Not dead, just making merry

Well, it's been a *coughcough*coupleofmonths*cough* while since my last post. Sorry about that; the holiday season starts early in retail, and it will suck the life right out of you. No joke.

Speaking of the holiday season, though, I have some things to say. Nothing, really, that I haven't thought before; but approaching things from a new perspective has--unsurprisingly--led me to think about things that I'd never really taken the time to consider before. I'll divide these into a couple of different posts, since the one topic has to do with the holidays and the other is just something that happened to occur to me during this time.

What I want to talk about here is the realization I had that the holidays are one of the most difficult times to maintain a steady fat-acceptance outlook. Ironically, the reason for this is the very spirit of freedom and overall tendency to throw caution to the winds that makes it seem as though it would be the easiest time of year. This might not make sense yet, but hear me out.

I've lost count of how many times over the past several weeks I heard some sort of variation on how "holiday calories don't count." I even caught myself saying it myself a time or two. Yes, I always said it as a joke; but doesn't everyone? No one actually believes that the food you eat between the middle of November and the beginning of January magically stops impacting your body in any way. But there's a sort of unspoken agreement among most adults to pretend that that's the case, or at least to pretend that for a month and a half everyone stops caring. For that stretch of time, most of society winks an eye at the consumption of foods that would, during most of the year, garner stern disapproval at best. The idea seems to be that during the holidays, that magical, wonderful time of the year, sensual pleasure--fleeting though it may be--is an acceptable goal. Want another cookie? Go ahead! A third piece of fudge? Why not! After all, it's the holidays!

Now, on the surface this all seems well and good. It's one of the few times of the year when a fatty like me can snack and munch and nibble without worrying about disapproving looks or people whispering behind her back. The problem, however, doesn't lie in what's actually said and done; it lies in what's lurking beneath the surface.

You see, every time I found myself saying, "Holiday calories don't count!" I was aware, in a way that I never had been before, of what I wasn't saying. I wasn't saying that calories do count during the rest of the year. I wasn't saying that we shouldn't eat these things for the 46 weeks between New Year's and Thanksgiving. I wasn't saying that once the new year hit I would remember that calories always count and going into overdrive trying to rid myself of the consequences of my excess. I wasn't saying any of those things; but I could hear them hanging in the air nevertheless, all of those implications that almost three decades in Western society have taught me go along with that one simple phrase. Holiday calories don't count during the holidays, but no one really thinks that they don't count at all.

Why is this a bad thing? It's not; at least, it's not absolutely and inherently so. It is, however, perilously close to diet-speak for my comfort. It is, let's say, the gateway phrase. It would be all too easy for me to go from saying, "Holiday calories don't count!" to sliding into a "Calories in, calories out; more calories are BAD" mindset. It's a slippery slope for me, and I'm guessing for quite a few of you out there in Internetland.

The real irony here is that I tend to eat better over the holidays than I do for most of the year. I'm at home with my family, and my mom is cooking and/or preparing most of the food. I'm not running out for something quick (and almost certainly unhealthy). There's usually a lovely selection of fresh fruit, which I almost unfailingly fall upon like a plague of locusts. (This Christmas sadly excepted, as I had a horrible cold start to hit me on Christmas Eve. Those pears were good too, damn it.) And for myself, the worry about extra calories didn't actually cross my mind. But with a mother and a sister who have likely never even heard of fat acceptance (no, I haven't brought it up, as that's a longer conversation than I feel up to having this early on), I was quite aware of that concern.

I came through more or less intact, but with New Year's and the accompanying resolutions yet to come, I know I'm not out of the woods yet. If anyone reading this has any tips to stay positive during this time of year, drop me a comment and let me know!

There's no such thing as a conservation of pretty

I was at breakfast this morning (okay, afternoon, because I was up until past 5 a.m. watching "Huge", which I'll talk about later; don't judge me). Now, I love breakfast with a ridiculous, fiery passion, enough that I will eat alone, in public, on a regular basis in order to indulge. Also, this place in town makes the best breakfast burritos. Just so you know.

The point is, I was out at breakfast with my delicious burrito, reading the Shapely Prose archive on my phone and enjoying the Very Cute Waiter whenever he came by. A lovely time, all in all. After a while, though, when I was about to get up to refill my coffee I glanced over at the VCW again to see him chatting with a very pretty girl sitting a few tables over. Immediately, despite having left the house feeling quite satisfied with how I looked, my self-confidence took a nosedive. The thought process is a familiar one, and goes something like this:

She is thin and pretty --> I do not look like her --> therefore I am not pretty.

It's a problem I frequently encounter when I'm out, just one of the self-esteem pit traps to be navigated. I could feel my shoulders hunching in, my head lowering, the thought going 'round and 'round my head, Keep quiet, keep your head down, don't let anyone notice you. Just getting up from the table, crossing the room to get another cup of coffee felt like a horrifying, daunting prospect. But instead of letting those feelings inform my actions, I squared my shoulders and stood up and crossed the damn room. Because really, the thought process should go something more like this:

She is thin and pretty --> I do not look like her --> so the fuck what?

Here's the thing to understand, and what has taken me far too long to be able to articulate: there is not a finite amount of attractiveness out there.

There is plenty of pretty to go around. If there is a pretty girl in the room, that does not make me less so. One person being pretty does not take away from the rest of us. Insane as it may sound, I only realized today that if I'm pretty, and another pretty girl walks in (even if she's prettier than I am), my level of attractiveness have not changed. Pretty has not suddenly been subtracted from me, or from anyone else to accommodate her presence.

If I don't look like her, what does that matter? If I saw a girl who looked exactly like me, except she had blonde hair, would I think that I couldn't possibly be as pretty because my hair was dark?* So why the hell am I letting myself get hung up on the fact that I don't look like someone else as though it makes me any less pretty?

Because it doesn't.

There are so many different kinds of pretty out there. (And I will compile some of them here, because I like to look at pictures of people I think are pretty.) Sure, maybe not everyone is going to find me attractive. But that's true of anyone; there is absolutely no such thing as an absolutely universal standard of beauty. How much happier would I be if I stopped defining my self-image based on other people?

I think quite a bit.