Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Sunday, Jun. 20, 2004 - 12:08 a.m.

So, I have made two new weblog discoveries, both of which are really well-written. Like, again, I wish I were all pithy and cool with the writing. Instead I am placating myself with the hope that I am at least mildly amusing sometimes, and that I write pretty off-the-cuff, so it's okay not to be all polished and a great writer. Right? Right? RIGHT???

C'mon, damn it; reassure me.

Bygones.

The first of my discoveries is Losing the Cow. LOVE her. I really like her "Mission Statement", for lack of a better term. And that's my crappy term, not hers. She does not seem to be so presumptuous as to claim to have a mission statement, and certainly doesn't term that entry as such. But it does seem to be something slightly more than an explanation, at least in attitude. Whatever. Just go read. You'll probably be glad you did. She's a good writer. I think I have to hate her.

(And by the by, "Mission Statement" is a really stupid term. Yes, it is; shut up. Bygones.)

The second of my discoveries today is Tomato Nation, which is just quite possibly written by the best writer/blogger ever. Seriously. I wish I could write this well. At least, her September 11 entry, which I very much recommend you read. It's just that damn good. And moving. It's pretty much the best damned thing I've read on that day. I got a really good sense of what being near the WTC was like for her, and how the aftermath passed. I kinda got chills as I was reading about how she had to walk home from the area, and I remembered seeing the streams of people walking home on the television that day, and it's just bizarre to think about how each of us spent the time surrounding that event, how different it was for each of us, and that she was one of the hundreds of thousands of people I watched walking home. I don't know; for me that sort of makes a connection to her story. It humanizes that great stream of people, it lets me be one of them, from 2800 miles away. Whatever; I tend to be way too empathetic with others. It's one of the things that makes living harder. Just ignore me. But go read her story, and read the entry about Operation Find Don, and if you know Don, maybe help get the two of them back together to share a beer and say thanks. So many things were ripped apart that day. I just kinda like the idea of helping put some of it back together. I hope she finds him.

The Part About the Dieting
Fucking points. I hate points. How the hell am I ever supposed to eat enough, let alone freaking *snack* on 20 measly points a day?? Seriously. ::sigh::

You know, I was one of those people who ate whatever the hell I liked, as much as I liked, all the time, and never gained a pound. Except I had hypoglycemia from about the age of 13 to just a few years ago, so I could actually *lose* weight eating a package of Twinkies a day for a week. Which is actually not as cool as it sounds, because I craved sugar constantly, but I wasn't supposed to have it, and it made me really sick after I'd eat anything with sugar in it. But sometimes when I started to feel "fat" ::eye roll:: in college, I'd munch a pack of Twinkies every day for a week and drop 10 pounds, get back down to 107 or 105, and life was good.

And then I hit my 30's. And someone somewhere - probably in a town in East Germany filled with nasty little hateful people, the kind who used to shoot me dirty looks at the gym � someone flipped a switch, and I put on 22 pounds in 2 months, 10 of it the first 2 weeks. I�d worn all my jeans, and when I washed all of them and pulled them out of the drier and put that first freshly-laundered pair on, I was like, �huh; my jeans have shrunk.� Because, I was a size 5 pretty much all my life, from 16 on. 36.5� hips, 26� waist. I was proud of that waist. It was a full 10 inches smaller than my hips, and then some. It was a waist others would kill for, and I knew it. I loved it. It was mine, and it was wonderful, and I didn�t have to do anything for it. It just, was. ::sigh:: What a beautiful, gorgeous waist.

Nice ass, too.

Alas. Now, I weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 145. That�s not as huge a jump as it sounds � I mean, it�s not a jump of 40 pounds � because over the years, I gradually put on weight until I�d slowly worked my way up to 118. Which I didn�t like. It felt really a little uncomfortable, and I was yearning for the days of 113, but that 5 pounds was like a bulldog. It had grabbed hold of my ass and wasn�t about to let go. And it didn�t look bad anyway, other than being a little less firm than I wanted it to be, and I figured at 30something, one was expected to have a certain amount of weight, and if 118 was my lot in life, then that was just fine and something I could live with. I just made sure to suck my tummy in whenever TB saw me naked or when I was wearing a little crop top. My favorite outfit was a pair of overalls, worn unbuttoned, with a little red middy tank top. I looked so cute. And I felt sexy as hell, because TB loved that outfit, and any time I wore it, he could not keep his hands to himself. Man, the attention I got in that outfit. It was great. For the first time in my life, I actually liked my body. I didn�t feel gawky or unattractive or invisible. I felt just the right amount of curvy and hot, and the guy I thought was totally hot totally dug me, and that outfit was the key to the whole thing.

And now I can�t fit my frigging fat ass into it. Because 118 pounds suddenly became 128. Which became 133. Which turned into 139. Which fully burgeoned into 142, and then I lost 10 of it climbing millions of stairs in France and came back home, all newly happy with my more willowy self, and then promptly stacked back on that 10 plus 5 more.

Fuck.

145.

It sits, like a monolith silhouetted against the horizon, mocking me. Laughing it�s big, booming �fuck you� 2001-Also-Sprach-Zarathustra laugh. And no amount of uphill walking, no amount of starvation, no amount of dieting, no number of frigging points is helping me.

Fucking 145.

It just hangs on me and drags, pulling me down and making me feel like a fucking tub of lard. (yes, I changed metaphors; deal) And I know that other people � other women � look at me and think get over your whiny little size 8, perfect ass, but the thing is, my ass isn�t perfect, any more than theirs is. Sure, it might be the ass they want, but it isn�t the one I want, the one I used to have. It doesn�t fit into any of my old jeans or old clothes, or the cute little short dresses I used to wear that TB loved, that made me feel cute and adorable and desirable as hell to him, and I don�t look like a sporty girl-on-the-go anymore, I look like a frump. Like someone�s frumpy, middle-aged mother. And I don�t mean to bag on women who decide to go that route, because frankly, I don�t give a rat's ass what someone else looks like, and I rarely, if ever, notice a woman and go �wow, did she go the frump route, or what?� but I do see frumpy characters on tv and in the movies, and now I am becoming one of them, and I hate it. I don�t want to be the frumpy character, I want to be the Keira Knightly character. Or the Kate Hudson. Or even the Goldie Hawn character would be fine, because Goldie is absolutely adorable, and never looks frumpy, unless she�s supposed to, and even then she ends up looking pert and perky before the thing is done. But no, I am looking remarkably Meryl Streepish, and moreso every day. And it sucks. Which I don't mean to bag on Meryl, because frankly, the woman is an incredible actress, and I think she should do more comedy, because she�s really good at it, but let�s face it: she is rather patrician, and patrician women can simply not be called cute and perky. It does not work. But damn it, I want to be cute and perky. I want to be a hot chick, even if I myself don't think I'm all that and a bag of chips; I want to feel like maybe my ass is. But nooooo. I am becoming patrician. And that? That just sucks. ::sigh::

Peace out,
Katie

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