Full Figured Christmas List

Dear Santa Claus,

How are you? Hoping you're well and not letting the stress of this busy season get to you. I've been a very good girl this year and have a few requests while you're checking off your list on Christmas Eve.

1.) A red Wii. I don't really know why I want this, I am just filled with childlike glee at the thought of owning one. If you can't do it, Santa, I understand. You may feel--just as the grown up in me does--that I don't really need one of these. You might be right. I'm just putting it out there.

2.) A house to rent in Warren. Note that I am not asking for a house, free and clear, just the availability of a house for rent. Three bedrooms, some space for storage, and in our price range. (Hint: if anyone reading this blog knows of someone renting houses in the Warren area, you can feel free to play Santa at any time!)

3.) Hollywood to either accept plus size women or not. I've given up caring which way they go at this point, I just want them to make a decision.

Confused, Santa? Allow me to expound. I am so sick of clothing stores, magazines, commercials, billboards, etc. telling us how they are creating things for "Every Body" and "Celebrating Your Curves!" Blah blah blah. That's nice, fashion/advertising world, it really is. But what I'm hearing and reading is a lot of talk. Not seeing so much with the action.

What do I mean? I mean find me more than a handful of movies or television shows where the main character is a plus-sized woman. Okay, easy-ish enough to do. NOW find me a movie or television show where the main story line for said plus sized character is something other than her weight or her appearance. I'm tired of watching a storyline unfold where a good looking man "proves his depth" by noticeably looking past her appearance and finding some other part of her attractive. No good. What is that telling plus sized women? That if, by the grace of God, someone somewhere ACTUALLY pays them any attention, they should be grateful because he obviously went through some serious soul-searching to look past her curves?

WRONG MESSAGE!

Truly, Santa, all I want for Christmas this year is a decent show, starring a normal looking woman who gets to have all the things that a bone thin woman would get to have on any other show. I want to watch her have a career and date and fall in love and interact with her friends and be funny and NOT focused on her dress size, or her struggle to lose 50lbs, or even how she overcomes current trends and learns to love herself anyway. No. Stop calling attention to it. Stop acting like being curvy is a disability or some built-in heartwarming human interest hook. It's not. It's not new or a novelty, either. It's just not what you, Hollywood, have been celebrating for the last...ever. There are a lot of gorgeous, plus-sized women out there who are tired of waiting to be represented by you and your kind.

Get on it! For all our sakes. It's Christmas.


Wishing you a very curvy Christmas,
Em

PS: So far since joining Sparkpeople I've lost 4.5lbs. Not the most stellar of weight loss numbers, but it's about a pound a week. Pretty darn okay in my book. :-)

"Magic lives in curves, not angles."
-Mason Cooley

Two-faced

No, I'm not climbing up on a soapbox to wail about how everyone lies and pretends to be someone they're not...blah blah blah. That's not what this week's blog is about. I'm sorry if that's something you're going through and thought I was going to offer some witty commentary on it. Maybe some other time.

This, my friends, is about the difference between my faces. I have at least three. I know the blog is titled "two-faced" but that's because that's how many faces I see. There is the one that looks back at me in the mirror, and the one that appears on top of my body in pictures. There's that other one too, the one that everyone else sees, but unless I have an out-of-body experience, I try not to think about that one.

First, the face in mirror. I like her--I think she's quite pretty. No, really, I do. I like the weird multi-colored irises she has going on and her symmetrical freckles and the bright pink of her lips. All good things. I don't notice her chubby cheeks or double chin. I don't look at the rest of her and say, "She'd be cuter if she wasn't so pudgy." One step forward, right?

Then, the face in the photos. Her, I like not so much. Only occasionally when she has the perfect lighting and angle and professional photographer behind the camera. Even then, it's not guaranteed that she'll win my favor. Unlike the girl in the mirror, the girl in the photo has hardly any positive features worth mentioning. No pretty eyes or cute freckles or bright pink lips. In fact, the girl in the photos is comprised almost entirely of flaws. She's waaaaay to big for that guy who is standing next to her, her double chin is gross, her arms are too big and her mid-section too flabby. Eugh. Who wants to even take a picture of that, anyway?

