Why Be Happy When You Could Be Skinny?

The topic of fat as a feminist issue has hit the headlines again. Namely the gob-smackingly smug missive Michelle Thomas received from her Tinder date, who considered her too fat to fancy. 

Then, in the same week, I watched a video of comedian, Luisa Omielan.  I was expecting to find it funny, and it was - but I wasn’t expecting it to land a punch right quite so firmly on my ego. That ego that still witters on annoyingly in the background with its doubts and criticisms. 

As Luisa hugged her belly and knocked her thighs together (and how the words ‘ample’ and ‘shapely’ beg to be collocated to those nouns) Ego/Vanity - whatever you like to call it - gave a horrified scream and Real Self raised her regal head and nodded - “That’s right, Love. You are still influenced by the bullshit beauty standards that were instilled from the moment your boobs began to bud and hormones wreaked havoc on your girlish, bum-less, beanpole body and turned it into that of a bodacious-buttocked sexually mature female. 

Remember?

Yes. Cue criticism and self loathing. 

In fact I can remember the exact moment. It was a Sunday. I was wearing jodhpurs, about to go riding. I was looking out of the window, my back to the door when my mother walked in and uttered a cry of dismay. I turned around. What could it be, I wondered. What could be so bad that it made my mother exclaim out loud? I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell me of a catastrophe, an awful omission…

“Your arse!” she gasped. “It’s absolutely huge!”

And from then on, she felt duty bound to remind me of this, along with her keen observations on my imperfect nose, my meager breasts and my appalling posture. As I described in my post about Marilyn , I came to realise eventually that such afflictions did not preclude me being attractive to men. However, the ‘ huge arse’ comments and the complete contempt in which my mother held anyone even slightly overweight made its impact. 

I recall the first time a man said I was beautiful, I thought he must be slightly mad, or a flatterer, or just kind. I didn't know what to do with compliments.

I was far too busy frantically trying to stave off any trace of fat. It was so hardwired I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I’d say things like ‘I can eat anything I want!’ and partly in thanks to a youthful, maniacal metabolism firing on nicotine and caffeine, the minimum exercise came up with the right results: skinny. 

When I checked my height to weight ratio I was bemused by the fact that it always came up as ‘underweight’. But I’m not! I thought. 

For a while taking the contraceptive pill and being actually quite happy put pay to my skinny obsession. When my ex-husband saw photos of me from this time in my life he remarked: “What a fatty!”

What a crime! I was proving my mother right - inside me there was just a hideous fat cow waiting to slip out when I was preoccupied with silly things like enjoying myself. “I’ll show her!” I thought. 

Living in Japan was the perfect place to nurture such an ambition. Imagine living in a place where no shoes are big enough - and when you tell the shop assistant your size, she exclaims, “Gigantic!” Imagine discovering you even too big for the fat-granny’s oversize department.  Imagine only being able to buy clothes from American catalogues (apologies guys). This was a sorry episode in my personal style. I was so happy when Freemans became available overseas. British fashion in my size! 

But, by then, I had subjected myself to such a gruelling regimen of exercise and food control (in my head I was never on a diet) that I had slimmed down to the largest size available in most Japanese fashion boutiques: British size 8 (American 4, European 36). But I still believed I was too big. Especially when another smirking shop assistant was kind enough to ask me when the baby was due. Miaow! 

It was years later, on that watershed day I have reflected on in a previous post, when my mother was finally too ill with dementia to recognise me, that it finally dawned on me how the chief motivation in my battle with weight-gain was simply to spite her! Now she didn’t know who the fuck I was, there was no one to prove wrong anymore. 

I’ve done enough work on myself to extinguish almost entirely the spiteful voice that once had the power to reduce me to a baseline of self-loathing and self-harming every time I did something ‘wrong’ or looked less than very slim. And now I am suspicious of my relationship with exercise - I question why exactly I do it; whether it’s doing me more harm than good.  

Food and drink are two other contenders for addiction and abuse. That’s a whole blog post in itself.

But, as Luisa Omielan says as she cuddles her middle. “I love this - this means I have dinner with friends.”

She’s so right. Listen up, Ego. 

