Friends,  I had kind of a sucky weekend. You know, the type where you sit in the dark listening to The Smiths longer than is probably strictly healthy and you’re fairly sure you’ll never be happy again and it’s just gonna be you and Mozzer sitting in a room together staring at each other until one of you actually dies from misanthropy.  You guys do that too, right? Right?

Usually when I have a sucky weekend, I don’t check my email because 99% of it comes from PR reps who are trying to convince to care about a whole lot of things I don’t even know about (What is a Jwow?) and your normal spam of Nigerian princes in seek of bank information and Ukrainian girls bending over and frankly I’m too delicate a petal to deal with that even when I’m feeling my normal chipper self. I definitely can’t hang when Truffaut films are speaking to me on any emotional level.

So it was with fear and trembling I opened an email from Beloved Reader Kylie.  I’m going to reprint it here in its entirety:

I wanted to share something that I think the plus-sized community needs to hear:

I have been plus sized since I was about 14 years old and NOT ONCE that I can remember has anyone so much as said ANYTHING negative about me pertaining to my size.  Boys have always been attracted me, girls have always been nice to me and my friends and family have always totally supportive of me in every way.  I have had my own self-esteem battles as anyone does, regardless of their size, but I have found I have more self-confidence in my appearance than my skinnier friends.  I decided long ago that whatever size I was (currently a 22/24) that I would do my hardest to not only love and accept myself for exactly who I am, but to be a confident woman who dresses and carries herself in the same way that any slender girl would, and I truly believe that this mindset has made all the difference for me.

My boyfriend of three years absolutely adores my Entire being and body completely.

Almost everyone I know has positively commented on the way that I look, and not only just my outfits.

No one has ever made me feel bad about myself in any way, shape or form and I have a feeling that I am in the minority in this, and on one hand it makes me feel sad that other curvy girls out there have had more difficulties with their size and how people react to them, but on the other hand, I feel completely blessed.  I have never been treated with anything but respect and kindness and I wanted to let people know that being a larger woman does not always mean that you have to fight adversity because I have never had any adversity to face.

I truly hope that I am not the only plus-sized woman out there who has had this experience, and I hope that I will hear that others too have been supported and loved for every inch and pound of themselves exactly for who they are and how they look just as I have.

Sincerely,

Kylie

This is something I’ve struggled with because my experiences generally have matched Kylie’s. I won’t say I’ve never been made to feel bad, but it has been extremely rare. What I HAVE experienced, however, is other girls who haven’t been as fortunate as Kylie and I, who try to convince me that in fact, I HAVE been treated as badly as they have but I’m not noticing it (and thus the inference that people are laughing at me and I’m too stupid to get the joke). This is particularly true of girls who once were fat and no longer are.

Now, I’m going to be intellectually honest and say that it is a possibility that despite being hyperaware of how people perceive me and borderline obsessed with the image I present and how it’s received, that in my thirty-one years of life I have been completely oblivious to all but a very few examples of the ugly, hateful and all-pervasive anti-fat bias at play around me.

But honestly I don’t think that’s what it is, and I’m so, SO glad to hear from Kylie because now I know although I might be in the minority, at least it’s not a minority of one.

Have people made fun of me because of my size? Sure, probably. Who cares? Have guys that I’ve thought were cute not been attracted to me (as unfathomable as that is) because of my size? Quite possibly. But you know, them’s the breaks. If some guy isn’t attracted to me because I’m fat that’s not any worse or more offensive than me not being attracted to him because he’s got spindly legs.

It’s preference, not persecution.

I think we create more problems for ourselves when we project our own insecurities onto other people’s actions (yeah I know, novel idea, right?) so when a woman who once was fat and insecure becomes less fat and less insecure, all of the sudden people who our girl felt were giving meaningful glares when she ordered the pasta instead of the side salad are now just people in a restaurant whom she may or may not notice.

If some passing girl gives me the stinkeye because I’m fat, who cares?

Lord knows I wouldn’t leave the house looking like 75% of the women I see for one reason or another. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m not going to treat them like less of  a person, I’m just going to hate their shoes. And honestly, that’s fine. I don’t need to like them and they don’t need to like me. It’s not like after the random disapproving girl rings up my groceries we’re going to go home, French braid eachother’s hair, have a slow motion bra-and-panties tickle fight and practice making out.   She’s going to ring up my criminally overpriced olive bar purchase and we’ll move on with our collective lives. C’est tout.

