Fries & Prejudice

So let's face it, although we live in an "enlightened" society, prejudice is still rampant.  It's not socially acceptable, it's not nice, but it's out there.

We seem to have all understood that it's not nice to comment, judge or slander someone on their race, colour, sex, sexual orientation etc. but there is one hold out it seems that is still socially acceptable: weight.

Now I too, tend to make disparaging remarks on random people's size/shape/girth, but it's never personal, not that that makes it okay.  I have a number of people in my life whom are "personal size" challenged, and I love them just the way they are.  I don't berate them for eating something unhealthy (unless they've given me permission to in order to help keep them on track for diets etc.), I politely suggest that something needs to be in a larger size for proper fitting (when my opinion is asked), and I don't make comparisons between them, myself or any other persons because really, who actually looks like Hollywood people? 

So that said, the rest of y'all should shut the fuck up and leave the skinny girls alone!  Yes I said it. People pick on the skinny girls all the time and apparently that's okay.  If there's a group of women chin-wagging (read: bitching) and you walk into the room, like hungry, bloody-beaked vultures they turn on you.

"It must be nice to have legs that go on forever!"

"Look at what she's eating, I wish I could do that and still look like you."

"Must be nice to not have to worry about your weight."  On and on it goes.

Are you fucking kidding me?!?

Let me set a few things straight ladies.

Let's do that whole travel back in time thing:

Picture the youth, almost the tallest in her classroom grades 4-8.  Not only is she completely uncoordinated (read: not athletic), she's also flat as a board.  I don't just mean no boobs, I mean from her shoulders to her ankles there are no indentations.  No hips, no waist, nothing but knobbly knees, a showing rib cage and two arms and legs that would look healthy on a starving African child.  If you laid me down on a piece of paper you could use me like a ruler.

Speed up slightly to high school.  Now I'm not only tall and skinny, I'm in a new pond of very well endowed fish. So now's there's a new set of social cues that I've got to figure out (I'm still working on them).  Hair, make up, hugging friends you'd seen only a period before.  Oh yeah, and low cut shirts (Madonna was big back then), tight skirts (so were Metal sluts), and I still am skinny, no bewbs, still haven't got my first period (I know, I know, looking back it was a blessing but in the midst of girls who are obviously having sex [you could tell since they were pregnant] having your period was pretty important for fitting in) and completely uncomfortable in my own skin.

Grade 10 arrives, as does the social pressure to remain skinny.  So I stop eating, pretty much.  For the entire year of Grade 9 I consumed a Snickers bar and a can of Coke for breakfast purchased from the coffee truck outside the school.  Just to give you an idea of my eating choices =)

So I eat an apple and a bagel each day.  And that's it.  Why? Good question.  I always wore clothing that was too big for me to hide my body so it wasn't like I was prancing around in all my long-legged coltishness flaunting my flat tummy (looking back I certainly would have).  So began my year with anorexia.  I was hungry. All the time. It sucked. 

Towards the end of Grade 10 I decided I had enough of being hungry and went back to my stellar eating habits of fries with gravy, Jamaican patties from the cafe and a Mars bar and a coke for breakfast every day.  Did I gain weight? Nope, but I had a new appreciation for the hungry girls at school.

In my late teens I was approached in a mall to be a model.  I have since learned that those people are like telemarketers and will say this to any girl who's tall and skinny.  By now my bewbs have come in (yay), I've gotten laid (bigger yay) and I'm over hiding my body under layers of clothes that are too big for me.  I've moved onto the inappropriate clothing that Mother's of teens have hated for decades, but (as seems to be the case for me) later than others.

So I convince my parents that this is career for me, we meet with the agency people who happily take my Mother's money and they snap some pics of me.  The pics were gorgeous (this was before photoshop, hell it was before digital, so they did a good job) and the agency proudly told me that they would love to represent me.......after I lost 20 pounds.   FULL STOP. Say WHAT?!?  At 5 feet 9 inches and 125 pounds unless I lost a leg there was no where for me to loose 20 pounds.  I'd also played the anorexia game and there was no way I was joining the B&P crew (Binge and Purge.  I HATE to vomit and will avoid it at all costs, unless tequila is involved at which point all bets are off).  So I told them to stuff it and walked away, $1000 poorer but with my eyes opened a bit more.

