Calling Olsen, calling Memphis, I am calling, can you hear this?

So, as I mentioned, my sister's birthday was Saturday. Since we were going to the mall for pedicures anyway, and my bra was very clearly not fitting anymore, I decided that while she was getting her makeup done I would go to Lane Bryant and get some new bras. (Which I did, and oh dear lord, the difference is MIRACULOUS. I am wearing the one that didn't have to get shipped to me right now. Let me tell you, if it were possible to legally marry a piece of clothing, this bra might be it for me.) On the surface, this sounds like a simple enough thing. In reality, though, I knew before we even left the house what would happen, which was that I would walk into the store and either go, "Ugh, everything in here sucks," or else I'd find fifteen to twenty other things to try on. And since I've gone in one too many times thinking, "Oh, that's cute, I'll come back and try it on later," only to find when I do go back in that it is gone forever. This makes me a sad panda. So going in, I knew there was a good chance I'd be trying on clothes.

Thus, the day was already going to be stressful before the Evening Out even began. Because yes, shopping for clothes can be lots of fun, but it can also be absolutely horrifying. There's nothing quite like standing in a tiny room, all of a foot and a half away from the mirror, and trying on item after item that were clearly not designed with you in mind, to completely wreck your self-confidence. It's entirely too easy to see a shirt that looks absolutely adorable on the hanger, get it on only to find that it makes you look like you're pregnant or makes your arms look like a mad Dr. Frankenstein's mistakenly sewn a pair of legs in their place, and immediately start blaming your body. It was incredibly cute on the mannequin, after all; the problem is clearly you.

When this happens once, it's reasonably easy to push it aside. When it happens twice, it starts getting more difficult. When it happens with everything you try on (and yes, I have gone into a dressing room with three armloads of clothes only to come out with nothing) it's fucking devastating.

This shopping trip, as it turned out, was pretty much ideal. I tried on several things, and enough fit to make me feel good and confident and attractive; enough didn't fit, or didn't fit quite right, to keep me from spending way more money than I actually needed to. When something didn't fit, instead of dwelling on the parts of me it didn't flatter, I shrugged, decided it wasn't for me, and moved on.

It sounds simple, doesn't it? It's not. It was really fucking hard. For example, I tried on a pair of leggings that I pretty much already knew weren't going to work, because I figured "Why not?" They managed to highlight pretty much everything I dislike about my legs, and I barely got them all the way on before whipping them back off again. I got that sinking feeling in my gut that happens whenever a part of my body I particularly dislike is thrown into sharp relief. It would have been incredibly easy to let that feeling take me over, to spend the rest of the time looking at my thighs whenever I tried something else on and knowing that they were there, under my jeans, fat and lumpy and ugly. Instead I took a deep (mostly mental) breath and thought, Okay, maybe super-thin, skin-tight leggings aren't designed to flatter me. I just won't wear them. I moved on, and while I still have that image sort of burned into my brain (I've made progress, but I still have a long way to go, body/fat acceptance-wise) I don't find my eyes automatically drawn to or repelled from my thighs when I look in the mirror.

(Okay, I'm going to derail for a moment here to ask: does anyone else remember, in the eighties/early nineties, when "leggings" meant a pair of pants that were sort of thin and stretchy but not, y'know, TIGHTS? What happened there? Seriously.)

So the first hurdle of the day was cleared, and I got some new clothes, including some bras that make my boobs look FANTASTIC. For real, y'all. It's sort of epic. Plus I had soft feet and toes painted a pretty dark blue, and everything was going rather well.

But I still had to get through the part of the day that was tying my stomach into knots whenever I thought about it.

To explain this, it's first necessary for you to realize that though I love my sister dearly dearly dearly, we are two very different people.

I am, quite literally, a Big Damn Geek. I prefer to read books in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre; I have held discussions on why that entire genre should probably be more accurately titled Speculative Fiction; I play D&D; I am a Trekkie/Trekker/whatever the hell you want to call it, so clearly I'm not as fanatical as some because I really don't give a damn about the word itself; I read and write fanfic. (Shut up.) I also tend to be--and this may be somewhat unexpected, coming from someone who's decided to start her own blog and toss her opinions out into the often uncaring and hostile land of the internet--extremely introverted.

