Life in the Middle Lane

AKA- I can be sexy, too OR  A word from your fat friend

This post is a rant and a confession and an invocation. I might curse. Forgive me.

Earlier this week I was watching Tough Love reruns on VH1 On Demand (don’t judge me). I actually love Tough Love. It teaches women to get over themselves, and be open to love. It also teaches them how to go after what they want, which is in this case, a man.

I was watching the episode where the ladies posed for a photos where they were supposed to be sexy. They were meant to be sexy, not slutty, not skanky, not tomboyish, not porn star, not business casual. Sexy.

Of course the ladies each had their own ideas about what sexy looks like.  Some wore t-shirts and boxers, there were a couple of short pleated skirts and baby doll dresses, one girl wore a large button down shirt, in past seasons, girls have worn next to nothing, or strawberries and whipped cream.  Most of them failed miserably at being sexy.

One girl, whose pictures came out horribly, kept saying that she didn’t know how to be sexy because she used to be fat.   Men never look at me, she said. Sexy isn’t something that I know anything about, she whined.

I call bullshit. How dare she use her weight as an excuse for not knowing how to be sexy!

I have always, ALWAYS been the fat friend. Even when I was 17 and a size 8, I was the fat friend with size 2 friends. In college, when I was a size 12, I was the fat friend surrounded by size 4’s and 6’s. Now, at my most rotund, my friends run marathons, and climb rocks, and do other ridiculously athletic shit like that.  I secretly hate those skinny bitches

As the fat friend, you might think I’d be relegated to the sidelines, watching all my skinny friends get hit on and danced with and talked to.

Nope.

In all my years of being the fat friend, I’ve never, NEVER not been sexy. Regardless of the thickness of my thighs, or the jiggle of my stomach, or the pudge in my cheeks, I am always among the sexiess people in the room.  I’ve never had a problem with getting attention from WHOMEVER I want.  Even in the gym (post workout!!) people try to get my phone number.  I get chatted up on the walking trail near my house.

So how dare this recently skinny chick talk about how she doesn’t know how to be sexy because she used to be fat? I wanna elbow her in the stomach for spouting that stupidity on TV and fuck VH1 for even allowing that to make it in the broadcast.

This poor woman’s problem has little to do with the number on the scale, and everything to do with her lack of self confidence. She doesn’t think she’s sexy. Not when she was fat, and not even now since she’s skinny. Somewhere along the way, she lost her mojo.

You can call it mojo, self-esteem, inner spark, personality, whatever. She lost hers. And that makes me sad for her.

But I’m pissed because somewhere some chunky girl heard her talk shit about her weight and might have thought, Oh I can’t be sexy because of my weight?

Dear Fat Girls of the World: You, too, can be sexy.

A few weeks ago I attended an awesome Food Seminar at Woo Cosmetics on carbohydrates with a buddy of mine.  Leaving the seminar my friend and I were talking about body size and body image, and I mentioned how being the fat friend has never stopped me from also being the sexy friend or the pretty friend or whatever.

She looked at me with a funny little frown. She said, I’ve never thought of you as my fat friend.  You have too much sass and spark to be the fat friend.

Notice that nothing she said had anything to do with how much I actually weigh. Being the fat friend is a state of mind, not the size of your skirt.

I have a friend who insults people by calling them fat. I look at the girls she calls fat and cringe. Because the girls she calls fat so aren’t. And if she thinks they’re fat, then what the fuck does she think of me?

I know for a fact that she thinks I’m gorgeous and athletic and too cool for my cube. She doesn’t even think about my weight when she cattily insults someone by calling them a fatty.

Even when you ARE the fat friend, it’s still what is inside that counts. Regardless of weight, age, height, whatever, we all can be sexy.

You might need to reach down inside yourself, find your mojo, set it up on your shoulder, and  smile but dammit your sexy is THERE. Bring it out and show it to us.

You know that feeling where you get sometimes that feels like butterflies in your tummy? The one where your body is a vibrating, waiting, tense wire. You’re so ready to MOVE that your head is either going to explode or you are going to pee in your pants.

