ATFC. It stands for “Ask
the Fat Chic.” That’s what I wanted to
call an advice column I was thinking of writing. It would have nothing to do with weight loss because
that is not something I have any proficiency in at all. It would just be about everything else. I was throwing the title out there because
sometimes we don’t take people of substantial girth seriously in other
areas. As a comedian once chided, “In
Great Britain people are fat because they have character; in the States we are
fat just to take up space.” It’s
funny. But not really.
I want people to be able to look into the face of their
neighbor and appreciate that person for just who they are. The person who is very stunning by Cosmo
standards, but has so many insecurities… the person who has scars visible from
some accident, but won’t attend parent-teacher night so their kid won’t be
teased … the person who doesn’t fit television’s portrayal of what lawyers,
secretaries, doctors, and mechanics should look like but keep eeking out a
living serving others daily … the list is endless. We are who we are – and in every person must
hide a bit of the divine, a bit of the lovable, something to offer.
I ran the idea by a few friends and was intrigued by the
reactions to my using the “F” word in relation to my own self. Now, I can do that, right? Without violating the national taboo
regarding politically correct terminology.
After all, it is MYSELF I’m talking about. And I am pretty familiar with what the
numbers say when I get on the scale.
I have been fascinated by how we deal with this – oh heaven
help me for saying it – “white elephant” in the center of our cultural living
room. I had a friend who is a bit of a
direct-hit sort of person. Fifteen years
ago she left a weight watchers grid on my desk.
She came in to use the scale in a neighboring office – and did I mention
she is a very crafty senior citizen – I said, “I will walk over to the scale
with you.” I got on the scale and she said,
“Now how does this thing work?” (she
KNEW) and she looked at the digital read out and let out a very elongated, “Wowwww.” I responded, “You know if I had any feelings,
they’d be hurt.” She reiterated that I
didn’t look like the number she was reading.
Now, fifteen years later, I probably do.
But then again, the number changed.
There are places we don’t
deal with it, aren’t there? The
woman who refuses to get weighed at her annual doctor’s visit…. The shopper at
the store who is throwing into the grocery cart a few giant size bags of chips
and cookies…. The person who just HEARD me say “I’m starting Whale Watchers,”
and puts an entire tray of Italian cookies in front of me, or gives me four
scoops of ice cream when they take two.
Like the racial language issues, we just keep dancing around
each other in crazy circles hoping we don’t accidentally bump into another
person’s feelings. We don’t want to say
the wrong thing. We don’t want to say
the right thing, in case somebody changed the rules again and it’s a new wrong
thing. But mostly, we just don’t want to
say ANYTHING.
I love the film “Cyrano
deBergerac” with Gerard Depardieux.
There’s this whole uncomfortable scene about how big his nose is and the
dance-around that issue between him and another gentleman. He takes everything offensively. The great thing about that movie is that the
actor came to his part without needing additional makeup construction for his
nose. He’s still GOT IT – that huge nose
- in every other movie he is in…. and it never seems to get in the way of how
fabulous he is as an actor.
In the front page of my journal this year I have taped a
little saying: “If hunger isn’t the
problem, then eating isn’t the solution.”
It makes you wonder what the problem really is, doesn’t it? At 5 am the other day I got up to let the
dogs out for the second or third time that night. I let them out into the side yard fresh with
new-fallen snow. I came back into the
house and stared at the clock, calculating how long I would have to sleep
before the alarm went off once I got the dogs back inside and back to bed. I opened the microwave. It doubles as storage space for cereal, bread
and contraband. There was a package of
iced molasses cookies there. I just had
one. I had a cookie at 5 in the morning. Not because I was hungry, but because I
remembered at 5 in the morning, when I barely had a pulse, that YESTERDAY I had
wanted a cookie and never got around to it.
I brought the dogs back in the house.
I went back to bed. My chocolate
colored spaniel Madeline inched up next to me, leaned over my body and whiffed
my breath. She looked directly into my
eyes in a very accusatory fashion.
Yeah. Molasses cookies do not in
any way smell like minty-fresh toothpaste.
I got busted by the DOG.
So what is the problem?
I think we could have teams of psychologists and counselors and guru’s
all taking a stab at it. I don’t want to
over simplify it. But I think if you
remember that final scene in “Moonstruck” when Johnnie Camerari comes home from
Italy, Cher tells him she can’t marry him (because she is in love with his
brother who looks, ironically, just like one of my ex-boyfriends), and Olympia
Dukakis looks at her husband across the breakfast table, in front of the entire
family, fully aware that he has gone out on a date with a younger chickadee,
the quote of all quotes is delivered: “Cosmo,
you’re gonna die.” She throws it right
out there: the only excuse for his
juvenile, needy, thoughtless behavior is he fears death. He needed to be able to do something that he
thought he was missing out on and survive it.
And he looks at her, quite sheepishly, and responds, “Te amo.” What a perfect response: “I love you.” No unpleasantries. No yelling.
No hurting words. Just, in a
word, he was grateful she didn’t tell him what an ass he was. He already knew.
So the next time I am in the dressing room and am wondering
why in my midlife years the women’s clothing department switched to funhouse
mirrors, I’m not going for ice cream afterwards. I think I am going to take one step closer to
that woman in the mirror and tell her: “Te
amo.” I’m going to sort this out. But even if I don’t it’s okay because “Cosmo,
you’re gonna die.” Eventually. And maybe someday I can look at the scale and
say “wowwww” for a totally different
reason.
###############
No comments:
Post a Comment