My name is Nancy and I am a size 10. No, not the Hollywood standard size of double-zero. Size ten. And you know what? I don’t care.

It seems like whenever I am in a room with a group of women, the conversation inevitably turns to weight. Every woman complains about how fat she is and how desperate she is to lose weight. It’s usually during this type of conversation that I am biting into a bagel, chock full of (gasp!) carbohydrates. I never know what to say during these conversations since

1. I’m not on a diet
2. I’m not worrying about my weight
3. I eat a lot
4. I eat carbs and refined sugar.

I drink coffee almost every night and usually pair it with a slice of cake. Since I’m from Philly, I also have an endless stream of cheesesteaks, soft pretzels, water ice and hoagies making their way towards my taste buds. Sometimes I wonder if I am a mutant female because I hardly ever lament over my weight. I rarely feel guilty about eating. I enjoy eating; it’s one of the great pleasures of my life. I eat when I am happy and don’t eat when I am upset. In my world, fat equals happy.

After I had my son, I actually had the opposite problem and wound up losing all of my “baby weight” plus an additional fifteen pounds. I didn’t do it on purpose. I was busy and exhausted, and I hardly ate. Although that weight was probably a better weight for me, medically speaking, I felt emaciated and sickly. Not eating was not fun. And I wanted to fit into my clothes again. But in this case, I had to gain weight in order to fit into my jeans. Good old size 10.

This is why I can no longer suffer through these conversations with women talking about their cellulite. (By the way, cellulite is a code word for double-zero.) These women are a good twenty pounds (at least) lighter than I am.  If they are calling themselves fat, then what are they calling me?

Consider Valerie Bertinelli, the spokewoman for the weight loss company, Jenny Craig. She may look good, but I find the blue bikini and the fake bake very annoying. She was embarrassed at a larger size but now she’s happy and confident after losing forty pounds. She’s so happy that she’s diving in a pool (backwards!). I care about my appearance, but I don’t need a blue bikini, a fake bake and pool acrobatics at this point in my life. And I don’t need to see this commercial twenty times a day.

This isn’t a discourse on girl power or self esteem at any size. It’s just a call for some normalcy, because I can’t take it anymore. So can we please stop talking about how fat we think we are? If only for a second, at least while I finish my bagel.

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Tags: diatribes, health & medical // 4 Comments »