When you get this feeling, this…. sensation… your spirit, your VERY SOUL is pulls you in 8 different directions, your toe is tapping and your web browser has, like, 35 tabs open. And if you’re anything like me, your computer just ISN’T fast enough to keep up with you.

You probably have not been sleeping well because as soon as your head hits the pillow, your mind starts thinking all these crazy ideas, and you have to get up and write them down because you’ll never remember them all in the morning. But if you get up now, you’re going to spend another hour writing, then another 30 minutes or so calming back down (warm milk or tequila helps).

And you probably have a dull headache because you’re sleepy, you’ve been sitting too close to the computer and you forgot to eat lunch.

Welcome to my week.

Maybe it’s excitement of 3 of my favorite “non-related to me” women having birthdays (go Aries!), maybe it’s the reverence in the air with Holy Week, Passover, and the Spring Equinox all converging, or maybe the tutonic plates which are my life are coming together in a way that is not unlike an earthquake.

I don’t know what the f*ck is going on, but I’m feeling a little crazy.

Have an AMAZING weekend! May you feel the excitement, the change, the expectancy that I feel at this moment.  May it play over your skin like musical notes. May it be in the very air you breathe. My it fill you like water. May it carry you forward towards your dreams.

I love Bath and Body Works fragrances. I wear the lotions, and body washes and sprays. Any of my friends will tell you that I have around 8 bottles of each (ranging from almost full to almost empty). I kick myself all the time because instead of wearing them, I always convince myself to save them for a special occasion. And really, how often is there a special occasion?

Well today, I needed to feel pretty, so I used one of my Favorite body washes, Pear Blossom and I could just feel the smile come on my face.

Out of the shower, I could not bring myself to cover the Pear Blossom with my normal (cheap) lotion smell. So I tried to think of a way to use the Pear Blossom lotion without using so much of it (you never know when they will discontinue a favorite scent, damn them). And I found a solution.

I also love, and use daily, Vaseline Intensive Care Unscented lotion. I always keep a bottom of it around, mainly because it keeps me soft and I also like the unscented scent.

So I mixed the Vaseline Unscented with the Bath and Body Works Pear Blossom.  And guess what I smell like?

Heaven!

If you mix unscented lotion with scented lotion, you’ll smell like the scented. Seems like a no-brainer, but I’d never tried it before.

Now my Bath and Body Works lotions will last even longer, I won’t have to wait for a special occasion, and I’ve been sniffing myself all day.

So I can be thrifty AND flowery, fruity fresh and soft all day.

Happy Friday party peoples!!!!

I hope you are having a great day and are feeling and fresh and fancy as I am.  But if you are living in the path of an oncoming hurricane, I hope that you are hunkering down for the storm. And I do mean HUNKER down! Hurricanes (the storms) suck and Global Warming is real.  Just ask Al Gore.  He was talking about environmental stuff when I was in high school.  I remember reading a book that he wrote when I was in the ninth grade.  We had the choice to build a Earth Day bulletin board for the class or read this book.  ….

I chose to read the book.  LOL  And by the way, Hurricanes (the drink) are super yummy.

But I digress.  Today is wonderful beautiful day, and I made a life altering decision.

I cut off all my hair.  Oh, I don’t mean I got a hair cut and now its short.  I mean, I cut ALL my hair off.  It is right now, about a half an inch long. And thank goodness that I have a gorgeous face (not even kidding a little bit), because oftherwise, I would look like a sad pitiful mess.

I reach up to touch my hair and I am surprised by the air up there. When you don’t have any hair, there is nothing to hide behind.

All I am is face and face parts.  I have big lips, a big nose, a big forehead and prominent cheek bones.  And other than my glasses, you can see everything much clearer without all the hair distracting from my beauty.

I know I sound a little full of myself, but the Universe is egging me on.  No less than 8 people that I don’t know have stopped me in the street or in the stairwell to tell me how beautiful I am.  And my eyebrow waxer told me I had fierce eyebrows to match my fierce haircut.  And her co-worker told me I could model.  So, there.  I’m hot and they proved it.

Pictures will be posted soon!!!!