I’d like to hear from both sides of the aisle on this one. Has your experience been more like Kylie’s or less?

I’m sure others of you out there in Big Girl Land have seen Jennifer Hudson’s current Weight Watchers commercial, where she starts off by saying that before she found WW, her world was full of ‘can’t’.

Really, Jennifer?

This is a woman who competed on American Idol, started a singing/acting career and won an Oscar, all while being fat.

As far as I’m concerned, her choice to join WW is just that: a choice. It isn’t one I would make, nor is it one I would particularly encourage, but it’s her choice, she made it, and I honestly do hope that she’s happy with the choice she made.

But here’s the thing, being fat didn’t stop her from living a worthwhile life. It doesn’t stop me from living a worthwhile life. It doesn’t need to stop anyone from living a worthwhile life.

My life is filled with can. I can write. I can laugh. I can cook and bake. I can do craftwork. I can have a happy marriage to a wonderful man. I can fight for social justice. I can entrance children and cats. I can work to overcome my own fears. I can exercise my logic. I can share my joy in life with others. I can sing. I can walk distances. I can swim. I can hold a friend’s hand in a crisis – and have done so even across continents. I can both win and lose gracefully. I can be gloriously stylish on my own terms. I can see beyond my own choices to accept those the people I love make for themselves.

I may never win an Oscar (in fact, I kind of doubt I will since I’ve never been in a major release film), but there’s so much I can be and do.

I can.

I do.

I will.

And honey, I don’t need to reach a particular goal weight to do it.

This was a slightly different week at Casa Twistie. You see, Mr. Twistie was away at a conference. It doesn’t matter what it was or where. The important part is that he was off doing his thing, and I spent four days and nights alone with the excessively evil Jake the Cat.

Meh, big deal, you may say. But in my case, this happens a couple times a year at most. That means that I’m not especially well-versed in being by myself for more than a few hours.

I am, by nature, a gregarious person. I am also, by nature, a person who needs to be alone. I walk the tightrope by working from home by myself and then spending my evenings with Mr. Twistie and good friends, and occasionally  meeting a friend for lunch at a neighborhood  bistro or a brief shopping expedition.

But four days pretty much by myself? I don’t do that so often. There’s an art to being alone for an extended period of time that I don’t think I fully mastered until quite recently. In case it will be of use to anyone else, I hereby give you my tips for being alone superfantastically over the short term.

(more…)

Yeah, I can’t resist the opportunity to make a Stevie Nicks reference. So sue me. What brings her song to my mind today?

Today makes seventeen years since I married Mr. Twistie.

Has it all been roses? Well, roses have thorns and life isn’t perfect, so yes, in a funny way it has been. As with roses, the difficulties we have faced haven’t outweighed the beauty or the charm of our love and our lives. Given the option, I would absolutely marry him all over again. Given the chance, I would marry him every single day.

What does this have to do with being a Big Girl?

We are told every day in every way that being larger than average means we are unloveable. If we just lost weight, we could find love, you know. After all, who could love someone who is fat? Who could love a woman who stands tall or talks loudly?

And yet every day many of us stand in stark defiance of this assumption by having loving relationships with life partners who adore us. We have lovers and spouses and booty calls, depending on our circumstances and preferences.

Does everyone get the brass ring? No. Does everyone even want it? Again, no. Does everyone who is thin get true love by default? Hardly.

It’s not about dress size. It’s not about height. It’s not about toeing the societally acceptable gender line. It’s about the choice to look, the luck to find the right person (and I don’t give a fig whether that person has opposing or matching genitals), and the courage to take a chance on that right person, should you find him or her.

Will you find the sort of love I have? I can’t tell. There’s simply no way to know. It’s a crap shoot at best. But I do know one thing: if you let your packaging stand in the way, you definitely won’t.

If you’re looking for love, the best advice I can give you is to be unapologetically you. After all, you want someone to love you for who you are. Let people know who that is, and you have a much better chance of finding the person who will delight in you the way Mr. Twistie and I delight in one another.

