Frilly Friday: Pool Blue and the Beautiful Melancholy

 

It’s been a lovely week in the world of body love! How could it not be, with all the sparkly femme Barbie vibes in the air. 95% of my brain power is currently taken up planning my outfit for the movies tonight! Speaking of frilly! Plus, I feel like I’ve fully reclaimed the pool, and they even added a lap lane!

After all those useful and painful paragraphs last week, making lazy art with pretty stuff feels like a balm. This is the first piece of fancy, grown-up lingerie I bought for myself, and the shift in mindset is almost as powerful as when I realized I could find new songs for myself without boys making me mixtapes! (Oooh but remember the Princely One’s dreamy Afrobeat picks though!? Let me now get swoonily sidetracked…)

The cups are a size too big, but as soon as I tried it on last Friday, I knew I didn’t want to be separated from this gorgeousness long enough to make an exchange. I love lingerie so much—the tulle feels so cool and delicate against my sweaty summer skin. The lace and embroidery and so shiny and tickly and exciting! Like the dear ropes, it’s like a hug I can give myself, just softer and less crafty/labor-intensive.

After I took the pictures though, sadness settled over me instead of horniness. I’ve been lonely these past few weeks, friends are away and there’s been a few too many (sometimes some is too many) “On This Day” reminders from last summer. The thing about these self-hugs is that they relax me into all different kinds of releases.

So instead of getting out the toys or hitting the search terms, I turned out the light, pulled the comforter over my fancy self, squeezed my Snorlax Squishmallow, and felt all the things.

Because And Just Like That has a new season, I remembered that I’m already familiar with this feeling—remember Carrie sad in a Paris hotel bed, swirled in that Versace gown?

Just like that but gorgeously fat and under forty bucks. Though I was sad, a warmth traveled through my body, concentrated on my heart and soul. This is what it’s like to love myself! And my dating break is over in just three days!

Yay it’s Frilly Friday!

 

Is using Prisma capitulating to the robots? Maybe! This bodysuit is from the Christmas box and I really love it because! It's long enough that the crotch snaps don't immediately unsnap! If I scooch down the top, (the lace is so stimulating!) it's very nice to sleep in too!

Part of my Fat Liberation process has been learning that I’m worthy of beautiful and specific clothes. For most of my life, my choices have been so limited and now suddenly there are choices! And there are beautiful, sexy fat people all over my socials. My gorgeous city even has its own facebook community specifically for practicing/celebrating/enjoying our fat bodies.

I’ve already written so much about what The Shy One’s beautiful Christmastime box of all different lingerie meant to me, but the abundance of it is really so profound. As a fat woman, some parts of beauty and pleasure have long felt unavailable to me and now, suddenly, there it all is!

Last week, after Dumb Fatphobic Lap Lane Thing happened at the pool, I asked my body what I could do to pay her back for all the things she puts up with, all the things she is and does for me. And in that moment, the Instagram algorithm did its knowing-me-too-well-sometimes thing and showed me a beautiful pool-blue, floral embroidered babydoll set. I definitely clicked through! You can see it next Friday!

Over the past month or so, I’ve been working my way through the Christmas lingerie box, enjoying, then sleeping in, then gently washing, then hanging up Marie-Kondo-neatly each beautiful set. This was one of the things I wished for as I set out on my grief journey back in February, and now the time is here! Oh Frilly Things, we’ve made it! We lived!

Plus, I have plenty of other cute slutty stuff in my collection!

So on Fridays, I’ll show you a glimpse of how cute I am when I’m loving myself! I hope you enjoy it, I know I will!

That Darn Internalized Fatphobia, Part Two

 

Content Warning: It’s pretty mild, but I do talk a little bit about my relationship to food restrictions here. If that would feel yucky to read, please skip!

As has been amply and knottily documented here, The Shy One had, last I saw, a cute tummy, but over time, the rest of him became more and more of a traditional sculpture. (Oh, the butt! I still think religions should rise up around it!) Most of the time, it was easy to believe I was beautiful to him, that he wanted me. But with the added complications of closetedness, alongside his natural reserve in public, I sometimes landed on the conclusion that he was ashamed of me, ashamed of my body.

In retrospect, I think maybe he had some shames about himself, and I was getting them by emotional contagion. Is emotional contagion real? Are mirror neurons? How do I know when I’m projecting and when I’m picking up cues?

Anyway, once when we were talking about our goals for 2023, he mentioned wanting to lose the “quarantine weight” and get in better shape. This was his business! I don’t know why it triggered me, but it did. I texted after to ask if we could take diet talk off the table. Whether or not he meant the weight loss talk as indirect advice for me (he did not) it felt like pressure to keep up.

