Oh I’m so mad. I…I…GRRRRR.

We all know how I love snakeskin shoes because they wear forever and stand up to a lot of abuse and also snakes are all bastards who must die, not that I am at all scarred from that time my dad took me over to his bff’s house as a kid, and that bff also happened to be the head herpetologist guy or something for the National Zoo and had snakes all over the place INCLUDING A FREAKIN’ COBRA because sane people totally keep FREAKIN’ COBRAS in their HOUSE and think nothing of lifting up a little girl to eye level and taptaptapping the glass trying to get the aforementioned FREAKIN’ COBRA to display its hood BUT THEN INSTEAD IT STRIKES THE GLASS 2 INCHES FROM MY FACE, DAD.

<deep breath>

And that, dear readers, is why my father needs to count his lucky stars that his Korean child bride and NOT his permanently traumatized daughter, will be choosing his eventual nursing home.

Where was I?

Right, shoes.

A few months ago I bought these Brian Atwoods, even though they’re totally not “me” I tried them on and they look a.maz.ing. on the leg. Seriously.

and now, NOW they have these:

and these are BETTER, and they’re snake! AND they’re like…a THIRD of what my Atwoods retailed for at almost 60% off regular retail.

Plus they’re from Elie Tahari so I’m glad to toss them a little extra cash in appreciation for finally FINALLY offering a plus size line last year.

Miss Plumcake loves the gays. We all know that.  I go to their clubs, I march in their parades (Austin Pride June 5th, y’all!) I go to weddings with them if Aunt Titsy is too concerned about shocking the neighbors or messing up the boy-girl seating arrangements she’s had nailed down since Cousin Bettina’s first Communion. I am an A#1 certified Prom Date (I don’t spend this much time at the medspa to be called a hag) and I cherish that. I don’t even mind –in fact I relish– those few times when I’ve been confused with a drag queen.

Last Friday a gentleman caller and I were having The Talk.

You know, the talk where you decide Where This Is All Going blah blah blah. I hate that talk.  I hate most serious relationship-y conversations and frankly, part of the appeal of dating a Glaswegian was not having to deal with tedious relationship-wrecking things like emotions or expressed feelings.

Things were getting a little uncomfortable for me.

I’m clearly not into this guy as much as he’s into me (cute, but a non-starter in some really significant ways) so after he says The Big Thing he wanted to say, I –trying to lighten the mood– put on a big I’m a lumberjack face,  flexed my pretend muscles (because if I can’t be Judy Garland when I grow up, at least I can be Eric Idle) and said in a super-deep James Earl Jones voice  “Good, because I’m a man.”

He believed me! Apparently he’d dated a girl who was mid-transition once and didn’t tell him, and it set him off forever.

Birth certificate, baby pictures –complete with comments from my dad on Facebook– NOTHIN’.  And of course the more I denied it the “guiltier” I looked in his eyes. And the most infuriating part was he was trying to be The Sensitive Guy about it which made me even madder because I wanted to be the one to reject HIM. He’s the jerk who “forgot” to mention he had a girlfriend back in Glasgow before I dumped him the first time in January, I’m the catch with the immaculate rack. It’s the natural order of things!

Generally I don’t care what people believe about me as long as it doesn’t pertain to my character.

I know there were plenty of folks who thought Miss Plumcake was a group of gay men. Heck, even Francesca thought I was a strong black woman trying to “pass” as white Southern belle (yeah, I don’t know why either, but it was hi-larious when it all came out). So you know, whatever.  But it really threw me to have my gender questioned.

He said I was a very nice girl blah blah blah but he’s “only interested in women with wombs.”

Does a womb make a woman?

I’ve got one but I don’t plan on using it, another friend with a passel of gorgeous biological children (although they’re gross, because all children are gross…gross and moist) doesn’t have one anymore.  Does that make me more of a woman even though I’ve never done womanly things like push a shrieking, money-sucking demon the size of a toaster oven out of my Very Thing experience the joys of childbirth? Of course not.

Which brings me to the Very Special Episode portion of the blog.

