At Least My Mom Thinks I'm Hot

I am an only child of divorced parents.  I was raised by my mom, and she believed the sun rose and fell at my feet.  She told me I was smart and special and could do anything I wanted.  One of the most difficult parts of life after college was realizing that a lot of what she’d told me only contained a sliver of the truth—I would not get any job I applied for, I wasn’t necessarily meant for great things.  Like most people, I am destined to live a mostly average life. 

The mom-lie she told me that is only really sinking in lately is the lie about my appearance.  If the rest of the world saw me the way my mom does, I would not be single at 31.  My mom believes I am beautiful.  When I’m having a conversation with her about cleaning my apartment, she’ll interrupt me to tell me how pretty my hair is even though it’s frizzy and up in a ponytail.  When we go out to restaurants, she believes that every man is turning his head to look at me.  And when I have talked with her about men I’ve been interested in who wanted nothing to do with me romantically, she never believes it has anything to do with my extra fat cells or big nose or squinty eyes.

I’ve never believed I am hot.  I’ve always been humbled by the beauty of my friends and the attention they received from the opposite sex.  Growing up, it let me know, at the very least, that I was not destined to be a model or to date the hot guys.  And this was good.  Because I didn’t garner male attention, I focused on my studies, learned how to be a great friend, and cultivated my mind, a rich inner life, a fierce independence and sense of humor.  I think I’ve turned into a pretty awesome person to know, if I may say so myself. 

Even though I never believed I was hot, I never thought I was ugly.  At least not until recently.  After many years of not really hanging out with single women at all, or at least not with single women in a larger group of people, I made a single lady friend.  This friend is tall and skinny and tan and blonde—very pretty.  People are always telling her how pretty she is, too.  They talk about fixing her up with their single friends.  They wonder aloud how it is possible that she is still single.  Men clearly are giving her the eye.  As for me?  No one makes mention of their single male friends to me or comments on my appearance at all.  I might as well be invisible except for a few silly comments I throw into a conversation here and there. 

It’s started to make me wonder just how unattractive I actually am.  I think because of my level of security with my personality and intelligence I have body dysmorphia, only instead of believing I’m much fatter than I am, I think I’m thinner.  Maybe my hair is scragglier than I imagine.  Maybe I have more than just the 2^nd chin I see in the mirror.  Perhaps people can barely see my eyeballs at all for how narrow they are.  Is it possible that my lips are actually so thin that I just look like some old lady without her teeth in every time I talk? 

I’ve always wanted to find a man who appreciates me for who I am inside, but is that even possible without a pretty package to lure him in?  I don’t have any answers, only dateless nights.  All I can do is tell myself my own lies and hold out hope that I can find a man who sees me through the eyes of my mom.

The Perks of Being a Fat Girl

Mama's big boned-ed, y'all.

(Mama is me, in case you didn't know)

I've been overweight since I was about 11.  There are countless complaints I could attempt to innumerate like: listening to skinny bitches complain about how fat they are, listening to skinny bitches talk about their eating habits, listening to skinny bitches comment about how fat other skinny bitches are, and other things about skinny bitches.

However, instead of focusing on the more annoying, sometimes downright maddening, issues related to being a larger lady, I've decided to begin my blog commentary about life as a fat girl by discussing some of the brighter points of this life I've led.

Now, in case you're thinking, Lisa, you skinny bitch, you aren't fat! here's my statement of truth about my size:  I've hovered between the heavy side of normal and the lower side of obese on the BMI chart for my height and fluctuated between the larger sizes in the women's section and the lower sizes in the WOMEN's section since high school.  So, no, I'm not as large as some ladies, but I'm definitely not skinny.

