What if No One's Watching?

I come from a long line of "full-figured" women. As they themselves would say it, fat women. Not fat just because they love to eat (although they do, and they eat with a voracity and lust for life that I admire and aspire to), but fat because they were meant to be that way. Fat because thousands of years of Dutch peasant stock built them sturdy; fat because they have worked for generations in fields and on concrete diner floors; fat because there is nothing waifish about their personalities; fat because when you grow up poor, you never, ever leave food on your plate. Mostly, though, they are fat because their mothers were fat, their grandmothers were fat, their aunts and cousins were fat, and fat is their way of life.

The language of being fat has surrounded me all my life. You are "built like a brick shithouse," you have "arms like a blacksmith," or "your ass is wider than an ax handle." Only typing those words now do I see them as insults, which in the society where I live, they most certainly are. And yet at home it was a family reunion contest between my grandmother and her sisters to see whose ass really was as wide as an ax handle, and I've never felt anything but pride at the sight of my mom's "blacksmith arms."

Our society tries to make us believe that fat should be associated with laziness, sloth, indolence. Growing up, though, fat women were associated with competancy. My mother and aunts are the most competent women I've ever known. They can and do take care of themselves, and take care of their kids, just the way I imagine my grandmother took care of (and still takes care of) them. Being fat doesn't just mean they can lift heavy things, move you if you are in their way, slap the shit out of you if you mouth off, it also means that they have the best laps in the world, that no matter how bad things are, there is always something soft about them, something that means home.

It is clear to me, at 25, that it would not be at all difficult to follow in my mother's footsteps where body weight is concerned. It's still kind of a shock, because I was a really skinny (and embarrassed about being skinny) kid. And it has taken me years to realize that yes, I do have "child bearing hips," and they aren't going to go away no matter how many times I say I don't want children. But now that I am ten years away from skinny, skinny is the biggest compliment I could get. I can't capture the sense of competency and female completeness I see in my mother and her sisters, no matter how high the number on my scale gets. When I see it in myself, being big isn't about being competent and able to take care of myself, and being soft isn't about being rounded and feminine and feeling like home. I am horrified by my own blacksmith arms, and I would never in a million years lean over and let someone measure my ass against an ax handle, much less do it laughingly year after year. For me, coming from this long line of beautiful, strong, fat women is a curse. I resent them because their genes and their inherited eating habits have cursed me to a life of sucking in, counting calories, being ashamed to shop in a plus-sized store.

So what has changed between them and me? It would be easy to blame living in the city, or blame the generation gap, but that's not it. The simple truth is that I got vain and greedy. I thought I could have my size 10 body and still have their competence, their joy, their love. And now I have none of it. I'm fat, but I'm not part of their tradition. My arms may look just like my mom's, but she wears her's without a thought, as part of who she is, while I try to hide mine. I don't revel in the things my body can do, and I certainly don't use it to make my living. I eat with shame, guilt, petulance, but never gusto. And I wonder, since I'm never going to be skinny, if I can learn to be fat like them?

I don't know that this is really a meme, but I hope folks treat it like one and take it back to their blogs and LJs. There has been a lot of bad body image going around in the circles in which I travel, and a lot of it has been coming from me, and it sucks. So here are some things about my body that are good:

Things I Like About My Body

1. I have large, strong, capable, athletic-looking arms and legs.
2. I have great hair--thick but still soft.
3. I have really good skin.
   
4. My breasts are nicely shaped and firm and nearly exactly the same size.
5. I have a movie-star quality back.
6. My ears are really cute.
7. Because I am so tall, I can usually see really well at concerts.
8. I can easily balance or carry things on my hip.
9. I'm tall enough to carry off wearing a dress over pants without looking like I'm 5.
10. I have tattoos and piercings that I picked out and feel comfortable and natural to me.
    

Blogging has kind of fallen off the "To Do" list this week. Actually, I have part of several entries written and saved as drafts, but finishing them has fallen off the list.

But there is a reason.

The reason is that WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!

Well, let's back up. We're buying a house. We have an offer on a house that should be accepted in writing by the seller today. We have an inspection on a house on Tuesday. We have financing offers for a house from several reputable companies. But we have to wait until April 25, then we will actually HAVE the house. Which, given everything we're going to have to do between now and then, is just fine.

