Tag Archives: Does this blog make me look fat? Body Image & stuff

Boobs and Locker Rooms

Posted on March 5, 2010 | 4 Comments

When I was 5 or 6, I saw my first boobs at Loehmann’s department store.  Well, I’m sure they weren’t my first view of boobs.  I’m sure I had seen my mom’s boobs at this point, but this is not a post about my mom’s boobs. (You’re welcome, Mom.)

Those boobs at Loehmann’s were the first boobs that made an impact.  I mean, they made such an impact I still remember them more than 2 decades later.

I was shopping with my mom that day.  Loehmanns was the same as every other grown-up clothing store — boring — with one notable exception.  The dressing room.  Instead of the rows of small, badly lit cubicles with partial doors or curtains for privacy into which you squeezed to try on clothing, Loehmann’s dressing room was literally a room. One room.  One giant, badly lit room with benches and mirrors lining the walls.  Everyone changed in that room together.  It was like a huge locker room with rolling clothing racks and discount designer clothes instead of showers and towels.

I was in this dressing room with my mother while she was trying on something.  I was bored.  I slouched on the bench and idly scanned the room.  That’s when I saw them.  The boobs.  A few feet away a very old woman had stripped off her shirt.  She was standing there in her beige, fully foundational, serious support bra and a skirt that was pulled up almost to her ribcage.  She was slightly stooped, and she moved slowly as she reached back to unhook the 4, or was it 5, hooks that held her bra strap in place.  Once the strap was unhooked and hanging loose, she moved her hands to the cups, one cup in each hand.  She shrugged her shoulders free of the straps and then began to lower her bra — very slowly — down towards the floor.  Slowly, slowly, the bra got closer to her waist, and just as slowly her breasts emerged, long and cylindrical, hanging from her chest like heavy pendulums.  Down and down went the bra, lower and lower stretched the breasts, long white sausages of boobs stretching for the floor in painstakingly slow motion.  It wasn’t until her bra was below her waist that she finally managed to uncover those breasts entirely.  They hung slack against the top of her skirt, nipples pointed down to the brown industrial carpet.  My mouth hung open just as low.   I was a Looney Tunes cartoon with my eyes bugged out of my head and my chin on the floor.   Honestly, whenever I think of this story, I’m still that way.  That woman must have been a EE or a ZZZ earlier in life. Gravity had not been kind.  Her bra was an engineering miracle.  It was the clown car of foundation garments.

I was thinking about those boobs today because I’m back at the gym and back into the culture of the locker room.  I’ve been away from it for awhile.  I had a gym membership at our local YMCA for years, but I let it lapse once I started kickboxing seriously.  It was too expensive to pay for both the gym and the dojo, and I was getting such a phenomenal workout at the dojo that I didn’t need the gym anymore.

I signed back up at the Y this week.  I’ve been resisting.  I desperately want to kickbox again.  I keep trying class, and my neck keeps hurting.  I rest it for awhile, and try again.  My neck hurts again.  I need an answer to how I can manage my neck and still do what I love – kickbox and dance – but I don’t have that answer yet.  In the meantime, I need to get my increasingly fat ass back in gear.  I was resisting signing up at the gym again because I can’t afford to do both the gym and the dojo.  I think by signing that form at the gym, I felt like I was saying good-bye to the dojo.  I was basically pouting that I couldn’t do the exercise I want to do by not doing any exercise at all.  I’ve finally reached the point where I just need to suck it up and deal with the reality.  I can’t kickbox right now.  I can’t dance.  I need to stay in shape, so the gym it is.

Yesterday and today found me back in the gym on the elliptical and the recumbant bike — bored out of my mind — but breaking a sweat.  I’ll just have to be bored and sweaty for awhile.

And yesterday and today found me back in the locker room.