Two steps back. Actually, rereading my uncensored honesty, I'd say that looks like three steps back. At least.

I try. I try really, really hard to find something positive about photos of myself. But usually, when I have to make a comment out loud, whatever I end up saying is a lie. It's not that the camera work is bad (dating a photographer so that's never been the case) it's the subject I find fault with.

Here's something I'm not proud of. Last summer, I found, in the dregs of my computer's memory, a photo of my mother and I from the last Christmas we spent together. My first thought? I wish my face didn't look so fat. This is probably one of the last pictures my mother and I would ever take together, and that's my first instinct? Really? Yes, really. I said I wasn't proud of it.

I guess I'm just feeling a little raw and a little vulnerable tonight. Normally, this is a time when I'd curl up on the couch, put up a melodramatic lyrical quote as a facebook status, and wallow. But tonight, I decided to share my little raw heart with you guys.

Thanks for listening.

The Thanksgiving aftermath

Here we are, Cyber Monday. Four days after Thanksgiving when all the guilt from a weekend of gluttony starts setting in. First, we gorged ourselves on Thursday on delicious food (twice on Thursday, if you're as lucky as I am to have two places to spend the holidays) and then (again, if you're like me) we all spent waaaaaay too much money over the long weekend on deals that were just omgtoogoodtobetrue.

Yes, a Monday morning with a pair of tight jeans and a dwindling bank account should be enough to make anyone feel less than buoyant. Unless, apparently, you're me.

What? What was that? Did I really just write that? "Unless you're me" ? Really?

Uh...yeah, yeah I guess I wrote that. I guess I wrote that because, well, I guess I kind of mean that.

Yes, I ate more than my fair share (okay, more than mine AND my alter ego Maria Lopez' fair share) of sweet potatoes and stuffing. Emphasis on the sweet potatoes. And I can't be ignorant to the calories I consumed the rest of the weekend or the money that I spent, but for whatever reason I'm not experiencing the usual self-loathing that accompanies this time of year.

I don't want to read into it. It's like over-analyzing a string of good luck: almost guarantees that it will make it run out. So, whatever the reason, (my heart or my shoes...tee hee, sorry. Couldn't resist a Grinch reference!) without thinking about all that I consumed, I woke up this morning and went back to my fledgling routine.

This morning began with Jillian Michaels screaming at my to surrender my soul to the workout and leave behind everything I regret. Have I mentioned that she scares me? I prefer Yoga Meltdown because at least there she's trying to be zen and calming...she still slips into her old, crazy mode every now and then, but it's nothing like the 30 Day Shred. *shudder* I still have nightmares about the Shred.

SparkPeople update: last week I was down a pound. One down, forty-nine more to go, right? Okay, that sounds more than daunting. Way more than daunting, actually. Putting it that way makes it seem damn near impossible. I think I'll take this as I've done in the past...ten pounds at a time.

So, in that case, one down, nine to go. Wish me luck!


Oh, and before I go, allow me to further celebrate the holiday that just passed by offering some heartfelt gratitude. Those of you who left comments on my last blog and facebook or sent messages or e-mails...you have no idea what that meant to me. Really, almost every one of the comments that you've left have caused me to tear up at least a little.

You're fantastically beautiful people. Really, really beautiful. Thank you.

One last thing: something else I'm thankful for...



YAMS!!

Not a Diet

THIS IS NOT A DIET. I REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DIET.

You know why? Because diets don't work. They don't. What's that, you say? Your cousin lost 36lbs in a month by eating nothing but steak and peanut oil? That's nice. Ask her what happens when she gives in and eats a crouton and gains 45lbs overnight.

That being said, I've joined sparkpeople.com. If you're not familiar with the site, I recommend you go over and check it out--it's full of nifty tools and like-minded people and (best of all!) it's free. Yep, you heard me. 100% free to the public.

No, it's not a diet (weren't you listening?!) It's a way for me to easily keep track of what I eat and how much activity I get without hauling around a notebook and losing track of keeping journal entries. The nutrition tracker is super easy to use; after you enter in all of your specifics (height, weight, goals, etc.) it gives you a target number of calories, fat, protein, and carbs to stay within for the day. You log the foods you eat and it tells you how "on target" you are for the day. Pretty sweet, huh?