And what a house it is. To say it is everything I dreamed of and more sounds really trite, but it honestly it. I could not be happier with it. I can't figure out a way to link to the pictures without linking to the address, which doesn't seem smart, so that will have to wait. Instead, I will bore you with the list of things it has that I wanted but didn't think we could get:

• French doors. There are actually FOUR sets of French doors in the house--a triple set in the living room and a set in the master bedroom, all of which open into the most amazing yard (garden is really a better word for it).
• Doors outside from the bedroom (see above) for easy letting the dog out when we're sleeping in. :)
• An actual "master suite," with master bath and walk-in closet.
• A good-sized indoor laundry room/mudroom/pantry with lots of storage.
• An attached garage (two-car even!).
• A beautiful, residential neighborhood that is also just a few blocks from major city thoroughfares.
• Location a few blocks from a public park.
• 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.
• A beautiful, amazing, magical, storybook yard, complete with pond/waterfall, arbor, flagstone paths, amazing plants...
• A huge built-in bookcase taking up one whole living room wall.
• Poured concrete and butcher block kitchen counters.
• Open kitchen shelving rather than upper cabinets (but there are hand-carved lower cabinets).
• Wood privacy fence.
• Corner lot (neighbor on only one side!).
• Open kitchen/living room/dining room.
• Uniqueness (the listing calls it an "artist or landscaper's dream house," and it really is). This includes multicolored tile in the entry, seagrass carpeting, and a million other unique and lovely features.

So last night I'm on the Stair Stepper, listening to an audiobook I just downloaded. It's Confessions Of A Reformed Dieter: How I Dropped Eight Dress Sizes and Took My Life Back (perfect for the Stair Stepper, don't you think?). So I am listening and huffing and puffing along, and then she says it. Something that has been in the back of my mind since Tracey Gold was on the cover of People in 1992. Something that other people have thought and said as well, but never so clearly, at least not within my hearing.

Sad story articles about anorexic celebrities are not meant to be warnings, or just tear-jerkers. They are instruction manuals. The pictures they print of the "deathly skinny" celebrity aren't for shock value, they are something to aspire to.

So I wanted to illustrate what I was saying in that post about anorexia.

Here are some pictures of people the media has called anorexic/done "anorexic how-to" stories about:

Mary-Kate Olsen

Tracey Gold

Whitney Houston

Now, here are some women the media thinks look great:

Sarah Jessica Parker

Various soap opera stars (Carly from General Hospital and Bianca from All My Children. Please don't ask why I know that.)

Tell me, how big a difference do YOU see?

What's worse? Renee Zellwegger (whom, as I have said before, I really like).

She sometimes looks like this:

And sometimes looks like this:

Now, which one of those is supposed to be the healthy weight?

Handmade custom purses, especially those made out of vintage fabrics and/or old clothes.

The best site I found for them is SaraAnn Designs.--I love that she tells you what clothes she used to make her bags. I also like Sylvia Designs and think there are some really cute things at Baby Peach.

I'm also a super big fan of the sites that let you custom design your own bag. 1154 LILL Studio is probably the best of these, and I love how interactively their site works, but I am also impressed with the wide vintage fabric selection at mandy b. bags.

Anyway, just wanted to give a shout-out to these women, because I think they are doing a great thing on several leves. First, female self-employment is good, good, good. Secondly, original couture is most excellent, and what could be better than a one-of-a-kind bag? Finally, to the women using old clothes and vintage fabrics, extra props for making something old new again.

Now the question is how to limit myself to only ordering from ONE of you...

I am a bit of a Peter Pan afictionado. I have spent my whole life listening to stories about how, at age 2, I could recite the entire Disney Peter Pan 45 (yes, I had 45's, and a little blue and white striped record player on which to play them). When I was 4 and my dad and stepmom took me to Disneyland, my dad spent a very warm afternoon trying to chase down the little boy in tights they had playing Peter so I could get my picture taken with him.

As I've gotten older, I've kept my love of Peter Pan. In fact, the older I get, the more I understand the pull of Neverland and the magic inherent in the notion of never growing up. The sad truth is that I don't believe in fairies, and I could clap my hands to keep Tink alive, but it would be hollow. I miss the me that could clap in earnest.

