Fat Apartheid

178.4 lbs. Well, hello old friend. I see the sugar-free Jell-O shots didn’t disturb you. (Yes, I was doing Jell-O shots at a party yesterday. I’m 50, not dead).

By the way, I saw the Fucktard, star of yesterday’s blog, at the gym this morning as I was waiting for Pilates class. (He does NOT have a mustache. He also does NOT have any idea of how to dress). I was extremely surprised to see him simultaneously walking and chewing gum. He stopped and stared for a moment, then continued on his way, wherever the hell that may be. That was the extent. He’s still a sorry-ass motherfucker.

I am going to get retro and preachy in this space. I found something I’d written in 2007 and it ties into yesterday’s “fatty” encounter. (Look it’s a holiday weekend and nothing extraordinary happened today in the weight department, nobody cut the cheese in Pilates class although I was clenched the whole time – all the core work seems to get the intestines stimulated and the most interesting thing today was that I woke up from nodding off with an intense craving for coconut. Not worth a lot of blog space).

I give you “Fat Apartheid” (from November 2007)

I just got my nails done which, if you don't speak Vietnamese (and I think I'm learning "My God, this woman has big feet! Make sure you charge by the acre!"), you spend your time leafing through old and new magazines, mostly of the gossip/celebrity news variety, with the occasional Time or Newsweek from 6 months ago. A letter to the People editor regarding Queen Latifah caught my eye. After two other letters that praised her for accepting her body as is and showing "the cardboard cutouts" of Hollywood that you don't need to be size 0 to be successful, the third letter said that with obesity being epidemic in America, it was Latifah's duty as a role model to promote "a healthy body" - shorthand for "lose weight."

A short essay in Time was devoted to "inter-facial marriage," that is marriage between one homely spouse and one "hot" spouse (what makes someone hot? Nobody has the rules). Whereas, it stated that an unattractive man marries a gorgeous woman, it is likely he's rich or a rock star. If an unattractive woman marries a handsome man, though, the whisper is that he must be gay or have some terrible deformity hidden by clothing. I read Vogue. After the Jennifer Hudson cover (which surprised me because I had doubted Anna Wintour would put someone on the cover who isn't built like her), among the letters lauding Vogue for putting a plus-sized woman on the cover, there was one complaining about it.

In a previous blog, I related an incident where another Myspacer didn't like what I posted and referred to me as a "fat fucking whore." What I find interesting about that particular insult is that it goes to the body type first; one would presume because the first cut should be the deepest. Also, I have related the Trader Joe’s parking lot incident where, after a woman nearly hit me head on in the parking lot of Trader Joe's in Studio City (the one on Riverside) and I did my Boston "Lean On the Horn" thing to express dissatisfaction, she told me that I was excessively angry because I was "big and always would be." Direct quote. Granted, this came out of the mouth of someone whose voice sounded like a stereotype for a dumb, self-absorbed woman.

We live in a society that hyphenates race and ethnicity (African-American, Italian-American. Can't we just be Americans together?). Various states have statutes punishing hate crimes (with which I don't agree. Very un-American to attempt to regulate thought). Within the past 2 years, various Hollywood figures have been pilloried for using racial and homophobic slurs. Yet there are not repercussions for taunting or abusing someone who's overweight. Fat is not a protected class.

And yet, most Americans are overweight by scientific body mass index standards, damned near none of us can fit into designer clothes (let alone afford them) and we criticize (including me) Britney Spears for wearing an outfit to the VMAs that showed a soft (but not convex) belly. "Curvy" in Hollywood terms means a 5' 9" woman who weighs 125 lbs. One of the pictures I’ve shown here is me with George Clooney. One of my first thoughts on meeting him was "My God, he needs a good meal." And when I displayed the picture at work, a thimbo asked me "How come you got your picture taken with the handsome man?" (I kid you not) We have been trained to worship sticks with bumps; big head/slender body for men, big head/slender body/relatively big boobs for women.

Most of us don't look like that. Go to a clothing store like Old Navy and head for the jeans/slacks section. Okay, you'll see that there are far more 2s and 4s hanging or folded than the 14s, 16s and 18s. Why? There are more double-digit people buying clothes than low single-digit.

