The Kindness of Strangers

 

I'm no Blanche DuBois.

I’m no fragile flower, covering naked bulbs with Chinese lanterns, aghast at an indelicate world.

I ain’t delicate.

In fact, I’ve got a pretty good temper and a razor blade on my tongue. But those used to be rendered mute when someone insulted my size--probably because I tended to silently agree with my attacker’s assessment.

I was fat. And that was tantamount to giving people tacit permission to rip my self-esteem right out of my chest, dripping blood.

I have found that women are worse than men in this regard. A man, for instance, would never announce (in your earshot) that he was so disgusted with himself for gaining five pounds, that he had gotten so fat. And he would never then proceed to pat his washboard-flat stomach, sighing at the enormity of his weakness.

Most men that I know can walk around naked with a stomach the size of a small country and feel mighty pleased with himself, even though his genitals may be totally obscured by his girth. Oh yeah, I can see myself doing that, parading around my jiggling fat. (Well, I’m working on it, my dear husband!)

A man would never show me a dress in a catalogue---a slinky little number that would only look good on an exhumed Pinelawn resident---and ask me if I would ever wear something like that. The questioner, in this case was.an anorexic, vacuous little twit who will probably have the Gucci logo engraved on her coffin. After I looked at the dress and agreed that it was gorgeous, I said: "but that dress is way too old for me." That got her. I was still smiling three hours later.

But we all know who can inflict the worse damage, don’t we? Oh yes, and they ain’t strangers. They are the ones who gave birth to us, so they can rip your intestines out all in the name of "love."

A friend once told me the story about how she was driving her mother somewhere, and a man in the car next to them gave my friend the eye. Her mother pointed out the man to her, then sighed, "well, I guess that’s because he can only see you from the neck up." (I still go a little batty when I think of that remark.) Interestingly enough, this woman is devoid of malice....she just blurts out what she’s thinking, without backspacing. This friend happens to be stunning...and would be at any size. But I suppose it’s no accident that she wears turtlenecks that not only cover her neck, but obscure one third of her face. In most pictures I have of her, she looks like a turtle darted halfway out of its shell.

So what is the point of all this? How do you respond to the self-appointed assessors of beauty and health, the ones who assume you eat a black angus every night for dinner? The ones who have both God and Jean Neiditch on their sides? How do you get across that you think you look like hot shit at any weight?

I might have been wondering about this the day I went dress shopping. I went to a snotty little boutique on the upper East Side, the kind that serves you cinnamon coffee and croissants when you walk in.

Even though it was a store that catered to full-figured women, the pregnant salesgirl looked like a straw with a bean stuck in the middle of it. It was amazing that she could even menstruate, much less conceive.

"That," she cooed approvingly, "looks fabulous on you!" I had just lumbered out with an a-line that didn’t do too much for me.

"Is it slenderizing?" I asked her, glint in my eye.

"Oh, definitely," she answered, circling me, nodding her head.

"You mean, it doesn’t make me look fat?"

"Oh, no!" she answered, as if that was inconceivable, as if anything I put on could obscure my extra hundred pounds.

"You sure this doesn’t make me look fat?"

"Absolutely not."

"Goddammit!" I said, then spun around and headed for the dressing room. "I guess I’ll have to look at something else," I told her.

To this day, I can still see her face.

I did finally buy something, but I wasn’t overly thrilled with it. In fact, I was feeling a little depressed, because my choices were so limited due to my size. I was already redesigning the dress in my head when I heard a male voice behind me.

"You are so gorgeous! Have a nice day."

To quote Ms. DuBois: "Sometimes there is God....so quickly."