Biologically I am a woman, but biology has precious little to do with it when I come to think about it. I am a woman in my soul, I live my life as a woman and deal with all the joys and pains (well except the childbirth pains…suckers!) that come with it. But so do my girls who weren’t born as biological women. They deal with all that and more, and even though I fight them for the only pair of size 42 Roberto Cavalli pumps with the gold serpent sculptural heels (and I am NOT afraid to bite) they are my sisters.

Last year in an oft-quoted interview with The Daily Beast I said:

““I’m fat, I have money. I’m more than willing to give it in quantity to the store who will supply me with beautifully made clothes that don’t make me look like a hooker, a tranny, or someone’s bingo-playing grandma from Duluth.”

I got lots of letters of outrage, and I replied to everyone who was reasonable saying I was an equal opportunity mocker and my history of civil rights work on behalf of the gay and transgendered community would stand for itself, which I am and which it does.

However.

The first rule of Plumcake Fight Club is you don’t kick someone when they’re down. You don’t attack people who are already made vulnerable in society. That’s not what comedy is about and that’s certainly not what I’m about, but that’s what I did. And you know what?

I was wrong.

I was wrong, wrong wrongity wrong and I’m sorry. I had no idea, HAVE no idea, how difficult it must be to feel like you don’t fit in with something so many people take for granted. I just had this teensy little experience –something that’ll be a chapter in a book someday and that I was laughing about 48 hours later– but the rejection and the lack of understanding is something I’ll never forget.

I hope someday as a society we’ll be at the place where we can reclaim the word “tranny” just as we’ve reclaimed “queer” but we’re not there yet, and until we are, the word “tranny” no longer has a place in my vocabulary outside the auto-mechanical realm.

Don’t Panic.

I’m not going anywhere, neither is this blog. No one here is taking a break.

Do you know why no one here is taking a break? Because it’s our job.

Being the editor of this blog is my job.

I do it for the paycheck and I earn the hell out of that paycheck.

Of course I do it for other reasons, too. I love my readers, Manolo is a doll, and Twistie and Raincoaster (you’re visiting them at Ayyyy, right?) are great colleagues. Most importantly, I believe in this blog, its message and our eclectic, size-inclusive community.

BUT

If you think for one hot-buttered second I’d do this for free; you’re drunker than an acolyte on Easter.

I know a lot of people –many of whom I haven’t even killed– who, upon finding out that I’m a writer and blogger tell me ZOMG!!! they’re writers and have a blog too and it takes a great deal of teeth gritting and counting to ten to not throttle them while they tell you allllll about their uniformly grim “poetry” and mommyblogs (there is exactly one mommyblog I love) because God forbid the world doesn’t know about little Aidan and Madison’s opinion of the artisinal gerbil milk smoothies they were forced to glug down because of some twee made-up allergy conceived just to illustrate the speshul speshulness of your “gifted” little snowflakes.

Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t keep a blog if you want to, or write bad poetry, but let’s have a little intellectual honesty here: keeping a hobby blog –while a worthwhile thing to do– is just not the same as a “content-rich” blog with thousands upon thousands of hits a month full of readers wanting you to dance, monkey, dance.

Uh, great Plumcake, so what’s the point?

It’s this:

For those of you who follow Style Spy –and you should– you’ll have noticed she’s been on hiatus.  You can argue back and forth whether you ought to announce in advance when you’re not going to be updating for a while –ideally yes, but this isn’t an ideal world– but I was shocked and mightily ticked off at the emails devoted readers had been sending her harassing her for not updating.

Here’s a woman who parlayed a hobby blog into a professional blog with all the demands but none of the benefits (read: profits) and people have the gall to threaten her to  update more frequently or they were going to O NOES take her off their favorites list? Unacceptable.

Now fair play: it is frustrating/disappointing when one of your favorite bloggers takes a hiatus. I get it. I check Style Spy every day too, and a sign of a good blog is when your readers become emotionally invested.

But therein lies the danger. It’s shockingly easy to think we know our favorite bloggers, especially when their blogs offer a peek into their daily lives.

We don’t.

Bloggers, even indiscreet ones like your pal Plummy here, show what we want to show and no more when it comes to our private lives. Once a close friend called me after months without contact, horrified to find out from a mutual acquaintance that I’d had six deaths in my family over the course of those four months. She hadn’t realized how long it had been since we’d actually seen each other since she read me every day and just assumed we’d spoken.  She had literally forgotten we didn’t talk. I didn’t take it personally because I know it’s just a hazard of the industry. She assumed that if something major happened in my life, naturally I’d announce it on the blog.  Whoops.