We the people are being dominated and controlled by an underweight minority and it's a very small minority. We the people have been trained to feel inferior for our size, that we have no compensating factors for excess weight. I write, I have a law degree, I've always been able to get and keep work "from the neck up" and earn a good living. I'm known for my wit, my intelligence and (usually) my kindness. I have naturally blonde hair, blue eyes and a nice, even smile, but I've had blind dates turn and leave me at a restaurant because I was overweight (even though I'd been honest about it). Luckily, my grandmother is gone because I got sick of hearing "You have such a pretty face, you need to lose..." coupled with a sigh. I've had a long-term membership at 24 Hour Fitness and gone 4-5 times a week (when I could. Travelling job makes it difficult), toning up legs, arms, strengthening my back, but the belly never moved (turns out I have a thyroid in need of a swift kick. It's getting it). I'm part of the majority and yet, we're barraged with ads for weight-loss programs, the only "plus sized" woman on TV was Roseanne and she was portrayed as borderline white trash paired with John Goodman as a husband (John, you kept me tuned in, but they didn't pair Rosie up with Jimmy Smits or the aforementioned Clooney). And neither of the characters had college degrees or white-collar jobs. There's no problem with spongy blue-collar guys having hot wives on TV (Jim Belushi, Kevin James, Jackie Gleason, even), but we don't see the reverse. Where are the large lawyers and doctors? We know they exist in the real world.

"Shallow Hal" dealt with seeing past a person's exterior but coming from the Farrelly brothers, the message was mostly lost. Thin people are beautiful (doesn't matter what the face looks like) and beautiful people are automatically good. Anybody remember Ted Bundy? Dead serial killer? He was able to lure in his victims because he was considered "handsome." OJ Simpson? Considered a handsome, attractive man until he was accused of murdering two people. And let us not forget: Angelina Jolie, the blood-wearing, brother-sucking, home-wrecking tattooed freak show. Skinny body, big boobs, she's hot and nothing else matters (the humanitarian work came after the blood-wearing and brother-sucking, probably at the behest of her desperate publicist).

Interspersed with the weight-loss programs and pills are ads for deals on extra-large pizza, carbohydrate-laden snacks and instant family-togetherness dinners that consist of fats, sodium and starch (That's you, KFC, Hamburger Helper and Betty Crocker). Not a green vegetable within a mile. High-fructose corn syrup permeates processed foods, damned near everything from ketchup to soda, Doritos, Wheat Thins and soup (Campbell's). Read "Fast Food Nation," folks, especially the part about the companies in New Jersey that manufacture flavoring. This is how the skinny minority maintains oppression over the heavier majority, by lulling us into carbohydrate-induced energy crashes. And, oh yeah, there's a pill for that. Or a Red Bull.

It's not youth we're obsessed with, it's appearance. The high-school dropout with the hot body stands a better chance of landing a successful man than the size 12 Harvard summa cum laude.

I have an idea for a TV show that will probably never fly: it's called "What Does He See in Her?" about a hot-looking guy, local TV anchor, married to a not-as-attractive college professor/successful author. The laughs come from bimbettes mistaking hubby's lumpy best friend for the college professor's spouse and people refusing to believe that two such people could have a happy/successful marriage.

As long as fat apartheid continues, it'll never be aired

About an Asshole

178.4 lbs. Okay, fourth day in a row. Not thrilled, but that’s not the big deal of the day. Monday, I can do a Monster Burn to my heart’s content.

Yesterday, I didn’t hit the gym for weight training as usual. Number 1, my trapezius muscles have decided to turn to cement over the course of the day (they paid for the rebellion today, trust me) and Number2, I figured if maybe I lulled them into a false sense of security, hitting them with weight training today would so shock them, they’d burn up a lot of fat through whilst holding little muscle group therapy sessions asking each other, “What the hell just happened?” (No, I don’t have a medical degree. Somehow, I don’t think this is much of a surprise.)

Normally, I avoid the gym on Saturday mornings due to the excessive douchebag quotient. The Weekend Warriors are out in force (and Guys, if you’re an investment banker with a baseball cap on backwards and/or tattoos, you’re a double bagger. Investment bankers ARE the establishment and the ones who just crashed the economy. You have no right to wear emblems of rebellion) and the energy in the gym changes subtly from one of people focused on their workouts to one with that is jittery and edgy. However, it is a holiday weekend, there weren’t many folks on the floor when I headed for the weight machines and I figured I’d been given a reprieve from the douchebags.

Nope.

There are two leg press machines in this gym. One was occupied right before I got there and the other had a sweatshirt, towels and a water bottle next to it. No problem, I thought. I’ll just start with the back press machine. By the time I had completed my sets on the back machine, the one guy was still on his machine and the owner of the detritus next to the other machine hadn’t returned. Since (to me) this behavior is just short of peeing a circle around it to claim it, I picked up said items and moved them to the window sill.

Halfway through my first set, the owner of the stuff came chugging over. I had seen him on the other side of the room talking to someone, so I wasn’t kindly disposed towards this individual. I was focused on what I was doing (Form is everything) and he proceeded to hover like a vulture. I paused for a minute, ignoring the buzz cut buzzard (and he was not doing anything to change my attitude towards him), then proceeded on to my second set. By the time, I finished that one, I had to take my feet off the pads for a minute to let the blood flow back into my legs. He stuck his face in mine (still not helping) and asked to “work in” (if you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s sharing a machine, swapping off between sets). Had he not been a machine hog, I would have acquiesced. However, I was not about to give the Roid Boy what he wanted (BIG upper body, some acne, buzz cut, bad, unfinished tattoos, legs not as developed and I’m thinking nuts the size of Skittles) and told him that “No. You had your chance to complete your workout when you left your stuff to do something else. No.”