Anyway, being a Peter Pan lover, I've seen most of the versions that have come up--the old Disney version, a couple of different versions on TV...I've even seen it on stage once. And, of course, Hook, which I've seen four or five times. I have not horribly disliked any of these versions, but I've not felt they really captured the essence of what I felt listening to that 45 as a kid, either.

Well I felt it tonight. We went to see Finding Neverland, and for a few minutes, in a dark theater full of people who were probably not nearly as moved as I was, I was a kid again, reciting that record. It was a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

Given my emotional attachment to the story, I probably can't review the film or any of its stars with anything approaching objectivity or accuracy. However, given the Oscar nominations, at least a few people seem to have agreed with me that Johnny Depp was magical in the film. I've been a Johnny Depp fan for years, and have never doubted his capacity for magic, even in roles that wouldn't have at all special otherwise. He was a fairy tale prince in Chocolat, and even his silly Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean had a bit of magic. The Johnny Depp I saw tonight, though, is pure old school. I haven't seen him this good since Edward Scissorhands (and that's been...gulp...15 years), and the little bit of his Benny & Joon role that was reprised here would have made the film well-worth seeing even if everything else about it had sucked.

Besides Depp's wonderful performance, Finding Neverland also benefits from Kate Winslet, who is fast becoming my favorite actress. She's not as remarkable here as she was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and honestly I'll be floored if she can ever pull off anything that good again), but she's damn good. It reminds me a little bit of some of her other performances as well, actually (no, NOT Titanic!). More than any of her other roles, I think it hearkened back to Iris, which was a great movie, and you should see it if you haven't.

The supporting case is top-notch as well. Dustin Hoffman is tolerable and doesn't get much screen time, and Julie Christie is awesome. I also really enjoyed Radha Mitchell as Barrie's wife, who I've only seen before in Pitch Black. She is also in Woody Allen's upcoming film, called Melinda and Melinda, if you are interested in checking her out (it would honestly take more than one good performance from an actress to get me to sit through a Woody Allen movie, especially one that also has Will Ferrell in it, but to each her own). The most impressive part of the supporting cast, though, is the kids. I like all of four of the actors who play the boys, but my personal favorite was Nick Roud, who plays George, the eldest.

Aside from great acting and a top-notch (though I suspect historically embellished--I am going to have to find something to read about Barrie's life to find out) story, the movie also benefits from great visuals. The semi-animated sequences are among the best parts, I think, and the fluid movement between "reality" (Barrie dancing with his dog in the park) and "fantasy" (Barrie dressed as a ringmaster, dancing with a bear in a circus ring surrounded by clowns) is really beautiful and gives a great visual for how Barrie's mind must have worked. Another thing I loved was the way the showed the stage Barrie's play was performed on, complete with low-tech special effects, but you were still able to see why the play would be convincing. I've seen other movies try to do this less successfully (Shakespeare in Love comes to mind), and it can be disastrous, but it seems to work here.

All in all, I'd highly recommend the movie. It's one of the best I've seen in quite some time. It begins to make up for director Marc Forster's previous work (Monster's Ball...), and I'm almost ready to forgive Johnny Depp for Secret Window. But not quite. We'll see how I feel after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...

There are a group of people in my life who mean a whole lot to me, and I have never met many of them. I've never seen their faces, I've never heard their voices, I don't know how they smell. I know them only by the words they choose to use and way they choose to use them. I know them only on some subjects, and only in strange, punctuated time frames. In the shorthand we use, we don't know each other "IRL". In real life.

It seems to me that our shorthand is misleading. The parts of my life I share with them are real. They support they have shown me during some of my worst times over the past few years is certainly real. The camaraderie I feel with them is real, and the disappointment I feel when they let me down is real.

Why do we require physical proximity to believe things? These people of whom I speak are scattered all over the globe, and yet I am closer to many of them than I am to people I see every day. I speak to them from my heart more, I show more of myself to them. At first, this may have been because I felt safe in my anonymity, safe because they were so far away. Now it is because I know them, I trust them, I consider them my friends. And just like my other friends, the way I feel about them goes beyond political allegiances and common interests. Somewhere along the line screen names and avatars turned into people. If I lost some political efficacy when that happened, so be it. I am not sorry.

*Title from Ani

We all owe a great debt of gratitude, I think, to those people with whom we can spend time and leave feeling better than we did when we came, people who can remind us without even trying (and probably without even knowing what they are doing) who we used to be, who we want to be, who we meant to be all along.