Now, here are the perks I've experienced as a lady of size:

Cushioning
Two weeks ago, I was trying to not let a cat out of a friend's house, missed a concrete step while walking backwards and went crashing down on my derriere.  Now, if I was a twig, I'm convinced I would have snapped in half.  Instead, I landed with a buoyancy that let the rest of my body sort of float to the ground.  I came away with only a sore rear end and not the concussion I surely would have had without my layer of fat.  Cats and children also seem to enjoy the extra layer of love I carry around.  It's good for napping, apparently.

Feeling Secure
Speaking of others who love the layers, don't forget men.  Now, not every man likes a little cushion for the pushin', but the ones who do...really do.  I don't think I'm really large enough to attract men who like the Big Beautiful Women, but, wow, those men really dig some bigger ladies.  They seem to worship them with a fervor that you don't see in men who like your average size 6 woman.

Also, I've never worried that a man was only after me for my looks in the way that my blonde, size 2, model-like friend may have worried.  I generally feel pretty confident that the men who are interested in me may find me attractive, but mostly they like my intelligence, humor or some other aspect of my personality.  And I usually feel pretty confident that they are secure enough in their own manhood to date a woman who does not necessarily fit society's version of beauty.

Being a Ringer
Nobody expects the fat girl to be good at sports.  So when you run a 10K, people give you a ton of support.  And when you play volleyball, the other team doesn't usually expect you to be able to break serves or spike the ball.  I've used this misconception about chunkiness to my advantage since I used to kick ass on the soccer field.  Plus, I could knock the other girls down with a quick jab of my powerful hips if i wanted.

Singing (and Dancing) Along to "Bootylicious" 
There are songs that skinny bitches will never fully understand.  Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious" is my favorite of them all.  In college, my best friend and I changed the lyrics to cause my body's too flab-ilicious for ya babe.

I shake my jelly at every chance
When I whip with my hips, you slip into a trance
I'm hoping you can handle all this jelly that I have[...]
I don't think you're ready for this jelly

Being Friends with Skinny Bitches
There's a lot of competition in the world of women.  I don't think we always know what we're competing for, but we're doin' it.  And doing it with all the passive aggressiveness we can muster, dammit.   But the nice part of being flabby is that a lot of women do not view you as a threat when it comes to men.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think I've moved in and out of circles of female friends with much more ease than if I'd been a size 4 and hot.  Everyone trusts the chubby girl!

Eating
Sure, plenty of people judge you when you're chubby and you order dessert at dinner even though everyone else in your party is doing the same.  But at the same time, you got chubby for a reason: you allow yourself to actually eat (and maybe you go overboard sometimes).  I watch some of my thinner friends count calories, workout tirelessly, and pull out their hair to remain thin.  I've been there during times when I've tried to lose weight, and it can become all consuming and, frankly, can take some of the joy out of life.  Not being as stringent with my food means that I can say yes to a request to meet someone for brunch or I can have a few beers.  And, best of all, I'm not that whiny girl who clearly wants to eat a piece of cheesecake but just picks at it or stares at it longingly whilst drinking her ice water with cucumber for flavor.


The Boobs
This is probably my favorite part of being a chubby girl.  When I lose weight, my boobs feel droopy and sad like all their friends the fat cells moved away and they can't seem to perk up from the loss.  But when I'm a little chunkier, my breasts feel like two torpedoes ready to fire jiggly hotness in any second at the next man who glances at my decolletage.


And, finally...

You get to say big boned-ed.

Hey fellow chunky gals, what are some of the perks I left out?

The Internet Dating Chronicles: Eh. Just OkCupid

Before I dive into more dating stories, I want to pause and talk about OkCupid.

OkCupid embodies the phrase: you get what you pay for.  (It's a free site.)  

I've had an OkCupid account for about 4 years now, though I've activated and deactivated it so often that it's probably only been available to the mens a total of one year.  I find the site appalling but feel compelled to look at it often when my account is active for reasons that I do not understand.  