His face turned a dark shade of purple and he started screaming, “I had to go get something!”

(No he didn’t)

I said, “You have no right to treat this place as your own personal gym. You can have the machine when I’m done.”

And that’s when he started off with, “Fucking fatty.”

I kid you not.

My response, “Is that the best you’ve got?”

His face turned even darker. Meanwhile, I’m working on my third set of leg presses (and since the muscles were screaming in between sets, I do believe I got their attention). “NO! You’re fat!”

Oh. Local anchorman giving me the news.

“You look like 20 pounds of shit in a 5 pound sack.”

I laughed at him. “Is that supposed to hurt?”

After that, I more or less tuned him out and, in a piece of timing worthy of the movies, my Zune started playing “Battle Without Honor or Humanity.” (Kill Bill, Volume 1. GREAT piece of music). He stood there and kept up a steady stream of (largely unheard) abuse. I heard “fat piece of shit” “ugly the dog wouldn’t play” (Oh, he was recycling “Yo Momma” jokes I haven’t told since I was 12) and something about “hammer.” (You got me).

When I finished my third set (and the leg muscles were still wondering what had just happened to them), I got off the machine and said to him, “You are one sorry ass mother fucker if you hate yourself so much you have to resort to playground taunts to make yourself feel better.”

Needless to say, this did not go over well and I don’t remember any of the rest of his blather, but given what had gone before, it was Variations on a Theme (Projectile Vomiting of Self Loathing) and not the classic “Variations on a Theme by Paganini” (Rachmaninoff). There may have been an offer to “go” out in the garage. Another indicator of possible steroid use.

I continued my workout, to the sound of clanging weight stacks (Again, a piece of evidence arguing towards steroid involvement in the altercation) that he was dropping.

He huffed his way off the floor about 10 minutes later, face still set and purple and, confirmation, the girl he’d been talking to on the other side of the gym went with him.

And I continued with what I was doing because I have bigger fish to fry than some insecure musclehead throwing a tantrum like a thwarted two year old.

By the way, if it was a matter of keeping score, I won. I won because I didn’t let this fucktard and HIS projectile of self-loathing derail me. He was still upset and angry afterwards. I wasn’t. I mean, yeah, I’m reporting it here, but I’m not angry, upset or sad. I think it’s funny as hell (and a comment on American society) that in order to inflict damage, the first thing (without even thinking about it) he went for was the weight. Nothing about what I was wearing, form good or bad, wimpy weights (they weren’t. I leg press over 180 lbs.). Nope. Fucktard stuck with body image.

I could have told him, “You know, I’ve lost over 40 lbs. since January” but I didn’t. Two reasons: 1) that’s none of his damned business and (This is the biggie. Make a note) 2) I didn’t feel the need to defend myself. He was attempting to break me verbally, hurt me, harm me, make me stop what I was doing  and he failed. Among other things (thoughts move fast, People), I was thinking “Asshole, I’m here in the gym and working out. Do you really think I’m at a point where you can shame me over my weight?”

If you think of your emotional self, your self-regard, as a tower, consider this: A strong structure will withstand nearly any assault without crumbling. If the tower is not strong, a light wind will knock it down. As this idiot was blathering (while I was counting repetitions because I wasn’t going to overstay my time on the leg machine), I remembered a scene from “Music of the Heart” (Meryl Streep. Movie bacon): Roberta the teacher is showing her students how to stand while playing the violin and talks about “standing strong.” She pushes against one student who is not in correct position. He’s off balance and has to take a quick step. When she realigns his feet to the correct stance and pushes again, he doesn’t move.

I am willing to bet that he’ll be telling his side of this story today, tonight and for a while (probably with alcohol involved. In that case, my weight will balloon up in the telling) and be just as angry as he was this morning.

Yeah, I’m telling the story, but I’m not angry or hurt. I know I have friends among my readers who would say, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that” but I don’t need to be comforted.

I’m telling the story because, if I can believe the stats on my blog, by the end of the week, Roid Boy (He’s about 5’10”, Caucasian, buzz cut sandy hair, mustache (I think), hard face, smallish wire-framed glasses, big upper body, not so big in the legs, looks to be in his mid to late 30s. I pass along this information if you ever visit the same gym I do. It’s in the San Fernando Valley, open all the time, epicenter of the 1994 earthquake) will have an actual worldwide reputation as a muscleheaded asshole.

NEVER screw with a woman who blogs.