Something for the Weekend

Baking, scorching, melting ...

The current British summer has taken us all (as usual) by surprise. And (as usual) the transport system has failed in a huge way, electrics are blowing up, and many a fair-skinned bod has been toasted a startling shade of scarlet.

As this taste of the tropics continues, the comely invitation of al fresco pleasures and picnics will be impossible to resist this coming weekend. Nevertheless, I feel the lull in my blogging should be interrupted, so that if anyone is so inclined to peruse their 'device',  they might stumble on this amuse bouche.  

An offering that, in my languorous state, requires little more effort than a few clicks, is a story that I adapted for inclusion in a story cabaret held by the delightful editorial duo Little Fishes, here in Lewes, East Sussex. 

The theme of the cabaret was 'Objet D'Art' and offered such an array of talent, that when I finally took my place for the final slot, I felt a tad amateurish and intimidated. However, the cocktails worked admirably at steeling my nerves, and it was well received. 

So, here it is - The Ersatz Idol.

 I was still teaching English when I saw Kinkakuji for the first time. If you're anything like me, that won’t mean much. It means Golden Temple. That golden temple in Japan, on all the postcards and stuff? I went along because that’s what you see when you're in Kyoto. We spent five hours on a train to get there. I bloody wanted to see that temple.

It was almost Autumn, but it was still hot. It was late in the afternoon when we got there, me and my two Aussie colleagues, Chris and Kate. It wasn’t even that crowded, but it felt like there were too many people. I started to feel panicky and suffocated. I fumbled for my camera and watched helplessly as the lens cap fluttered to the ground and disappeared into the grass. The camera felt slippery in my hands as I squinted through the viewfinder at the temple.

It was so golden; I was dazzled. It was delicately perched above a pond like a dancing maiko draped in her wedding kimono. I had never seen a building like this. It was too beautiful to be true. Too beautiful to exist.

I felt butterflies in my stomach. I had senses only for this beautiful object. The incomprehensible muttering of the visitors faded. I only heard birds, the wind in bamboo and I seemed to sense the temple itself resonating with a tone too low or too high in frequency for my human ear. I wondered if it was a time machine hosting the spirits of eagle faced samurai and emaciated zen masters. Shifting in its shimmering form between eras; appearing to me now in my stunned and static present.

Then I felt the tourists pressing against me, anxious to do the next thing on their itineraries.  The brief, magical rapport between me and the golden temple faded. I realised Chris and Kate were both hovering hesitantly, eyes questioning. I ignored them, turning away to skirt the boundaries of the tiny wooden fence, my head inclined awkwardly, with one aim: to capture the temple at any and every angle and fix those visions in my mind’s eye.

Reluctantly, driven on by the surge of the crowds, I followed the path to the gardens, and still my eyes searched for the temple that winked in tantalising  instances through dense bamboo.

I found Chris and Kate near the exit. We sat on a dry dusty rock across from the souvenir shop and waited for the bus. I began to read the creased pamphlet in my hand. I must have gasped.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kate.

 “The temple. It’s a fake.”

Chris grimaced as he swallowed cold tea from a can.

“Yeah,” he said. “Some guy burned down the original.”

“I think there was a book about it,” added Kate.

I couldn’t believe they'd known and hadn’t said a word.

“It’s still amazing though, isn’t it?” said Kate.

I didn’t answer. Kate stood to join Chris in an attempt to flag down a taxi.

I thought about how I had been sold this fake thing. How I’d been cheated. I had wanted to possess that thing of beauty -  I wanted to suck up its essence inside me.

And now, here I am in a hostess bar, perched up on my high stool staring at my reflection in the black granite table top.  Now when I try to imagine the man who could destroy something as beautiful as Kinkakuji,  I can. All too easily.

When I hear the door,  I keep my eyes cast down and put on my demure smile that’s twisted into a smirk by my reflection. Mama-san rattles out her greeting with fraudulent delight and I listen to the reply.

It’s for me.

Kimura-san sits at my table, eyes round with pleasure, ready to glug down his gorgeous gaijin along with his whisky. He doesn’t know I’m a fake. The real thing burned down years ago.