He kindly agreed and affirmed my beautifulness, but I kinda wishe I’d kept the topic open. Why is it so normal and culturally encouraged to do weight loss talk, but SO fraught to bring up fat liberation stuff? Practice, I guess?

It should have had no effect on me that he started eating less, particularly less sugar. It felt a little sad that he didn’t want to have a glass of wine with me anymore. He got more serious about his gym habits. Once, when I teased him (probably shouldn’t have) for putting a tiny amount of syrup on his pancakes, he looked at me with such contempt that it bordered on hatred! I can never know what emotional place that look came from, but it stopped me in my tracks and a little bit of our connection (and my connection to myself!) felt frozen solid.

I think it’s really weird that his dieting would land on me so intensely—it’s not like he was dieting AT me! I was already feeling trapped by the relationship hierarchy we were in, so some implied hierarchy about our body sizes might just have been just too much, another reason, paradoxically, to feel small. I tried to bring it up once, how I felt self-conscious eating in front of him because I was fat and he was thin. He just stared me down and said “You think I’m a thin person?” and that was the end of that.

Part of the story here was that I don’t think I was supposed to raise ANY kind of issues. I think he wanted my home and my body to be a place away from effort, away from conflict, away from the stresses and the divisions of the outside world. That fantasy is both sweet and dehumanizing. I think it would have been so lovely if we’d found ways to talk about our commonalities and differences lovingly and like it wasn’t the end of the world. That’s a tall order, but I don’t see any other way to be whole people together.

The last weekend of my thing with The Shy One, I watched the movie You People, a romcom about a Black woman and a Jewish man whose families and backgrounds make it hard to get along. I’m not comparing fatness to either of those identities, but the way the couple and the other characters Talked About THE STUFF seemed so beautiful to me. I think that’s how you stay together with anyone, lover, friend or family. (It’s also the movie wherein I discovered Frank Ocean’s cover of Moon River, MVP of my Grief Mix!)

By the time The Shy One and I were getting ready for our first weekend getaway, I was pretty freaked about how I was going to manage three whole days of eating in front of him. Like, what if I needed/wanted a snack and he wasn’t hungry? The anxiety had me completely stumped.

I think part of that nervousness can be attributed to the “butterflies” of love and attraction, but also that guy just stressed me the fuck out.

Today, I’m feeling afraid that these issues and tensions will keep me separate from men even when I’m ready to get closer. I talked about it with Summer Therapist and it was no surprise that (From the pages of Duh magazine!) childhood with my abusive, controlling, uncommunicative dad was part of the fear, the feeling of surveillance, the worry that I would never, ever get it right.

So maybe I’ll write about that tomorrow.

That Darn Internalized Fatphobia, Part One

OMG I’ve only got thirteen days left of my dating break!! For the most part, I’m rarin’ to get started—everywhere I go, there are completely smoochable-looking guys. I’ve got some cute new pictures for my Feeld and Bumble profiles—my favorite is me in a pink tutu sort of dressed up as Rose Quartz, carrying a sign that says “Ban jerks, not books.” It’s really starting to feel like there’s a romantic future for me, like at least one more entry into the First Date Hall of Fame might be in in cards.

I found a really nice Summer Therapist who has helped me believe I might really move on from the margins of others’ relationships. It’s been such a lovely summer with myself so far, lots of firefly walks, friend time, pictures of flowers.

But this dumb, sexist, fatphobic thing happened in the lap lane at the pool last week. Too dumb to recount, but when a thin and unhelpful pool manager blamed me for “just not feeling confident” that day, I thought it might be a good time to write about where I’m at with body positivity and fat liberation. Summer Therapist, by some miracle, listens to Maintenance Phase, so I can talk to her about like 80% more things. (You should listen! Especially if you’re a straight-sized person! https://www.maintenancephase.com/)

The Kitten Calendar has been all about body love, so I want to be PERFECT at it by now. When I started this blog in 2011, well before “fat” was even THINKING about being a neutral term, I had the idea that because I was plus-sized (Size 20 then, around a 24 now) I could only be attractive to women, that all men would find me disgusting. The Nude Beach and all the different play parties and superhot experiences gave me a more well-rounded (Ha) view of beauty and desirability, but the internalized fatphobia (and weird sexism about it!) is still causing trouble in my heart.

In the present day, I’m pretty convinced I’m desirable. Most of the time, I walk through the flirty world feeling like an adorable dorky goddess—cute, abundant, lush, bountiful. Like a human pleasure garden.