So, if I'm blogging about learning to love myself as I am, why did I join this site and set weight loss goals for myself? I will tell you why. Because, despite this lovely blog and its lovely followers, I am not happy with myself. Mostly because I don't really feel as healthy as I once did (probably an indication that I am, in fact, not as healthy as I once was) and want to get back to a point where, if I don't feel like I look good, at least I can say that I feel okay.

So Leslie Sansone and I walk/jogged this morning for a half an hour, I signed up for SparkPeople, and I watched what I ate all day. Not rocket science. Gotta tell you, though, when it comes to wake-up work-out personalities, I'm not Leslie's biggest fan. Yeah, Jillian Michaels gets annoying because she's so intense (and also because her workouts cause my life to flash before my eyes) and yells at the screen with things like "This is you last circuit! DON'T PHONE IT IN! NO REGRETS! LEAVE EVERYTHING IN THIS WORKOUT! LEAVE IT ALL!!!!!" And well...that's a little scary.

But Leslie Sansone is just so damn cheerful! She's giggling her way through her movements and telling me, "Doesn't it feel soooo good to get up and walk this morning?! I'm so glad you joined me and said 'I'm walkin' today!' I just love to hear you say that!"

Leslie, if I were in charge of such things, I would still be in bed, weighing 140lbs and never feeling the urge to pop in your DVD. Sorry, bub, that's just the way it works in my head. I also didn't say "I'm walkin' today" for your benefit. That decision was made on how much time was available for a workout this morning and how much I didn't want to hear Jillian yelling at me. Chill your life and tone down the enthusiasm.

But anyway, my goals aren't astronomical. I want to be a size 14 again--that's all. We've had a long-standing love/hate relationship, me and size 14. When I was a size 14, all I could think about was how close I was to a 12 and how I would be happiest if I could just dip down to a 12 or (gasp) maybe even someday a 10! Size 14 was just an inconvenient, seemingly ENORMOUS roadblock between me and true fashion bliss. *sigh* Oh the innocence of youth. But like with most things, absence makes the heart grow fonder. The longer we've spent apart the more I've come to realize that it's the size at which I'm the most comfortable, and the size I was when I came the closest to really enjoying the way I looked.

Rereading what I just wrote, it looks like I'm missing the point of my own blog, doesn't it? I don't think that's the case (though please feel free, gentle readers, to call me out on this one.) There is a vague hope that if I can get back to size 14 and still impress myself by reaching a personal goal or two, it may do wonders for my self-loathing body image issues.

Call it a baby step toward loving all of me all the time.

And then there's this...

Yeah, this.

I don't know how I feel about this. Mostly, I think that this woman is a crazy person who should be stopped. Where are her doctors? Who are these people who are telling her she's healthy? Why does she think she's healthy when she can only walk 20 feet before having to sit down? Why isn't her husband attempting to stop her so she doesn't leave their daughter motherless?

And most importantly, what is her daughter learning from all of this?

My mother struggled with her weight for most of her life--definitely all of the twenty years that I knew her. I can't lie and say that her perception of the way she looked didn't somehow color the way that I learned to look at myself. She was constantly buying exercise equipment and diet plans and fitness books and dvds and I remember as a child not being able to figure out why. To me, she was what most little girls' mothers are: the most beautiful woman they know. But she never saw that in herself and she was always trying to change the way she looked, to be thinner, to be more fit, she was always chasing some illusive "better" that was always just out of her grasp. I remember hoping, with each new plan she tried, that this would be what it took to make her happy, to make her see herself the way I saw her...but it never was. There was always something standing in the way of the way she was and the way she wanted to be.

I don't want that for my daughter--or son, for that matter--whenever he or she comes along. That's part of the point of all of this reflection, to get to the bottom of it and attempt to make a positive change so that I can be the right kind of role model for my children, and teach them how to love and accept and celebrate every part of themselves.

In that vein, let's get back to the inspiration behind this post. Do I feel a little hypocritical because this blog is about learning to love and accept myself, wobbly-bits and all and--although taking it too far--this woman is doing just that? Yes, yes I do. I'll be honest, I do find myself a little bit jealous that she can look in the mirror and not find anything she wants to change.