I'm a fan of lists.  Here are the benefits and detriments of OkCupid:


Benefits:

• It’s free!  When you inevitably do not find the love of your life through the site, you don't feel bitter and dead on the inside because of how undesirable the opposite sex seems to find you.
• More creative freedom.  The questions asked when creating your profile are much more open and allow for a greater word count in the response section than eHarmony.  This means it’s possible to get more of a sense of someone’s personality from looking at his profile.  Check out the bulleted list (my favorite kind of list!) I made on my profile.  Plus, you know that if he really didn’t fill in anything at all, he really doesn’t give a shit.

Bulleted list within a bulleted list.  I'm so meta.

• You can look at anyone’s profile.  With eHarmony, I can only look at the people the program has matched me with at the rate at which they decide to deliver them to me, but OkCupid lets you look at anyone in the world regardless of age, match status, gender, or location.
• You go straight to the messaging.  There’s no multiple choice question section.  Once you start communicating with someone, it’s often within a week that you meet up at some bar around town.
• Fun quizzes and questions!  The part of me that is still a 15-year-old girl loves that there are all sorts of personality quizzes on the site.  When am I going to die?  When I'm 78.  What is my dating persona? The sonnet (whatever that means).  What type of man turns me on?  The mystery man.  Quality stuff for procrastination.  Once I answered a series of sex-related questions in a row and forgot to answer privately; my activity was posted on OkCupid and I was extremely popular for about an hour...oops.

But does the way this person answers about kids correlate to how much privacy they'll give a partner?  Tricky.

Detriments:

• It's time consuming.  There’s a lot of sorting that has to happen if you’re taking a proactive approach. Since it’s free, it seems that everyone and his brother has signed up for the service.  Some of these guys are super active and others create a page and then rarely come back to it.  It’s also just a larger pool of users and you can access them at any time. 
• It makes you feel unworthy. OkCupid classifies its users into leagues according to how many people have rated your looks or personality highly.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t search and find people in a higher league than your own, but it does take more work.  And it’s kind of depressing to look at the matches on your list and realize they’re a reflection of how the opposite gender views you.  From what I can tell, I’m about a 4 on a scale of 1-10 in the world of OkCupid.  
• Less monitoring.  OkCupid isn’t always great at monitoring uploaded pictures the way eHamony is.  I’ve seen a few penises in my time on the site…
• Kockamamy matching and labeling.  The algorithms used for creating match percentages is flawed, in my opinion.  OkCupid uses multiple choice questions created by users to who is a good match.  Users are presented with a question like “How willing are you to try something new in bed?” or “Would you ever get an abortion?” that they answer.  Then, you decide which answer selections would be acceptable from a possible match and select how important that question is to you.  Are these really good indicators for a love connection?  The tricky part is that anything you rate as being really important or mandatory, often shows up in a tab called “personality” on your profile.  Something I answered led to me having a “more kinky” label on my personality tab, which led to a bunch of weird dudes sending me messages.

Here's my personality, according to OkCupid.

• Serial daters and dudes just looking for hookups.  OkCupid is not necessarily the place where people looking for serious relationships should flock.  Yes, it does give you the option of stating if you are looking for new friends, activity partners, casual sex, short term dating or long term dating, but people lie.  I went out with a guy who was supposedly looking for new friends who only wanted to get in my pants, and I went out with a guy who was supposedly looking for long term dating who only wanted to get in my patns.  There are also, clearly, guys spamming the inboxes of the women in their match list.  Why in the world would I reply to someone who cut and paste the same message into several messages and then maybe added one little P.S. that related to me as a human being?  Gross.  

Through OkCupid, I've met some of the worst, most disrespectful or awkward men and also some of the most interesting.  I don't think this is where I'll meet my ultimate match, but it's absolutely a good place to find a date.    For anyone looking to get back in the saddle of dating after a divorce, break-up or long ass dry spell, I highly recommend the site.  It allows you to wade in slowly by browsing profiles and ignoring messages or to jump into the freezing water all at once by meeting the first person who contacts you.