We started going to the Y when Ace was a baby for infant-parent swim classes.   I remember being in the locker room getting into my bathing suit and marveling at all the naked women around me.  They were all ages, all shapes, and all sizes.  I don’t think I’d realized until that moment that I just haven’t seen that many other naked women.  Not real ones anyway.  Contrary to what most porn wants you to think, women just don’t get naked together in the dorm or at slumber parties or summer camp or really just in general.  Most of our interactions with other women actually involve clothing of some sort.  Yes, I’ve seen naked women in Playboy and Victoria Secret catalogues, porn and television, but those aren’t real bodies.  (In case I have any teeenage male readers, all your porn magazines are lying to you, by the way.  Women do not really look like that.  Even THOSE women don’t look like that. Real women’s bodies are amazing and beautiful and imperfect.  If you can learn to appreciate that, you’re going to have a much better sex life down the road. You’re welcome.)   In my case, it was almost liberating.  I realized that my body, with all its flaws, was actually pretty normal.  The longer I spent in that locker room, the more naked women I saw there, the more OK I felt about myself.  ”Ah,” I thought.  ”So this is what we look like.”

That particular locker room is actually one of the reasons I like to go to the YMCA instead of a gym like Bally’s.  Everybody exercises at the Y.  Kids.  Seniors. Teens. Moms.  Hey, the hot, hard bodied gym rats are there, too.  Every kind of body is at the Y.  Every kind of body is in the locker room.  It’s beautiful and inspiring and I love it.

Well, I mostly love it.  Today, as I was changing from my work clothes to my gym clothes, a wet, naked woman strolled out of the showers.  Her clothes were under her arm, and she had a comb in her hand.  She ambled over to the only full length mirror in the locker room, set down her clothes, and proceeded to slowly, languorously, comb her wet hair while gazing at herself in the mirror — totally naked — in a locker room full of people.  She was not unattractive.  I guess, I’m glad she is comfortable with her body and stuff, and I know we were at the crunchy, we-love-people-of-all-kinds Y, but really?  There are rules to proper locker room behavior, aren’t there?

I guess it is going to take a little time to get used to being back in the locker room.

At least it wasn’t Loehmann’s.

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Posted in Does this blog make me look fat? Body Image & stuff, Memories light the corners of my mind, Reflections

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The Mommy Suit: Once again I succumb to the call of Land’s End

Posted on June 16, 2009 | 1 Comment

Summer is upon us and the pool has opened. The pool is the only thing that keeps me sane during the summer. I take the kids daily. We’ll head over there around 2pm and stay until at least 6pm. They swim out all their energy. Sometimes I get to read a book. It’s all good.

The other day I dug out my bathing suits and tried them on. In the last 6 months, I’ve lost approximately 13 pounds which is great. It’s not as much a I had hoped, but it is heading in the right direction. None of my suits fit anymore. Yay! Wait. I appear to have lost all 13 pounds in boob and butt and not so much around the belly region. Boo! Not fair. Not fair, I tell you. I am shaking my fist at the weight loss gods. Seriously? Shouldn’t the boobs and ass be the last thing to go?  Can’t you gods tell the difference between good jiggly areas and bad jiggly areas?

Anyway, this left me with the chore of shopping for a new bathing suit. Since I am basically shaped like a rectangle with legs (I first said square, but IT Guy interjected “Technically, you’re  more like a rectangle.” Thanks, sweetie. Kisses.) and bathing suits tend to be built around a more womanly figure (you know, one with a waist and without the back of an East German swimmer), bathing suit shopping is usually painful –tedious and painful.

Bathing suits are also not cheap and, since we are broke, that added another layer of concern. I needed a cheap bathing suit built for a rectangle whose recently largish boobs are now not quite largish. Good luck with that, right?

First, I tried bathing suits on at Target. That was so hilarious I couldn’t even get upset about it. I have things going on that cause Target bathing suits to run in fear.  At 38, I am now firmly in the “too mature to buy bathing suits at Target” category.