There’s been something in the air of late. The first inkling I got was when my esteemed colleague wrote about how to take a compliment, already. And seriously, if you haven’t read it go do so right now. It’s a wonderful and important article we all should read.

But then I saw this post on Shapely Prose, which should also be required reading. Warning, the language is far saltier there than it is here. We are PG, SP is hard R. Just so’s you know what you’re getting yourself in for. And this isn’t the only place I’ve seen this concept. It’s starting to float around the Fatosphere in a big way, and I – for one – am completely in favor of it.

If you haven’t gone to see what the concept is, it happens to be standing up to be counted as brilliant at something, no apologies.

So here are a few things that make me, Twistie, pretty darn fabulous:

I’m a terrific self-taught cook and baker. In over forty years of baking, I have never made a bad pie crust. I can put together a good meal out of unlikely resources. If you come to Casa Twistie, chances are you will not leave hungry.

Over the course of the last three years or so, I have overcome my lifelong phobia of dogs. No longer do I quail in the face of corgis. Not only that, I have been adopted by my neighbor’s chihuahua and another friends’ tribe of rotts. I still approach strange dogs with caution, but the sight of a perfectly well-behaved small dog on a short leash no longer fills me with such panic that I have to cross the street.

Cats and small children instinctively trust me.

I taught myself to make bobbin lace and made all eleven yards of lace for my own wedding gown.

I can find the upside or the funny in almost any situation, and get the joke across to someone else.

I come up with quips and aphorisms off the top of my head that people assume were written by someone famous.

I have had people literally stop me in public places to tell me how fabulous I am. You can’t ask for better proof of awesome than that, can you?

When I sing out loud, I can be heard half a block away without benefit of a microphone.

So what about all of you? I want you to come right out and tell me what’s so special about you, and I want it without quibbles, apologies, or caveats. Be proud of yourselves.

From Why I Hate Fashion by Tanya Gold

“But I got so fat that even fashion wouldn’t pretend it could fix me. You can get so fat they don’t actually want you in their clothes. It is bad marketing; if very fat people wear their clothes, thinner ­people won’t buy them. There was no point rattling through the rails any more, seeking a satin redemption – nothing would fit my unfashionable bulk. I was ­consigned to M&S smock-land, across the River Styx. And it is lovely here; no heels, no stupid dresses-of-the-moment, certainly no thongs. Fashion has died for me, with an angry little hiss. Ah, peace.”

Okay, it’s time for Miss Plumcake to give an Important Life Lesson to all you budding writers out there, so take heed because I’m only going to say this once:

Don’t

be

pathetic.

Seriously, just don’t. The one exception is if you’re funny. Really funny. Funny to the point of inspiring incontinence, and not just in old people on cold days, because you know how they like to dribble. Then SOMETIMES you can get away with it, but even then, it’s better to err on the side of NOT sounding like you own fourteen cats and have an impressive collection of cobwebs in your lady garden. See,  professional media is not myspace, you’re not a 14 year old girl and no one gives a patent leather damn about your speshul speshul poignant pain.

Oh, uh, too harsh?

Let me explain.

I don’t care that this lady has decided fashion is eeeevil. I really don’t. I don’t care that she blames the accidental death of a sixteen year-old on her high heels –heels I’m sure Anna Wintour personally FORCED onto her feet because surely a young woman can’t make her own informed decisions– instead of just marking it up to a sad accident. I don’t care that she calls the models who appear in fashmags “anorexic children” because apparently it’s okay to judge people’s bodies when SHE’S doing the judging. I don’t care about any of that.

What I care about is crying in baseball.

You know how there is no crying in baseball? Well, I come from the newspaper biz and let me tell you, there’s no crying in journalism, either, and there’s ESPECIALLY no airing of your own depression/anxiety/unresolved abandonment issues from that one time in 1987 your dad missed your ballet recital.

Do you know how you deal with that when you’re a REAL journalist? Alcoholism and failed relationships, that’s how. None of this namby pamby moaning on the internet under the guise of journalism. No, it’s cirrhosis and child support and eyebags so big they’re being knocked-off in Chinatown, THE WAY THE LORD INTENDED IT.

