I wonder sometimes how my large body has freed me from a lot of B.S. I *can’t* fade into the background. I take up a lot of space, physically. This body is a big canvas, so I dress it – awesomely. I have a big personality and a big laugh. I don’t second-guess myself much. I speak up in conversations like my opinions matter.

I have many female friends and get along well with women and love them, so I’m not claiming that “I get along better with men than women” thing, but I know growing up I had a very hard time fitting into mainstream/conventional female groups, so a lot of my friends were boys and men OR other girls who had a hard time getting into the cool crowd. So those endless locker room and lunch table conversations where girls enforce the status quo on each other – “I’m so fat!” “You’re not fat!” – I witnessed them, but wasn’t a part of them. I didn’t go to the mall with groups of girls on the weekends. We didn’t do each other’s hair or trade clothes. I felt like I was being excluded then, but maybe I was free of a lot of policing and subtle bullying, too – like, I couldn’t fit in anywhere, so I HAD to stand out, so eventually I owned it and chose to stand out. I wasn’t considered pretty, and I felt unpretty, so I never learned to lead with pretty. So I led with smart instead. Or funny. Or, in bad low-self esteem times, mean & funny, but I’m mostly recovered.

So in dating situations, I get called “intimidating.” Sometimes that takes on a really creepy cast if the guy turns out to be not-so-nice, like “Your self-confidence is all out of whack with what you should be settling for,” so I usually answer that with “Really? Thanks!” and move on.

One of the things I love about this blog is that it’s about being beautiful. Like I can be TEH SMRT and also have really well-groomed eyebrows. It’s that girl-training I missed out on in high school and college, but without all the self-hating B.S.

So… while I obsessed during the declining years of my marriage that I wouldn’t be able to meet anyone, I’ve found that without losing a pound, I can meet all kinds of people. I just can’t get over the idea that I’d have to give up my freedom to continue to see them.

You just never know.

I understand your point. And, I think everyone here understands that when discussing past relationships, which are complex and emotional, people express
themselves with a sort of abandon that reflects more about their
feelings about the relationship than it does about any category of
people. I didn’t see the comments as anti-Semitic or homophobic
because it never occurred to me that our readers would, on average, be
those things. It may also be a regional thing. In New York, for
example, there are so many Jews that saying one is not a “member of
the tribe” is considered simply a familiar, jocular way of referring
to oneself as a gentile. It is also more acceptable to make light of
someone’s gayness in a subculture where homosexuality is an accepted
part of the social scene.

Again, Francesca understands your concern, and if she herself saw any
bigotry in the comments she would delete them. What she sees, instead,
is women who probably hang out a lot with Jews and homosexuals — we
have a fairly urbane audience — dealing with painful dating histories
and making light of themselves and their exes.

The woman he left me for (and whom he’s still with) is indecisive. And kind of weak. And flighty. And not really interested in being strong, or tough, or putting work into herself. I can say that, because for fourteen years, she was the best friend I had.

Funny, how after I went to school and discovered what I was good at and what made me confident and self-loving, he turned to her. He couldn’t brain-fuck me into being a skinny, un-confident, off-balance little demure wife any more.

So. It *so* ain’t about the fat. A lot of times, it’s about the things that we’ve developed *because of the fat*–the brains, the self-reliance, the toughness, the humor.

thankfully my current guy only finds me “mysterious” and thinks that I’m the hottest thing on two legs.

The problem was that the best colleges for his field and the best job markets for it were on either coast, while the best for mine were in the Midwest.

This was in the late 70s, so long-term, long-distance relationships were much more expensive to maintain (no internet, no IM, no unlimited-minutes phone plans). We both knew that neither one was ready to trade in our own dreams to tag along on someone elses.

We agreed to go our separate ways.

Getting over one’s own self-loathing shouldn’t entail trashing other categories of people
and I really expect better of this blog.
Oh, and by the way, it’s spelled “shiksa.”