The fact is, we don’t know what’s going on when a non-pay blogger takes a break.

They could be working on other projects, burned out, uninspired, busy with family, school, friends or work…heck, they just might be getting laid regularly for the first time in years (Aims, if this is the case, call me immediately. I miss you and I want to know everything!)

Whatever it is, it isn’t about you.  They don’t owe you anything. Blogging is a hard gig and everyone deserves a sabbatical now and then.

If you want to encourage your favorite non-pay blogger to pick up the virtual pen, send them an email of support, encouragement (DON’T ask them for advice) heck even email them a gift certificate or donate to their server fees if you’re feeling generous, and let them know you miss them.

If they come back, it was meant to be.

A pal and I were chatting last night about The Fat Mafia.

Okay, she didn’t call it The Fat Mafia but it seems fitting.  Apparently a college friend of hers was a pretty big deal –no pun intended– in the size-acceptance world and then –horror of horrors– she lost weight.

She went from very very fat to merely very fat.  She “sold out” they said.

Uh…what?

I don’t even get it.  Is the fatosphere REALLY the body police now? Isn’t that kind of what we’re fighting AGAINST? Because I think it is, and to call someone a sell-out because she changed her body size? That is crackery of the highest order and if you subscribe to that nonsense you deserve a life of bad chocolate, worse sex and unflatteringly back-lit polyester chiffon.

Listen. You don’t owe it to me or anyone else in the universe to be fat or thin or tall or short or anything at all except for healthy for your kids if you’ve got ‘em, and that’s not even because I care all that much about your special little snowflakes, but I’m a sucker and somehow I’d probably end up taking care of them and oh God won’t SOMEBODY think of my white furniture?!

The point is this:

If you’re fat and you’re at peace with being fat? Stay fat. I don’t care.

If you’re fat and you don’t WANT to be at peace with it?  Get less fat.  Again, and I think perhaps you might be sensing a theme, I don’t care.

It’s your body and you don’t have to justify it.

Does this mean you get to expect everyone to approve of you? No. If you swallow a tapeworm because the boy you like only digs girls who look like Puccini heroines in the last act, I’m going to laugh at you. Hard. And probably make a bitchy comment about your daddy not showing up to enough ballet recitals. BUT. Other people’s disapproval is the price you pay for living the life you want, and it’s worth every penny.

When I first took this gig, I knew I wanted it to be for Big Girls, but not just for the type of Big Girl who wore plus-size clothing.

Anyone who knows what it’s like to feel excluded for being “different” is a Big Girl.

Anyone whose mother ever crushingly raised an eyebrow and asked if you *needed* that slice of pie is a Big Girl.

Anyone who looked in the mirror one day with bad lighting and acne and said “Well, this is who I am so I better start loving it” is a Big Girl.

Anyone who just needs to take up more room because that much love, affection, personality and style simply *cannot* be contained is a Big Girl, and if that means you’re a man, woman, thin, fat, gay, straight, confused or just a really well-trained labradoodle with access to an iPhone, if you like this site you’re a Big Girl and I don’t give a chocolate-covered damn what your scale says about it. You are welcome here.

So this is what it’s come to, huh? This is my life. I’m a thirty year-old woman and I am talking about vajazzling.

Sigh.

My life wasn’t always like this you know. I’m a scholar.

I speak three languages and that’s not even including Latin! I know STUFF.

Like you know whose wang is on the cover of the (uh) seminal Rolling Stones album “Sticky Fingers”with cover art done by Andy Warhol? I DO.

Can you identify all the maple trees found in North America by binomial nomenclature? I CAN.

I know all SORTS of stuff, but NO. I’m here writing about VAJAZZLING because APPARENTLY whatshername, with the orphans and the boobs, got her squirrel all sparkled up and thinks you should do the same.

Ladies.  Seriously.  Why do I even have to SAY super-gluing rhinestones on your shaven haven is a bad idea?