I don’t even have the energy to talk about the problems with the bulk of her emo screed article, like how just because SHE doesn’t like something doesn’t make it evil (as opposed to when I don’t like something, because, to quote Lady Beauchamp: “I’m right because I’m always right and anyone who says I’m wrong is mad and wicked.”) and that for propagating the stereotype that big women are happier wearing tent dresses and shunning fashion she deserves to be taken behind the woodshed and beaten soundly by a pair of size 42 Christian Louboutin peep-toe glitter pumps (which you may then send to me) until she realizes that being frumpy is not the same as being superior, and caring about fashion is not the same as being owned by it.

Fashion isn’t going to make you beautiful any more than eschewing it is going to make you interesting, ducklings. Remember that, and will someone please fix me a cocktail? Mama’s feeling a little piqued.

…and all through my house

The only creature stirring

Is my cat chasing a new catnip mouse.

It’s been a good time this year. While we weren’t precisely drowning in luxury items, we had enough to go around and enough left over to spread a bit of cheer to others. In the days to come, we will enjoy the leftover food and the thoughtful gifts…and probably chuckle a little bit at the ones that mystify us. We’ll snuggle close and appreciate the time Mr. Twistie has off from work and the fact that my writing career allows me to be flexible in my scheduling. The aforementioned cat will be blissfully spoilt with all the tandem petting we will give him.

Then it’s time to turn our thoughts to 2010.

People tend to make grand resolutions in the week or so before New Year’s Eve…and break most of them before Groundhog Day. Admittedly, I love that movie, but even if I didn’t, I still wouldn’t want to break its heart by lying to it (Query: How many Surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Fish.).

So it is that I approach the whole notion of resolutions with a bit of trepidation. And yet it really does seem to be expected of one. I thought I might get mine written down a bit ahead of schedule. What? My mother had me so terrified of being late as a child that I was regularly half an hour early to nearly every function. I’ve relaxed a bit as an adult. Now I consider ten minutes early sufficient in a pinch. For major events like an entire change of calendar, I like to be Johnny-on-the-spot three or four days before anyone else.

So here, without further ado, are my New Year resolutions:

1: I resolve to fly my freak flag high. I love bright colors, bold styles, big jewelry, hats, and loud classic rock. Anyone who has a problem with this, or any other aspect of my personality is cordially invited to suck it. I am a (mostly) gentle soul and I’m not hurting anyone, so how I dress or what I love is between me, myself and I. I do not apologize. I do not slink. I do not have to explain to anyone in the world what a grown woman is doing with a rubber duckie collection or what a fat woman is doing wearing orange.

2: I resolve to do good for my community. It’s easy to remember to give to good causes at Christmas and the New Year. There’s a Santa with a donation bucket or a Good Soul coming to your door or a reminder from your favorite cause everywhere you turn at this time of year. When I shopped at Borders, I threw in a stuffed panda bear for an abused child. When I got some coffee at Peet’s, I donated a couple bucks to the local shelter for victims of domestic violence. I love it that giving is made so very easy at this time of year, but I need to remember to do more in the other eleven months. I’ll be clearing some older, but still perfectly wearable clothes out of my closet in the next month or two. Luckily, I remembered to take some literature on that shelter so I can contact them to see if they can use anything. And I’ll keep being a good neighbor. They need someone to look after their cat sometimes. I’m happy to do that. Maybe I can do…no, scratch that. I definitely can do more. It’s time to make it happen.

3: I resolve to take better care of myself this coming year. Over the last few months I’ve been a bit cavalier about my own welfare. I stay up into the wee hours, rise when Mr. Twistie starts getting ready for work, pour myself a massive mug of coffee and remember to have breakfast slightly after noon. There have been reasons for this personal neglect, but it’s time to stop and pull myself together. Regular sleep and regular meals are important. I deserve them. And since my mommy has been dead for nearly twenty years, it’s kind of my job these days to make sure I get them.

4: I resolve to rediscover my own creativity. Again, there have been reasons I haven’t pulled down my lace pillow or written a short story in longer than I care to think about. But those reasons are no longer there to stop me. My life has changed for the better and I’m about to bloom again. Watch out world!

I think that’s enough to be getting on with. What about all of you? Are you making any resolutions this year? Tell me about them.