But there's another side to that. Another side to all of this that someone brought up a few posts ago. And that's that being obese--and that's what this woman is: morbidly obese--is a health problem. It can kill you. Being that overweight can...and in Donna Simpson's case, almost undoubtedly will kill her. For whatever reason, she keeps telling people that she's healthy and her husband thinks she'll be sexier the bigger she is. At some point, shouldn't someone be intervening and saying that she's just killing herself?

Granted, everyone is free to make their own choices and choose their own destinies and all of that, and she's obviously making a conscious choice in her ambition to weigh 1000lbs...but what happens when she dies as a result of this choice? Should we blame the men who are paying to watch her consume 12,000 calories a day via webcam? Or her doctors for not begging to her stop? (Although, who is to say they aren't already) Or just say "Well, there's another lunatic whose own crazy finally did them in."

Like I said earlier, I'm truly at loose ends with this one. There is something I envy about her positive self-image, that she's happy with the way she looks (aside from the fact that she wants to be bigger) and that she has people around her that love her just the way she is. How can she do that at over 600lbs and wearing a XXXXXXL while I can't seem to stomach wearing a size 16?

I guess it's a process. But while I'm anxious to get to a point where I love my curves and conquer my self-conscious ways, if I ever profess a desire to weigh 1000lbs, I'd like someone to come forward and kill me.

Now, as it is All Hallows Eve weekend, I can't leave you with something totally unscary. So, dear friends, I will ask you not to scream...


AHH!! Happy Halloween!

Photos

We took photos today, the boyf and I. He set up the lights and the backdrop and we had our own little Olan Mills photoshoot in the living room. We even wore matching blues...too cute for words, I know.

I tried to be good. I really did. I tried really hard to look at all of the photos he'd taken and not hate something about myself. But if I'm honest with myself (which is the point of all of this) it didn't happen most of the time. In most of the photos he showed me, I thought "God, my hips are enormous," or "I wish my face wasn't so chubby," and I got angry with myself. That's why I'm posting.

Why can I look at a picture of Ashley Graham and say "She is so sexy!" and look at the reflection of a girl with her same measurements and think "She's disgusting." I know that the ads with Ashley and the other LB girls are Photoshopped and airbrushed all over the place, but that's not the point. The point isn't what I see in them, it's what I don't see in myself.

So badly I want to look at myself and say "Hi, pretty girl--lookin' good today!" But even when I try it, the words sound hollow and fake and vain. Feeling vain is probably the worst because it's not even real vanity!

But I did try something new today while I was looking at those photos. I tried to look at things other than the parts of myself I wished I could change. I looked at my eyes and my hair and once I even thought, "Look at how happy we look," before I started crticizing my appearance.

It didn't really feel like progress, but it didn't feel quite like self-loathing either. So that's...good, right?

But, so as not to leave you so pensive on a Sunday night, I will leave you with this gem I stumbled upon while Googling "cute couple poses" (again, I ask that you do not judge me for what I end up finding online.)Anyone have a suitable caption? I'm coming up blank. BUT, since I wish to leave you neither pensive, nor emotionally scarred (as this woman's child will undoubtably be when they find this photo later in life) here is one of the photos the boyf and I took today. Actually, this is my favorite.


Cheers, everyone! Happy Sunday!

Complaints and Grievances

Okay, so there isn't all that much to post about at the present time. This week has been crazy and I haven't had all that much time to think about myself and my body image issues. But, I don't want to leave my loyal six followers hanging...so here are a few things that have been tweaking me lately.

First: Allow me to first say that I am bitter. Bitter about boots. And not just any boots, either. No, no. These are cute knee-high, leather, high-heeled boots with really cute buckles around the ankles and just a general sexiness that I was lacking in my winter shoe collection.

I know what you’re thinking: Why so blue, curvy gal? There’s nothing to be embittered about; these boots sound delightful!

And they are. They ARE delightful. The only problem is that they don’t fit. And not because—like so many boots before them—they’re too small. No. These boots are too big! They fit perfectly in the actual foot part of the boot, but the problem arose when I went to zip them up the side and complete the look. My calves were swimming in them! I had a solid inch and a half on all sides! And it’s not like this is anything to celebrate, either. I mean, it’s not like I’m excited to find that all of my ankle presses and calf-specific work-outs have finally paid off. No, they’re the exact same size they’ve always been. In fact, I’m pretty sure from the knees down, I’ve looked the same since I was about twelve.