Then, I tried on bathing suits at Macy’s, where all the suits were inexplicably covered with wide horizontal stripes. Now I don’t know about you, but wide, horizontal stripes only make my wide parts look wider and I’m quite wide enough already, thank you very much.

Finally I turned to catalogs. I went through Eddie Bauer, Athleta and Title 9, all the while avoiding the Land’s End swimwear catalogs I kept receiving in the mail. (Why do they send so many?)

This year was going to be different. I had lost some weight. I’ve put on some muscle with all the kickboxing. Both my kids are now in elementary school. It was time, I felt, to set aside the Mommy Suit. I was not going to buy a Land’s End swimsuit.

Land’s End is the ultimate supplier of the Mommy Suit. With their forgiving cuts, soft cup bras. strategic rusching and little swim skirts, they are the go to place when a new mom discovers her new mommy body isn’t quite what she expected and she needs to stuff it into some kind of latex for the summer. Land’s End suits offer coverage for women who spend half their pool time bent over double digging in their pool bag for diapers/wipes/sunscreen/toys/snacks. They provide ample coverage up top for all the times your small child grabs a hold of you by the neck of the suit and pulls down. Lands End suits have rescued many mommies from the embarrassment of flashing the neighbor’s 15 year old son.

Land’s End suits are functional, reliable and forgiving. Walk into a public pool and start counting. You can immediately identify the mommies by their faille fabric tankini tops and swim skirts. Land’s End suits are the mini-vans of the bathing suit world – all the mommies have one.

I have worn Land’s End suits – tankini top, skirt and all – since we got a pool membership 5 years ago. I have worn them every summer for all the same reasons as the other mommies. They are kind to my mommy body because they are made for my much less than perfect mommy body. None of this is a bad thing.

It’s just that this year, I have spent a lot of time rediscovering who I was before I was a mommy and what else I can be as well as a mommy. I didn’t want to go back to the Mommy Suit — not after the diet and the thousands of push-ups and sit ups and triceps dips. Surely, I could find a reasonably functional suit that was also, dare I hope, sexy? I’d even settle for sexy-ish.  In January, I would leaf through the Athleta catalog and fantasize about wearing a cute, low-cut tankini with hip hugging boy shorts — still practical, but a lot more appealing, a lot sexier, and a lot less Mommy than a Land’s End suit.

After 3 frustrating weeks of shopping in stores and on-line, today I finally found a suit — a suit that looks decent, a suit that is practical, a suit I will feel comfortable sitting around in for hours.

It’s a goddamn Land’s End suit. It even has a skirt.

The problem is despite the weight loss and all the exercise, I still have a Mommy body. I’m all soft and jiggly in the middle. My boobs aren’t where I left them. I still don’t have any hips. The cute, low-cut, sexy tankinis? They don’t look cute and sexy on me. It turns out my mommy body needs a mommy suit. I look better in it than any of the others. I guess this is not the year for sexy or even “ish.”

Land’s End, it looks like you have a customer for life. I tried to get away from you. I really did, but I can’t seem to resist your siren’s call. Forgiving cuts. Strategic rusching. Ample coverage. Soft cups bras and swim skirts.

Come on, kids. Let me pull on my Land’s End Tankini and swim skirt then we’ll pile into the mini-van. It’s time to go to the pool.

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Posted in Does this blog make me look fat? Body Image & stuff, Kids, Parenting

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Putting on make-up at 5 a.m.

Posted on April 23, 2009 | Leave a comment

Back in high school, I used to line the inner rim of my lower eyelids with black eyeliner.  This had nothing to do with Goth which did not yet exist.  It was just the latest make-up trend of the 80s.

I thought about this during an email conversation with GenieAlisa and Kim that started with business cards and BlogHer passed through The Supremes, Charlie’s Angels, make-up and acid wash jeans with ankle zippers to finally land on the 80s practice of pegging your jeans (which IT Guy did not give up until well into the 90s because of his irrational fear of bell bottoms.)  I got stuck on make-up . . .