My sister, on the other hand, has always been one of the Popular Girls. She played soccer and was a cheerleader in high school. She was in a sorority in college. She just finished with esthetics school. (She is also a lovely, warm, wonderful person, and the reason why I will lay a heap of righteous vengeance on anyone who wants to categorically slam cheerleaders, sorority girls, and/or estheticians or cosmetologists. Fair warning.) Her friends are the same type of people; traditionally popular, attractive, and outgoing.

I have never had a bad experience with one of my sister's friends. But I have had bad experiences with people who fit into many of the same categories that they do, and my fear of social situations entirely surrounded by people like that borders on instinctive.

I wasn't afraid of being badly treated, or condescended to, or anything like that. What made me nervous was, quite simply, being out with a group of these women and having to eat in front of them.

I want to say that it's a ridiculous fear to have. I really, really want to. But based on my past experiences, I can emphatically say that it's not ridiculous. What it is, is infuriating. I am a human being. I need food to . . . what was that thing called . . . oh right, live. It's infuriating to me that our society conditions people (female-type people, in particular) to see food as dangerous, as an indulgence, as a handy moral yardstick. As a fat girl, I've spent more years than I care to count carefully monitoring not only my own public food consumption, but how it measured compared to that of every other person in the room. I have turned down food when I was hungry because I didn't want to wonder if I was being judged for saying yes. I've waited to get food until someone thinner than me did, and very carefully gotten only as much as they did, maximum. I've lived terrified to put anything in my mouth in public that wasn't a) liquid, b) visibly non/low-fat, or c) such a tiny amount that I thought it couldn't reasonably effect other people's opinions.

One of the most important things that I'm learning from fat acceptance and demand eating is the ability to say the following phrase. Are you paying attention? This is important. Ready? Okay.

FUCK. THAT.

I've already said it above, but I'll say it again in more inclusive language: We need food to live. Food is not a basis for moral judgment. It's fuel, and it's pleasure, and it's just fucking food. One of the hardest things I'm having to learn is how to actually listen to my body, to accept when I'm hungry and try to work out what it is I'm hungry for. And since I've started, guess what? I'm eating lots of fresh fruit. I'm starting to be able to recognize when I need protein, and when I need carbs, and when I need vitamins, and when I need calcium. I'm also enjoying food more. I accept it when I really, really want a bunch of fresh grapes. I also accept it when I really, really want some macaroni and cheese. This doesn't mean that I don't stop and think and question whether these are things I really do want. But if I decide that yes, my interpretation of what my body's trying to tell me is spot-on, I don't then try to talk myself out of what I want on the grounds that it's fatty or mostly carbs or a goddamned sometimes food.

So when I went out with my sister's friends (all of whom, in addition to being lovely and extroverted, are also quite thin, and I believe three of the four are on Weight Watchers right now), I took a careful look at the menu, took the time to think about what sounded good and what I thought would really satisfy me. I ordered a salad (switched from a house to a Caesar at the last minute because it sounded better, and resulted in me eating the whole thing rather than half or less) and an entree and dessert. I only ate a few bites of the latter, not because I was afraid of what people would think but because that was all I really wanted. And, it should be noted, I ordered the exact same amount of food as my sister despite having ordered first.

Now, I'm sure there's someone out there who's remembering the having fat friends makes you fat "study" and is triumphantly calling out, "Aha! See? She was influenced by your ordering ridiculous amounts of food, and now she's going to get fat and miserable and it will be all your fault." I have two main problems with that. First, I believe that my sister is smarter than that. Second, there were four other thin women there. Even assuming that their body type wasn't the one she consciously wanted to emulate, they outnumbered me four to one. (Five, if you count my sister.) The odds were so stacked against my influence that it would be a ridiculous assumption to make. I'm going to assume, therefore, that you're all too smart for that, as well.

The point here, which I seem to have gotten distracted from making, is that I went out, I was confident in my own choices, and I had fun. Granted, this was a very different environment than if these women had all been strangers who hadn't been pre-screened by my sister for non-douchery. Still, it was a step in the right direction.

If there's anyone out there reading, tell me about your own small steps. What have you done lately that's made you proud of yourself?