. I have looked at myself plenty of times. I have some mirrors in my apartment. And I don’t look like that. Not completely. I’m really not that bad. At least, I’m not all of those bad things at once!

Before I met you, I never thought that I in any way resembled a duck. Now I’m not sure. And that makes me nervous.

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A cool and successful fat acceptance writer approached me, along with some other body-image bloggers, and asked us to submit essays for a book she’s getting published. It sounded like an awesome project. I wanted to participate. But I felt a little weird about it. Like I might be stepping on some toes.

So I wrote to her, and I tried to figure out how to say “I might not be fat enough,” in the politest way possible. It was difficult. But I think I did it.

She must have missed the email, because yesterday, I got another call for submissions from her. “Hey fatties!” it began.

“Um,” I wrote (because I sound awkward even over email), “I’d love to do a piece about accepting weight gain, and feeling good about getting bigger. But I don’t want to offend anyone either. I don’t think I…qualify.”

She wrote back. “It’s about whether or not you identify as fat. If you do, that’s fine. If you don’t, I’ll take you off the list.”

“Wait…” I said, stupidly. “I don’t think I know what you mean by ‘identify as fat’.”

She didn’t respond.

This was all very interesting.

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Last night I had a dream that my breasts were bigger. I was bigger. I saw a picture of myself and I wanted to give myself a hug, because I looked so comfortable and squishy. And because it was a dream, I gave myself a hug. It was really nice.

(I had long hair again in the dream, too. Sorry, I’m bad at drawing hands.)

And then, the way dreams do, it shifted, and I was meeting all of these famous people somehow. I was in the back of a limo, surrounded by movie stars and the very rich. It was an uncreative American fantasy. Some of them were talking with me, but a moment later, this model got into the car. She had her blond hair pulled up, and her face had that taut look model’s faces have, and it didn’t matter what she was wearing because she could make those sacks designers are always designing look sexy. And suddenly no one cared that I was there. And it was clear that they wouldn’t care again.

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