At the age of 16, I would get up at 5:30 a.m. to apply my make-up in time for school.  I woke up in the darkest of pre-dawn dark just so I had a full 30 minutes of make-up and hair time at a point in my life when I certainly did not need make-up at all.   I did blush and lipstick and eyeshadow and mascara and the eyeliner on outer and inner rims, as instructed by some make-up article in Glamor magazine.  I even used foundation.

I wore more make-up at 16 than I have ever worn again. I don’t currently even own foundation and I don’t believe I have owned any since my wedding 14 years ago.

Here I am in my 1987 glory.   Please note the inner rim eyeliner, the inverted triangle 80s coif, the large earrings and, in the bottom corner of the photo, the matching jeweled brooch pinned to my cardigan.  (My mom used to tell me to get my hair out of my eyes.  Now that I’m a mom myself I look at this picture and want to say “Get your hair out of your eyes!”)

I could have been in The Breakfast Club.

It was quite an extensive morning grooming routine and I think I must have used up all the brain space I had for learning about make-up in those years.  Once I hit college, my make-up bag got stuffed into the bottom dresser drawer as I grew my hair long, purchased 7 pairs of Birkenstocks and entered a full on granola phase.  Most days I wore no make-up and that continued well into my 20s. (For a time, I stopped shaving my legs which horrified my sister, but didn’t bother IT Guy in the least.  I have since returned to shaving.)  I had a get a make-up lesson before my wedding in 1995 since I had forgotten all my tricks.  The Mary Kay lady came to my mom’s house and figured out my wedding palette.  I am a Winter. Whatever make-up knowledge I still possess is left over from that Mary Kay lady.

Now that I’m in my 30s, I probably could use a bit more make-up, but who has the time or the energy?  I might manage a bit of mascara, eyeliner and eyeshadow, unless I’m going out for the night or doing a show.  I do admit to having a lip gloss addiction, but that’s about it.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not anti-makeup.  I’m not anti-grooming or anti-girly stuff.  I religiously wax my eyebrows.  I think/talk/write about my hair way too much.  I get pedicures in the summer. I have an overwhelming fondness for shoes – especially silver ones.  I wear jewelry and sparkly lip gloss and my lack of  a decent wardrobe has more to do with my inability to shop than any moralistic objection to paying attention to such superficial things as looks.

In other words, I am plenty superficial.  The major make-up regimen of my youth just requires too much thought and too much time and I’m not sure it is at all necessary.  I don’t think it made me prettier.  I think perhaps I looked fine without it all.

This is me about 3 weeks ago, soon to turn 38,  gray hair, smile lines, not a lick of makeup and my hair wet from the rain.  (Superficial part talking now – my hair usually looks better than that.)

Comparing these two pictures, I think I look better now.

When I was 16, I kept my lips closed when I smiled for pictures, if I smiled at all.  More often, I tried to scowl or look bored like the models in Elle.  I had round cheeks and I didn’t smile for pictures because I worried it made my face look fatter.  Today with a much older face (but still chubby cheeks), I break out the teeth for the camera because my cheeks are my cheeks and everyone looks better with a big smile.

I may be older, grayer and less adorned, but I’m also happier which makes all the difference.

I don’t see myself learning to put on a “face” anytime soon.

(Plus I’m pretty sure I’ll poke my eye out of I try that inner rim liner thing again.)

What about you? How much make-up did you wear in high school?  How much do you wear now?  Can you line the inside of your eyelids?

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My Boots (footwear to take on the world)

Posted on April 17, 2009 | 6 Comments

This morning I was getting dressed to go observe Ace’s class.  Given the history with his teacher, I knew I was stealing myself for a potentially tough morning.

I knew it was a day to wear my boots.