First of all, some things just don’t need decorating.  Like you know how your grandma crocheted toilet paper cozies so instead of having the INDIGNITY of an unadorned roll of Charmin, you had something like this:

HOW? How is that an improvement? Even being a flower of the South, which means I take the exceedingly broad view of hoop skirts and bonnets, this is just infinitely INFINITELY worse!

SECONDLY, unless you’ve got laser hair removal or are on a merciless wax schedule, you’re going to get some  follicular activity happening down there. I personally don’t care how you attend to your lady garden, but that cute little crystal Playboy Bunny is going to turn into “Easter egg hunt at Oilcan Harry’s” in about five to seven days and while a LITERAL Easter egg hunt at Oilcan Harry’s sounds like more fun than a wagon of puppies, a metaphorical one does not.

Also, glue does NOT last forever.

You think it might but I have eyelash extensions and I know the adhesive they use for that. That’s some hard core medical-grade stickum and even then, something occasionally gets loose.  A particularly hot shower and the next thing you know it would be like the The Last Days of Disco all up in your  lady lounge.

It’d be bad enough on your own but what if it your stray sparklies was discovered by a visitor to the area? And those things have edges! Do you REALLY want to be in the emergency room explaining to the admitting nurse that your gentleman’s personal gentleman is all scratched up because of a rogue crotch-crystal? Really? Because if you think you won’t be the talk of the emergency room you have another think coming.

And what if you got pregnant? It’s all fun and games and then nine months later instead of having a normal delivery which is pretty gross anyway, your kid, the fruit of your highly sparkling loins, makes his arrival into this world in a shower of cooch-confetti  like RIP FREAKIN’ TAYLOR.

Is that what you want America? Is it?

Sigh.

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.

Oh. My. God. Y’all.

ENOUGH WITH THE FAT TALK. The next time I hear someone Fat Talk themselves I swear I’m going to put on my best shoulder-padded black and cream bias-cut chiffon wrap dress and matching hat and slap their whinging tedious self straight into the nearest lily pond.

“Blah blah blah I’m so fat blah blah I’ve lost weight but still look like a cow blah blah blah.”

ENOUGH! Because aside from all the other reasons not to Fat Talk –like it sets a bad example for other women, it’s self-destructive, plays into misogynistic stereotypes etc– it’s REALLY FREAKING BORING. I don’t know about you, but Mama’s got Things To Do and I really don’t have the time to sit around listening to you complaining about your thighs. Do you know whose thighs I care about? Andre’s…and occasionally Colonel Sanders’. That’s it. Are you Andre or Colonel Sanders? No? Then stop ruining my dinner party!

The way I figure it is you’ve got three reasons to be Fat Talker:

Option A:

You really do have low self-esteem and you WANT to air your self-loathing and manipulate innocent bystanders WHO BY THE WAY ARE TOTALLY NOT INTERESTED AND JUST WANT TO FINISH THEIR MANHATTAN AND GO HOME into telling you how pretty/not fat/wonderful you are. In which case you need to do what My People do and bottle that stuff up deeeeep inside until you can get to a therapist and sort yourself out or develop a respectable drinking problem.

Option B:

You’re one of those girls who has lost weight and are pleased but can’t say anything nice about yourself without qualifying it because GOD FORBID a woman sounds confident, so instead of saying “I look FANTASTIC so you all can just CHOKE ON MY MAGNIFICENCE.” which is what you really want to say (and you totally should) you have to say “Well I’m still a cow, and these pants look stupid, and my makeup looks like hell, but at least my clothes are looser.” Because that’s MUCH more entertaining than being told to choke on someone’s magnificence.

OR

Option C:

You are Alana Edelstein,  we are in 7th grade gym class and you’re taking great joy in “complaining” how you can’t wrap your hands around your upper thigh anymore because you’re a Mean Girl even though everyone just likes you because you have a rabbit fur jacket and your dad is the second best plastic surgeon in town. In which case, just go for it because you’re two years away from a high school career punctuated by an ironically botched nose job and an impressive series of life choices resulting in knowing the free clinic staff by first name (proving once again my theory about rabbit fur jackets) and there’s no schadenfreude like junior high Mean Girl schadenfreude.

IN CONCLUSION:

Fat Talk is self-destructive, misogynistic, manipulative and really REALLY boring so quit it before someone winds up choking on a lily pad. THE END.