But when it came to intimacy with a man, there was still a tangle of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and pain. I never found a good way to talk to The Shy One about it, so instead, I’ll blog it out to you. Thanks for listening!

Knotty Thursday: Weaving Practice!

 Like everything I make, it looks nothing like the tutorial! Weaves that look so nice and neat on a mannequin (or, presumably, a skinny person) tend to scooch up on me, but I think it turned out so beautifully! I like the way the magenta and purple ropes look together, and I love the feeling of focus and peace that comes over me when I'm trying a new tie: I turned into human lo-fi!

Just Some Sexy Fat!

 

Please note: I did use a pink filter. I'm not really this close to the color of an Animal Crossing peach!

It's not a CURE for a body-size freakout, but some time between the covers with no PJs on sure helps. I couldn't quite get the angles I wanted--I either need a selfie stick or a photographer or both. 

Where’s All My Body Positivity?!

 

But maybe a little. Because of the patriarchy?

 

I mean, I still have it for other people! I still think every kind of body can be sexy and spankable and lovable. Pagan Boy, at something like 400 pounds, was one of the sexiest humans ever to grace my life.

And most days, I can still look in the mirror or gaze into the Zoom screen and see cuteness. I can still ravish myself wholeheartedly and go to sleep with a cozy smile. Objectively, I still know my body is fuckable and maybe even loveable when the right one comes along.

But throughout this latest crush, depression brain has combined with post-quar lonely horniness to say things to myself that I would never in a million years say (Or think!) to or about a friend:

“I must be delusional to think anyone could be attracted to me at this size/age.”

“Am I officially too fat for all men? Have I crossed the point of no return? And same for my age?”

I could have been intuiting that I would be too fat for Poly Friends’ Partner in particular. “Wow it HAS been a while” he said he saw me at a gig a few weeks ago. I am quite a bit fatter than I was in my thirties (Like 320 vs 250) but I’d still felt gorgeous when I’d left the house that day! I’m a little freaked that maybe the gorgeousness will never translate anymore.

“Why can’t they see me?” Has been the thought-thorn in my side since Quarantine Crush. I always wonder if he didn’t tell me he had a partner because he just didn’t see 45-year-old me as sexual at all! I definitely don’t look like the 26-year old California person he knew when we were first friends!

I know some of this just-be-my-neutered-confidant stuff I get from guys just comes from good old fashioned patriarchal fat-phobia. It’s hard to get people to see a spark of desire when they’re programmed to see…nothing. No one. Or at least not the person I want to be.

Not looking to guys from the past should help, but they should be able to see me.

Should statements.

When I started this blog way back when, I dove into every body adventure I could find. I loved and learned so much, but of course it couldn’t solve the fundamental problem of feeling unwantable and unlovable. I remember, toward the end of the naked years, the horror of being naked in a crowded room and realizing that I could never be naked enough, skilled enough, game enough, easy enough, brave enough, share-y enough to really be seen. It’s an awful feeling to be naked in rooms that couldn’t perceive me as a whole human, and where I couldn’t reach others as whole humans either. Desolate. (I’m talking about literal nakedness but it occurs to me that it’s how I felt in my old poet life sometimes as well.)

And now, this more (mostly) private and reserved summer, life is still just really really hard. I’m remembering how to work full time, which, yay! But also I feel buried and lost and disoriented a lot of the time. I want to both run right at every human I’ve ever known and hide from everyone forever. I want to go to the movies every day but also just stay home with my Animal Crossing and my Friends rewatch. I’m processing grief and estrangement and wondering how to save voting rights. I don’t really know what my life is at the moment, as I sure don’t know if the freedom we have right now is just a respite from tyranny and new variants. Nobody knows.

So, no leaping, no bravery, no forcing myself to be vulnerable. I know how to be kind to my body: swim in the pool or ocean. Remember to put on sunscreen. Eat peaches. Go out for ice cream. Go sit in the air conditioning with my BFF and see Black Widow. Hug and high-five when it makes sense and hope to kiss a cute guy someday. Paint, write, sleep. I think I know how to love myself.

Happy Friday from Sex Pajamas!

As always, wish you could see the smile that goes with!

One of the joy-sparking things in my life are the pajamas (and other lacy things!) I have just for sexytimes with myself. Just thought you might enjoy a peek.

I haven't taken very many sexy pictures since I gained a bunch of weight, but I see no reason for that to be so! I'm even flirting with the idea of booking a photo session with Fireguy, or at least getting a tripod for my iPhone...

I have a lot more to say about my warm relationship to the camera, but for now, enjoy some nipples. Happy Friday!