Thank you so much.

I have two friends, both of whom very much enjoy singing and who sing well. One of them is a very old friend, one is a fairly new friend. Both are far too many miles away. Both have voices I wish I could hear more often.

Until just the past few days, both also had something I envied very, very much. I have always wanted to be able to sing. My mother loves to sing, but can't hold a tune; I inherited both attributes and started belting things out at an early age. I have been told to shut up, that I "can't sing" my whole life. After years of that, I still sing, but never when other people can hear me.

Well I've decided I am going to sing. It came to me that it wasn't the actual voices of my two friends that I was envying as much as it was their ability to let loose, to fill the air around them with the joy or the pain in their songs. Though she was not addressing me when she said it, one of my friends was recently talking about singing in church, and she pointed out that what the Book says is to "make a joyful noise." Well, my noise may well not be on tune, or even anywhere approximating it, but it will be joyful.

I've stolen this from an entry a few days back on Bitch, Ph.D..

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

We actually had a long midnight discussion about this once when I was in college. I can't remember what I said then, but now I think I'd go with People's History of the United States. Not fiction, I know, and quite a lot to memorize, but it's the first thing that came to mind. The Beauty Myth would be another contender.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Hasn't everyone? The first one I remember having was on Sodapop Curtis from The Outsiders. Honestly, though, even before that, it was probably Harriet the Spy. Most recently I crushed on both of the main characters from The Time Traveller's Wife.

The last book you bought is:
Hrm...I'm not sure. The last book I remember buying was Temptress: From Original Bad Girls to Women on Top.

The last book you read:
Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food

What are you currently reading?
When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing Yourself from Food and Weight Obsession. Sensing a pattern?

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
The Clown of God
Hayden Herrera's biography of Frida Kahlo (this is obviously the only way I would ever get through it)
Anything by Andrea Dworkin (see above)
Some complete works of the Bronte sisters collection
A really great art book

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
Honestly, I probably won't pass it on, but I'd like it if Frog, Melinda, and Emilin to do it. I'd also be curious to see what G. has to say.

I have to recommend Shannon's Palm Sunday entry over at The-Blog-Formerly-Known-As-Waiting-For-Nat (Peter's Cross Station now, I think). It is brilliant, much better than I could have written about being in church this past Sunday, but very close to how I felt.

Feminists have a lot to fight against. I mean, obviously there is the Patriarchy (TM) in general, but there are also a million small, insidious things that make feminist progress so hard.

One of them, as I am rediscovering over the past few days, is that women give up on each other far too easily.

I could give you a dime for every woman I know who hasn't stayed with a loser guy for too long at some point in her life (and this doesn't just mean boyfriends and husbands--fathers, brothers, and friends all fit into this category as well) and still have plenty of change in the emergency jar. Women are socially programmed to never give up on men, no matter what they do. Even when they are non-responsive, even when they are mean spirited, even when they are abusive. Women find the ability within themselves to keep giving, keep trying, just keep on, often for far longer than is healthy or good. Giving up on other women, however, is a whole other thing.

This goes beyond just judging each other harshly, which we also do. This is about writing each other off, thinking that other women are just not worth the trouble, not worth arguing with, not worth teaching and learning from, just plain not worth it. Rather than the innumerable chances we give men to learn, to change, to apologize, to explain, we give each other so very few. How many women have you known with whom you lost touch for reasons you can no longer even recall, mostly because they were so minor and could have so easily been mended if one or both of you had just been willing to keep on keeping on?

Why do we do it? I think partially it's about our self-worth, and how we are taught to view the worth of other women. You have only to look at the myriad of women throwing their best girlfriends over for the guy of the week to see where our priorities are supposed to lie. Sometimes, not giving up takes a sacrifice, it takes other things having to be shelved for a bit, and we're just not as willing to do that for women as we are for men.

Just as we are taught that the value of women is lower than that of men, we are simultaneously taught to expect more from women than from men. We are harder on each other when we screw up because it's less expected, and I can even remember saying to other women, in anger, "I'd expect that shit from a man, but not from you!" This double standard puts us in the position of thinking that women's small transgressions are bigger than they really are, and of not being able to accurately gauge how angry we should be.

