Savage Love on Fat

Posted on May 20, 2004 in Sugar and Fat

The signs have been hopeful in my efforts to drop a few pounds from the midrift. Blood sugar and weight have responded well to the diet and my efforts just to get out and walk up and down the gullies at Whiting Ranch. There’s a photograph of me from a few weeks ago, showing my massive gut, on the refrigerator. To encourage myself more positively towards my goal, I aligned some poetry magnets to read “Beauty Beneath” where the big yellow finger points at my navel.

I’m looking for the thin man who used to be there.

Lynn, bless her heart, left up this week’s Savage Love column which speaks to the issue of fat:

I don’t question anyone’s right to stuff themselves constantly until they weigh 50 or 100 pounds beyond what would be healthy, but please, standing around yelling about how we others absolutely must find that attractive is just silly. You’re free to be fat. I, in turn, am free to find that not attractive. Especially when you wear something that showcases all that extra fat you’re dragging around.

Dan Savage does love to use live ammunition when he takes aim at a target. The real issue here is people who shove themselves into those thin designer jeans when they really don’t fit in them. I have a problem with jeans: I have a tiny, flat butt. It’s what my friend Diana calls “truck-driver/computer nerd’s syndrome”. I sit on it a lot and all the fat gets squeezed out into my belly. So I buy a small size so that my butt doesn’t flap in the wind. The belly hangs out in a way that Dan Savage finds repulsive. “Let’s not pretend that seeing rolls of fat squeezing up from your too-low pants is attractive, for god’s sake,” he says. He’s right. That’s why I am looking for the guy who used to wear all my clothes.