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| Talk,
Heather Lennox,
16 January 1999 | |
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Four years after emigrating to the U.K. I went back to the U.S. to work for a summer in the centre of Boston. At 11 stone (154 pounds), I tried to explain to my work colleagues that in England, I was considered quite overweight!
Yesterday, whilst sitting on a bus and now quite a bit bigger than 11 stone, a little nerdy guy sat anxiously next to me on a relatively empty bus. From behind his spectacles I could see a look of nervous longing. The only expression I could return was ‘I’m sorry. It’s not gonna happen, Buster’.
It’s not that I enjoy shooting geeky men down, in many ways I thought being overweight would protect me from that scenario. But, no matter what weight I am and despite the lack of interest from 50% of the heterosexual male population because I am overweight, it seems that the other half are just about going rabid trying to pick me up. Whether they think I am going to be easier to get because of it I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
My great guilty secret is this: if it weren’t for fashion problem for the over size 14’s. I wouldn’t really be that upset about being one.
In fact, if I hadn’t spent so much time in the past stressing about my weight problems from magazines, movies and morning shows; who knows? I may even have had time to go on a proper diet. Although, as soon as I believed I could run for buses, dance all night and play chase with my nieces and nephews, it seemed magically that I could!
I admit I don’t always like what I see in the mirror, especially after reading a copy of Vogue, or watching a late-night cat walk show. How I wish I could wear one of those diaphanous tops, and a tiny pair of hip hugging pants or some such fleeting frippery. They really do look gorgeous on those thin models. But then, there is only really about a 7-pound window between thin, and ‘too fat to wear that outfit’. I guess I shouldn’t be saying that someone at 10 stone is just as far away from wearing those tiny club clothes as I am, but they are.
Wherever I go, I see a lot of other girls who are overweight and with that; the dark-eyed darting lust that follows them in the shape of some anonymous guy, sheepishly skulking 5 feet away at the next table or seat on the tube. The girls in question are always oblivious to it and have dulled all tinges of their vivacity to nearly nothing.
I’m not saying ‘Hey, It’s great to be overweight’, because it isn’t. I just don’t agree that life has to be on hold because of it. The media seems to imply that you aren’t attractive and that men don’t fancy you. In the times spent noticing the male of the species in action, I know that that is rubbish. A give-away male expression is the ‘I fancy her, but that’s not what I was trained to look for’ look. I also wonder if their bemusement is that they think that going out with a large woman will be like being buried in an oil painting depicting a decadent roman feast (drapes, grapes and flesh everywhere).
Every once in a while I go on a big crash diet and lose all of my weight. It feels great. You get to make an entrance; it’s just like the crescendo in any brat pack movie. Soon after that, some moustachioed Romeo sidles up to me and says something like ‘Hello chicky, you are a cute little dame, etc.’ and I just think ‘Where were you when I was fat? Nevertheless a tryst of some nature usually ensues. A few months after the initial ‘honeymoon period’ of the relationship, (with me as the new thin girl) my new ‘Romeo dreamy guy paradise’ changes. It often transforms into more of a ‘dirty-socks everywhere slumlord’s wonderland’. Then, I’m sure that my subconscious starts to prescribe ‘sandwiches...lots of sandwiches...’As if to say, If he still likes you after that, then fine. You can stay thin. If not, he’ll go. Problem solved. I wish it wasn’t necessary. But it must be.
My sister in the US and I had names for 2 of the types of men we encountered in our respective social settings. There are the Bantams, and the Clydesdales. Bantams were the little stressed out scrappy types that seemed to have something to prove (in deed charming in their own way). The Clydesdales were the big, muscled, looming, peaceable ones. We have liked both types at some point but ultimately settled on the Clydesdales. I think men may have a similar system but aren’t aware of it yet.
And what of the fashion problem? You would think the designers would say ‘Gee I’ll bet that some of those ladies might be feeling a little bit down for having put on a few pounds. ‘’I know, Let’s make their clothes ultra feminine! That will make them feel better.’
It never happened.
Do you know why ‘Prisoner: CellBlock H isn’t on the air anymore? It’s because the U.K. ‘Larger ladies’ high street shops contracted the entire production team to design ugly, masculine, ill-fitting lavender blouses with huge grotesque faux gold buttons en masse.
By then, I had long been bored of shopping for clothes that didn’t fit and that I hated, so I started making my own clothes. I know now that because of it; by the time I can fit back into the kind of clothes the fashion industry says that only a size 10 or 12 can wear, they won’t have anything to compete with my standards by then. In short, companies (and guys, too) that only want to know you when you are the right dress size for them, aren’t worthy of patronage, at any size.
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