These are my footwear of choice for tough days of any kind.   With my boots on, I feel stronger and more confident  When I wear them, I stand with my feet wide apart.   I take longer steps.  I stride.  My heels rap assuredly on the floor, a steady announcement of my presence.  Here. She. Comes.   They give me a few extra inches in height and a few extra feet in attitude.

These boots are also my choice for nights on the town or anytime I want to feel sexy.  Confidence and sexy go together, right?  When I wear stocking and high heels, I also feel sexy, but high heels hurt my feet.  I have to take smaller steps.  The heels make noise, but that click click click doesn’t have the command of the rap rap rap of boot heels.  I teeter on my feet.

I never have to take my boots off first to dance.  They ground me, so I can groove.  Those long strides I take in my boots make my hips sway.  I can look a tall man in the eye (almost).

I should wear them everyday because these boots make me feel like I can take on the world.

What do you wear when you need to take on the world?

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Posted in Does this blog make me look fat? Body Image & stuff, The place I put random stuff

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Living Out Loud: My body. Not wonderland.

Posted on March 1, 2009 | 14 Comments

GenieAlisa is at it again.  She set another Living Out Loud challenge on her blog.   Here is her brief summary of the challenge:

This assignment is to write an ode to something about your body that kicks ass. Part two of the assignment is to provide a photo of yourself that pleases you, but doesn’t necessarily exemplify what kicks ass about your body. You can do it! Have I mentioned how nice you look today?

(For a more detailed description, follow this link.)

She had originally promised to make this assignment easier than the last one, to which I say “HA!”  (I’m more than a little afraid to see what she comes up with next.)

My entry covers some familiar ground.  I addressed this topic awhile ago with Beautiful, but hopefully, I’ve put a slightly different twist on it this time.  I mean, you just can’t use an old piece of writing for a new assignment, can you?  Can I have extra credit since I’ve technically done it twice?

So, without further ado, here is my entry for this month’s Living Out Loud challenge . . .

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PART 1: The Writing

I am strong.

I find acceptance for my body in what it can do, how much it can lift, what it can endure because I cannot find acceptance for it in how it looks.

I cannot find acceptance for myself in how I look.

It’s all about being fat. I wasn’t a fat child. Puberty did me in. With the hormones came big breasts and a big belly. I didn’t want either. I wanted to be petite and lithe. I wanted to be small like my mother and my friends. I wanted a small waist and a long neck. I wanted graceful, curving hips and a heart-shaped ass.

I have often joked that I am good peasant stock. I am built to work a farm, plow the back 40 and shoulder heavy loads.

I have broad shoulders, a short neck, a wide back and a tendency to muscle up quickly. A high school friend, Chris, used to sing Jerry Lee Lewis’s song “Big Legged Woman” to me in tribute of my mighty thighs. He meant it as a compliment and I tried to take it as such.

Then there is the thick waist and the belly. I don’t curve in at the middle. If I’m thin, I’m a straight shot from the ribs to the hips. If I’m not thin (which is most of the time), I do curve through the middle. Just the wrong way. I curve out. At the gut. Oh, how I hate it.

I keep my belly under wraps ““ hidden from sight. It is the sole place on my body that isn’t covered with freckles because I never expose it to the sun. There was one summer ““ the summer after Nutri-System ““ when I wore a bikini. I was 20. I’ve never worn a bikini again.

17 years and two pregnancies later, the summer of Nutri-System is a distant memory. Bikinis are no longer a part of my reality (if they ever were.) Despite diets upon diets upon diets and an ongoing commitment to exercise, I’ve never been able to banish the belly. I’ve never been able to keep the fat from returning. Lord knows, it is not from lack of trying. I doubt I will ever be at peace with how I look because I doubt I will ever be completely successful in losing all the weight. Somehow it’s just not in my genetic make-up. Good peasant stock. Big round belly. That’s me.

