MY BIG FAT LIFE

My doctor recently told me that a very large lump on my wrist (the size of a jaw breaker if anyone remembers what those are) is most likely not malignant but rather a “fatty tumor”. I think it speaks volumes about my mental health that I was far more upset about her calling something on my body “fatty” than I was relieved about not having cancer again.

I have considered myself “fat” my entire life. Oddly, it’s only now when I truly am fat that I realize for most of my life I was perfectly within normal range. For many years I was a size 8 or 10 petite. But, at the time, I still viewed myself as fat. My mother had the same issue. As an older woman, she was beyond tiny; a size 6 petite hung on her in the end. Yet she still talked about her “fat”. Her fat that no longer even existed. Rather than slimming down as I age, as my mother did, I have doubled in size. Truly, if some mad scientist knew how, we could make two humans out of me. Perhaps one could carry on under my old name (since SSA refuses to change it anyway) and Mckenzie James could go off and enjoy a new life.

After a trauma a few years ago, I began to eat to soothe myself and haven’t quit yet. Because of COVID, and everyone being isolated, it was easy not to notice as I gained and gained. Now it is as though I’ve woken up from a deep sleep and see myself for the first time in years. The necessary weight loss seems an insurmountable goal. But necessary for my health, my self-esteem, and most importantly for an old fashionista, to preserve my fashion sense. 

I have reached the point where I can no longer shop in normal department stores. I now am consigned to the “plus-size” stores. I can tell you, although they try hard to describe it differently, plus-size clothing hasn’t changed much in years. Now all 12 of the major stores can be found on the same website, carrying mostly the same over-sized moo moos sold at Woolworth’s in the fifties and sixties. Although the word muʻumuʻu means “cut off” in Hawaiian, because the dress originally lacked a yoke, that’s not how the fashion industry spells it, is it? I have long suspected designers spell it differently for obvious reasons. And who wants to wear clothing named after the sound a cow makes? No one does.

This all was driven home for me recently as I shopped for a dress to wear to a wedding and realized that retailers may have gotten it wrong with this move to plus-size models. If the idea is to sell more clothes, it isn’t working for me. When I shop, I want to believe that I’m going to look great in the clothes I buy. I know that’s no longer possible in reality, but I want to believe it for a moment. I want my illusion as I’m doling out my dollars.

Yesterday I scrolled through pages and pages of dresses worn by women my size and thought, “if that’s what I’m going to look like, why spend the money?” They’ve taken away the illusion, and illusion is what sold clothes. I guess I should thank them for saving me money because I didn’t purchase anything, and I am DEFINITELY having this fatty tumor surgically removed!