Another part of it, I think, is that it is easier and safer for us to get angry and stay angry with each other than it is to get or stay angry with men. This is something that can be seen, for example, when a man leaves his girlfriend or cheats on her with another woman. Who is the bad guy in this scenario? In my experience, the bulk of the hate is generally directed towards the "other woman." Why is that? Why would a woman have higher expectations of another women, who she may not even know, than of a man who she presumably has a relationship with? Could it be, in part, because we can feel fairly secure that if we get into a disagreement with another woman, we won't come back from it with a black eye or a broken arm?

The bottom line is that, no matter how many reasons there are for women to give up on each other so easily, it's hurting us. If we could give each other the benefit of the doubt in even half as many cases as we give it to men, we'd be so much stronger.

"Jesus Was a Capricorn"
by Kris Kristofferson

Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods.
He believed in love and peace and never wore no shoes.
Long hair, beard and sandals and a funky bunch of friends.
Reckon they'd just nail him up if He come down again.

Help yourself, brother.
Help yourself, Gentlemen.
Help yourself Reverend.

Do your politics fit between the headlines?
Are they written in newsprint,
are they distant?
Mine are crossing an empty parking lot.
They are a woman walking home,
at night, alone.
They are six strings that sing
and wood that hums against my hipbone.
-Ani DiFranco

So...things have been coming to light, lately. Things I don't want to write, or say, or even think, but I need to get out so that I can carry on. Like everything else, it's a learning experience, but this has been a particularly brutal one.

It is not enough to say that you are a feminist if you hate women. That much has become abundantly clear. If at the end of the self-righteous ranting day, you cannot treat other women with love and respect, as sisters, then nothing you ranted about means anything. It is easy to talk. It is easy to read Dworkin and MacKinnon (well, not that easy, but go with the rhetoric here). It is easy to take Women's Studies classes. It is easy to learn what the feminist party line of any given group is and to spout it ad naseaum. It is less easy, though, to listen to other women's stories and value them, even when they directly conflict with your own experience. It is difficult to value other women enough to treat them with patience and kindness. It is hard to move through the world in a way that shows respect to the very people who we have been taught our entire lives to view as competition, at best.

In recent days, I've had some firsthand experience with women who say they are feminists, who talk a good game, but who are unable or unwilling to listen when I speak, to treat me with anything resembling respect. These are women I used to look up to, model my feminism after. But I've had my moment of doubt, and come through it even more certain that the best thing I can do, the most feminist thing I can do, is to be true to myself and how I feel, and to be secure enough in that to treat other women as I would like to be treated. Theory and all of its resulting arguments are secondary--how I treat people is real. And how I treat people is and will continue to be the important part. To hell with their theories; to hell with the idea that I have to live up to a vision of feminism created by someone else. I know what I have to do.

For quite some time now, I have been discussing (arguing) my sexuality with people both online and off. Mostly, the contentious part of this discussion, for me, has been surrounding whether or not I identify myself as straight. For years I've bucked against claiming that title, because as far as I'm concerned, it's not accurate. I'm not straight. I'm bisexual.

People have explained to me (more times than I'd like to admit) that even though I am bisexual, that identity is largely internal, because I am in a heterosexual relationship, have been for a long time, and get the same heterosexual privledges as the next straight girl. For a long time, I found this line of reasoning threatening. Because when I look in the mirror and see my sexuality, I see bisexual. Because--duh--I like girls and boys. Because I don't want my past experiences or the possibility of my future ones to take a backseat to what I am doing/who I am with right now.

But also, if I am being honest, because I didn't want to be called straight. Because straight felt like a dirty word, something normal and cliche that I didn't want to be. Something that made me less interesting, less cool. Similar to the way I feel every time I go through all of the "interesting" nationalities and then mark the box next to "Caucasian" or, worse yet, "White."

And that reasoning just plain sucks. There is absolutely no reason for me or anyone else to be ashamed of being straight! However, the fact of the matter is that it is absolutely true that heterosexual privledge exists, and that it applies to me. It is absolutely true that if I don't choose to go out of my way to "out" myself as a bisexual (and even sometimes when I do), people see me as the norm--a heterosexual woman. A woman in a relationship with a man. This benefits me in a million ways, most of which I probably couldn't even identify. And just like not being able to admit that you benefit from white privledge is racist, not being able to admit that you benefit from heterosexual privledge is homophobic, or, at the very least, heterosexist.