I’ve tried to make peace with my body, find acceptance for it in other ways, though. I may not look good in a bikini, but I am strong. My legs are taut and muscled from dancing. These legs can hang an over at the same height as a 16 year old. They can pound out a hornpipe and a treble jig in time. I can kick over my head and probably over yours.

I can do 75 push-ups ““ on my hands and feet, not on my knees (even though IT Guy says I need to learn to keep my ass down.) I throw a right hook that sends a martial arts target rocking on its base. I can kick that same 7-foot target completely over with a well-placed sidekick. I can  throw a 220 lb man to the mat.  I can make my pecs jump ““ one side then the other. (I know that’s usually a guy thing, but I love that I can do it.) I admire the curve of my shoulder muscles when I raise my arms.  I can do bicycles, crunches, reverse crunches, full sit-ups and then hold my legs 6 inches off the floor for 1 minute while others groan and give up around me. You can’t see it, but under the belly, I have real abs . . . maybe even a 6-pack . . . my concealed weapon.

I am not small. I am not thin. I am not petite or lithe. Despite the muscle on the top and bottom, I’m still round and jiggly in the middle.  Muffin-top doesn’t even begin to cover it.

But I am strong. I can lift my children onto my shoulders. I can carry all my groceries. I can help a friend move a couch. I probably could plow the back 40.

I conceived two children. I carried them. I delivered them. I nursed them. All with this body.  The belly that I’ve always despised housed my children, nourished them and kept them safe.  I have swirls upon swirls of stretch marks as proof.  I have a long, crooked knotty c-section scar.  I have flabby droopy skin to cover the fat, but I try to remember why I have those things now.  I earned them.  They are marks of my motherhood.  They are marks of my life.  That, in itself, must be beautiful.

This body will never win me a modeling contract. I will never draw the eyes of men as I walk through the room.

But . . . I can swim. I can run. I can fight. I can dance.

I live.  I live in this body and you can see the evidence in my wrinkles and scars and freckles and all the other non-airbrushed imperfections.

I don’t read women’ s magazines or look at pictures of fake, plastic-filled people rendered faker by a computer.  I can never live up to that because you can’t actually LIVE and look like that.

I try now to find the beauty in the living, even though it leaves marks.

I may never be at peace with how my body looks, but I’ve come to find my sense of beauty in what it can do . . . in what I can do . . . in being strong . . . and in the living.

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Part 2 :  The Picture

I felt pretty good about myself after I wrote my essay.  I felt so good about my muscles that I decided for part two of the assignment – the photo – I would try to show off those muscles.  I knew I wouldn’t be posting any full body shots, but I thought I could get a good picture that showed the definition of my legs and then another picture of my arms.  I’d just leave the middle part out.  Simple enough, right?

I decided to get the shot in my underwear.  The picture wouldn’t be OF my underwear, but I wanted to show all my legs.  I felt good enough to stand in front of a camera in my underwear, but that good feeling didn’t last long.

I did get this shot.  Look. Legs.  Muscles.

But then I cried.

I have decades old body image issues and I thought I had put most of them behind me. (See Part 1.)  I just learned I haven’t.   I am not ready to stand in front of a camera in my underwear  . . . even in my own house . . . even with my husband behind the camera.  It wasn’t even a result of seeing the pictures.  I just couldn’t stand there with a camera pointed at my body.  First, I got frustrated.  I was picking at Ben even though he was just trying to set up for the best possible lighting.  Then I got agitated and  then I started crying.  I don’t know why.  All those feelings of being OK with my body. . . all that talk about the beauty being in what I could do and what I had lived and not in what I look like . . . all of it evaporated and I dissolved into tears.

I guess I haven’t come as far as I’d thought.

In the interest of Living out Loud, I’m posting this picture.  It doesn’t please me, but maybe that’s the point.

This is all of me.  I hope someday I really will be OK with it.

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To see a listing of all the entries, go here.

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Posted in Blogging, Does this blog make me look fat? Body Image & stuff, Living Out Loud entries

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