So I was pretty but not skinny enough, and skinny is what you wanted to be.  Whatever.  I was 19, had the metabolism of a marathon runner.  I could eat anything I wanted and it didn't matter, I was skinny. Cool.

So for some time after entering the workforce I endured the comments about my height, weight, length of legs etc.  I'd always be self-depreciating and say something derogatory to myself to brush aside the comment/compliment.  It's just my body type, I guess I lucked out.

When I got pregnant with the OC, my body went along with it.  Okay, so now we eat for two, whatev.  I craved Mick Chickens (no copyright infringement here) with extra mayo....daily.  In fact, after the second month I ate one...daily.  Could be 11am in the morning, could be right before bed at 10:30pm, didn't matter when I just had to have it.  So I gain a whopping total of........25 pounds......my entire pregnancy.....don't hate me, I tried, really I did.  This was my chance to gorge myself and no one would stop me.  I was eating for two, I had cravings, etc. etc. etc.  I also had an awesome metabolism.  From behind you couldn't tell I was pregnant, and then I'd turn around and there was this little ball where my belly should be.  I was so proud of being pregnant and wanted this big baby bump and people around me to turn and think "There goes a woman with child!  She's huge, you could see that thing from space!". But no, not to be.

So I finally hit the wall a couple of years ago when a family member who has a weight problem and would comment consistently about my size, pushed me to the edge. 

"Must be nice to eat whatever you want and stay skinny."

"You know what __________?  The thing is, skinny girls are ALWAYS hungry, but we've just learned to keep our mouths shut so we don't get fat."  That shut her up.

Seriously, I do eat what I want, usually when I want it but I also know that I'll have to do some type of exercise to work it off, that or not eat as much a few days later to balance out the fact I've just eaten an entire side of ham and poutine and chocolate cake and, and, and.

My job keeps me busy so there are days where after being up since 5:30am, (still not a breakfast eater either) if there's a birthday at work and there's cake at 11am, that's completely respectable to eat "for breakfast".  There are also a lot of days where I don't eat until 12 or even later.

There are downsides to this body type (no really). 

Being tall means that finding pants that fit properly is hard.  They're usually not long enough in the leg and/or to get them to be so, you have to buy them in a bigger size so they don't fit right in the bum/waist.

Long arms mean that finding jackets, coats and shirts that fit across the back and down to the wrist is difficult. Making sure that they fit your torso can be a challenge too.  No one wants to see you flashing your waist/muffin top.

When you are tall you usually have big feet so finding shoes that don't look like scuba flippers is a challenge (I swear sometimes I feel like a drag queen trying to find shoes that fit and look respectable).

Being tall means that you don't blend in well with the crowd.  I usually am at least a head taller than many of the people around me so I feel like a giant half the time (actually when I worked with a "little person" it was worse).  Our posture tends to be more hunched as we have spent years trying to get out of the back row of pictures so we round our shoulders (which causes back problems).

Being tall means that you get noticed whether you want to be or not. You get asked to reach things and then have rude comments made about the fact you don't need a chair/stool/ladder to get them.  If you don't want my help then don't ask.  You can't reach it and are too lazy to get a chair to do so, so you ask me and then insult me.  Bite me instead, hey, how about that?

You get asked to slow down because your stride is too long, or you shorten your stride to accommodate people with no leg range and end up tripping yourself and looking like a dork.  Hey, how about this Tiny Tim, run a little.  Then you can keep up and loose some lbs too.

Yes I'm tall, deal with it.

Yes I'm thin, can eat what I want to and not worry that it'll send me into a downward spiral of eat/regret/gain/repeat.  Although my metabolism is slowing down as I reach 40 and I have to watch a bit more and exercise a bit more, so be it.  Balance is the key.  So is not having gravy on everything.  Just sayin.
 
Guess what, you could be thin too if you exercised and shut your mouth.

In fact shutting your mouth would solve a number of problems.

So I'll stop making remarks about people who are fat, if you stop picking on the thin girls. Deal?

Mel