After realizing this, I knew I needed to think of a new title for myself. If I wasn't in a relationship, or if I was in a relationship with a woman, then bisexual would cut it. In a relationship with a man, it doesn't.

And here is what I came up with: functionally straight, or, if you prefer, practicing heterosexual. I think those are fair terms. They give credence to both my privledged status and to the fact that it is not the be-all and end-all of everything I have ever been or will ever be. They are a bit clunky, maybe, but bisexual is no walk in the park to define, either.

In Spanish, there are two different verbs for "to be." "Ser" tells you the nature of something, what it is permanently (for example, "Soy un mujer" or "I am a woman."), "Estar" tells you the transient nature of something, or what it is right now (like "Estoy enfermo," or "I am sick."). With estar, you can pretty much assume "right now" or "presently" at the end of the sentance. Using these verbs in my mind helps me clarify my sexuality for myself. My permanent nature, my "ser" is bisexual, but my right now, my "estar" is heterosexual.

I'm happy with that.

Note: This is catharsis. It's how I feel. If you don't like it, if you don't want to read it, if it offends you,if you have body issues of your own that it exaserbates, just stop. Please.

I hate my body. I hate these breasts. Where the fuck did I get these breasts? They don't look like my breasts. My breasts are small. I hate the flaps of fat swinging under my arms like a fucking whattle. I hate my belly rolls. I hate the cellulite on the outsides of my thighs and the stretch marks on the insides of them. I hate hate hate my ass. I hate not being able to fit into any cute clothes, or even any of the clothes I wore last summer. I hate being "plus sized." I hate shopping at Lane Bryant. It doesn't make me feel like a "Real Woman (TM)," it makes me feel like a fucking manitee. I hate people saying, "you're just tall." 30 pounds ago I was just tall.

The bottom line is that I hate being fat. I hate everything about it. On the more acceptable side, I hate feeling like I am carrying extra weight, I hate the extra stress on my knees. I hate having my archless feet swollen at the end of the day. I hate it that I can see my vericose veins getting worse. On the less acceptable side, I hate seeing someone I haven't seen in a long time and wondering if they'll notice the extra 30 lbs I've put on. I hate walking in front of people and wondering if they are marvelling at the size of my ass. I hate knowing that it swings when I walk. I hate it that I had a massage this evening and I never relaxed, as I was spending the whole time wondering if I was going to be able to keep my fat self on the little table, wondering if the petite woman massaging me was hurting her hands trying to get around my hips. I hate feeling like I have failed. I hate being fat.

And what I hate almost as much as being fat itself is this: I hate that I care. I hate that I can't embrace my size like a good feminist. I hate that I can't concentrate soley on feeling better, without wondering what exercises I need to do to get into a size 12. I hate that I weigh myself even more than I hate the number I see when I do it. I hate myself when I eat poorly and don't exercise, but I hate myself almost as much when I do, because I know it's for the "wrong" reasons. I really hate wondering if my problem is really with my body, or if it's a symptom of something else, something even less under my control. I hate being fat, and I hate what hating being fat says about me.

There are few things more tiresome than listening to someone else complain about her weight. I hate that I have become one of the people who does that. I hate the very idea that my self-loathing translates into loathing towards other fat women, but I also hate it when I catch myself thinking that it's OK for other people to be fat, just not me.

I hate that my big ass symbolizes my compliance in a culture of greed and excess. I hate that I am an overweight American. I hate that my ass is oversized because I not only like McDonalds french fries, I'll actually put aside my politics and order them. I hate that there are people starving in the world and I can't keep my intake below 3,000 calories most days. You could feed seven starving children off my thighs alone. I hate that I use more than I need and take more than is my fair share. And I hate that it shows in my body.

I hate exercise. I hate huffing and puffing, red-faced and miserable. I hate it that it is only being fat that can even get me to attempt cardiovascular fitness. I hate it that I won't do it for my heart, or my lungs, but I'll do it for the guys who used to whistle at me on the street but don't anymore. I hate that I hate exercise. I'm supposed to like it. It's supposed to make me feel good.

At this point, not much feels good. Being fat is nearly as bad as caring, and caring is nearly as bad as being fat.