Saturday, May 3, 2008

Me, A Mirror, and a Strapless Bra

Not pretty; not pretty at all. It had never really occurred to me that I'm actually carrying around 70 pounds of fat--seriously. I know I'm overweight (and this will not be a blog about that topic, I promise!!) but somehow the reality of what that means has escaped me since gaining the weight during my final pregnancy. I never was one to try on much in the "weigh" of clothes (haha, I crack me up!!) so this whole seeing myself in the mirror thing is pretty rare, and although I'm sure I've had this shock before, I've allowed myself to forget it right away. Didn't have a blog to record my humiliation for all time!!

Well, if you have never been in this position (for example, you are genetically thin and nothing you do seems to change that, like my husband) you need to imagine a hippo trying to crawl into a hula hoop. My first attempt involved snapping the bra and then trying to pull it down over my head. I don't think so!! Then the standard "reverse and inside out the bra, snap it in front, and twist back around the right way." It would not budge for the twisting; my flesh would have torn first, I swear. The damn thing was made of industrial-strength synthetics, perhaps something the military has developed for snaking men down the sides of mult-story buildings for the SWAT-type crash through the windows--can't have the fibers breaking on that, no sir! Finally, with considerable contortioning and swearing, I got it on, only to realize that not only did I have "bra fat" (the clumps over the strap in the back), but also top boob, side boob, and bottom boob--where one's cup runneth over, all over, in this case. A bit of further adjustment and voila, the bottom boob disappeared and I could see that, in fact, I did not have top boob or side boob--it was all just plain old non-breast-tissue fat! Rolls and gathers and wobbles and divots of it. I looked at my upper arms--the pitting and dimpling of flesh there would make the moon's surface look smooth by comparison.

I could go on, but why bother? Even with this post I will probably block out the entire nightmarish vision and return to my serene view of myself as "pleasantly plump," secretly thinking that "I still got it, baby." A healthy self-esteem, or delusional? What do you think?

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