I ordered these specifically from Lane Bryant (whom I love forever, don’t get me wrong) because my current zip-ups are known for the way they cut off the circulation in my legs. No good. So I order these “wide-calf” boots to avoid this problem, wait with baited breath in anticipation for them to be delivered, only to be faced with a terribly unpleasant truth. I am too big for “regular” boots and too small for plus sized boots. What sort of treachery is THAT!?

Second: I had my cat declawed two weeks ago and due to his complete inactivity and immense weight (17lbs: heavy weight champ of the world), his paws still haven't healed. This means, he's still wearing his plastic cone. Pathetic, really, bumping into walls and refusing to do much of anything other than sleep and shove his cone in my face in the middle of the night, demanding attention. Really, no one is more excited than I for the day when the vet says we can take this damn thing off for good. But the grievance came this morning when I made pancakes. (Pancakes, by the way = delicious, not grievance.) I finished their chocolate-chip yumminess and set the plate on the table where three seconds later, Radcliffe jumped up and stuck his whole head, cone and all, in the syruppy remnants.
A.) Ew. Sticky cat.
B.) I had to take the cone off of his sticky head to clean up the syrup.
C.) As soon as I did that and he'd taken a moment to adjust, he immediate began licking and biting at his paws. The ones he's not supposed to touch.

Third: This.

I stumbled upon this earlier this week and just looking at it now fills me with a rage only reserved for the poorest of fashion choices. This, my friends, is just wrong. How does it make you feel?

Tell me, I really want to know.

Something to think about

So one of my best friends is getting married in May and--being the out-of-towner-bridesmaid--I was facebooked the link to the dress I'm going to have to wear yesterday. Fine, bright blue bridesmaid dress, whatever, la la la la.

But, y'know how those damn wedding websites are. (If you don't know, the word you're looking for is seductive.) It's only so easy to waste a few solid hours of what would be a productive day off by clicking through page after page of dresses and shoes and color samples, saying to yourself, "Now, what would I choose?"

It's sick, really, the way they draw you in. Sick.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, no matter how or why I got there, I found myself on a page dedicated to the plus sized wedding dress selection. (No, I'm not engaged. Don't judge me.) I found a few that caught my fancy and, like any good online shopper, I checked out the reviews of each. All three of the dresses I was comparing had around 20 reviews--all of them positive. (Because really, who is going to give a negative review of a wedding dress. If you don't like it, you don't buy it.) One thing I noticed though, was that in about 80% of these reviews, the bride-to-be mentions not looking forward to wedding dress shopping.

Huh?

I read them all just to be sure I wasn't exaggerating...I wasn't. Most of the women who reviewed these dresses said that they had been apprehensive about even going into the store to try a dress on because of how difficult shopping is for them. They didn't want to be "the fat girl" surrounded by a room of size 2 dresses and being told that everything in their size would have to be special-ordered and probably end up costing more.

EIGHTY PERCENT!

Now, granted, David's Bridal is apparently a pretty slammin' place when it comes to carrying plus sized dresses in stock so these bridies were able to go home happy, which is wonderful. HOWEVER, the point I'm trying to make is before they went to DB, each woman who reviewed was apprehensive, disinterested, or--the worst--dreading going shopping. For her wedding dress. Her WEDDING DRESS! The one piece of clothing you're supposed to be excited to shop for, to have that moment where you step out of the dressing room and your mom and best friend get teary at how gorgeous you are.

This got me thinking about clothing and plus sizes and all of the drama that shopping entails. It's something I've been wondering about for years now and have never truly been given a straight answer. Why aren't plus sized clothes sold everywhere? Why are stores like Lane Bryant and Torrid necessary when we live in a country where the average woman is a size 14? Is this some kind of punishment? Are the fashion gods (ie: designers) so digusted with us and our expanding girth (which is a national health problem, I know. I'm not condoning it) that they're refusing to make clothes that fit us? Do they think that if the average store stops at size 12 then, in return, we will shrink down to fit?

It seems a rather not well thought-out plan of attack to me. And clearly not one that's seen any level of success as the rate of obesity in the US has continued to climb steadily for the past thirty years. Actually, we all started getting fatter right when the "supermodels" started getting stick thin.

Look at this photo of Cindy Crawford from early in her career:

She's got boobs! And a bum! And she's all sexy! Not chubby or "full-figured" by any stretch of the imagination, but there are some definite curves happening there. Now, let's compare to a photo from more recent runway waifs:


Notice anything different? Actually, if she turned sideways, I wouldn't notice anything at all. I think she'd disappear.

So you see my point...or you don't. Whatever. The point I'm trying to make is that if we're all getting bigger, why are our those held up for display getting smaller? Shouldn't they be at least slightly proportional to each other? Do we hate ourselves that much to idolize and plaster our magazines and billboards and advertisements and television and films with people who represent 5% of the population? Women who look nothing like us? That just doesn't seem fair.

I don't know. It's just something that I've been thinking about for a long time. Maybe it's something you'll think about now. Maybe it's not. Either way, thanks for listening.

steps off soapbox, carries it off stage left

Why I'm here

"Full figured" is a nice way of saying "fat". Everyone knows this...it's why they made up the phrase because "fat" is an ugly word that conjures all the wrong images.

Example from thesaurus.com:

Main Entry:	fat
Part of Speech:	adjective
Definition:	overweight
Synonyms:	beefy, big, blimp, bovine, brawny, broad, bulging, bulky, bull, burly, butterball, chunky, corpulent, distended, dumpy, elephantine, fleshy, gargantuan, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, husky, inflated, jelly-belly, lard, large, meaty, obese, oversize, paunchy, plump, plumpish, ponderous, porcine, portly, potbellied, pudgy, roly-poly, rotund, solid, stout, swollen, thickset, weighty, whalelike

Whoa. Look at those words! Blimp? Dumpy? Whalelike? Whalelike?! Now see the difference when I type in full-figured:

Main Entry:	buxom
Part of Speech:	adjective
Definition:	bosomy
Synonyms:	ample, built, busty, chubby, comely, curvaceous, curvy, full-bosomed, full-figured, healthy, hearty, lusty, plump, robust, shapely, stacked, voluptuous, well-made, well-proportioned, well-rounded, zaftig

Well...that's better. Sort of. See, the problem arises when we hear and read these words and they sound really nice. Cuvaceous, healthy, volumptuous...nice words that leave us with images of Marilyn Monroe and Jessica Rabbit instead of thoughts of crying in dressing rooms and de-tagging photos of ourselves on facebook. If someone made up that nice phrase and made it mean all of those sexy things...why do we still not feel like it applies to us when, clearly, we're the people it was made for?

Okay, I don't know why I'm saying "we" and "us." I'm talking about me. Just me. That's the point of blogging right? To talk about yourself and your thoughts and what you're doing? Actually, I'm writing this in hopes that it won't end up just being about me. I'm hoping that you'll read this and you'll comment and follow this blog because some of this sounds like you too. And then we will be a we. And I can talk about what "we're" doing and how "we're" feeling...and maybe that will help. Maybe that's why I'm doing this. I don't know.

Here's what I do know:
1.) I've never been thin, slender, or skinny. I've never even been the right weight for my height. Not even at the top of the bracket.
2.) I don't know what it's like to look at a picture of myself and not immediately find something to hate.
3.) I can't understand why anyone would find me attractive.
4.) All of these things scare me more than anything else in my life.

After talking with one of my best friends last night and finally saying these things out loud, she suggested I start a blog...because this, she said, was definitely something she'd read about. I hope she's right and there are other people out there who need something like this to read so they won't feel like they're the only ones who feel like that. And I'm hoping that if I write about this enough, at some point I'll get to the bottom of all of this negativity and find out what it's like to love the girl on the outside as much as I love the girl on the inside.

I just realized I'm going to end up crying through a whole bunch of this. So there's that.

My other hope and wish is that, if you do read this, you won't see it as a ploy for attention or as me fishing for compliments. I hope that you'll see this as the crie de coeur that it is.

And that, I suppose, is how we're going to begin this journey...