the long goodbye

Earlier today I was indulging in one of my favorite guilty pleasures on TV and this add for Curves came on. It was the one with all the women throwing their trousers/jeans out windows and shit and it had the

say goodbye to your fat pants

bit and it got me angry. It got me angry because it's powerful advertising, based in the reality that most of us can't maintain a healthy weight, and will gain back the weight we've lost multiple times.

It's advertising based on my life story, and it makes me feel like a piece of shit. And then, after I'm done with aforementioned piece of shit feeling, I think briefly about the fat pants I've held onto and the ones I've let go, and how saying goodbye to your fat pants is, like so many things we do, simply a gesture towards wellness. It's an idea. It's not our fat pants (or their beckoning comfy waistbands-- wait! Not comfy anymore!) that make us gain (back) weight.

I understand that the weight loss industry is not qualified to help me dig up my shit. There's no way on earth they wanna touch what's underneath my second helping of granola or my lifetime hours (yes, it all adds up) spent standing in front of the refrigerator, seeing if I can find my heart in there (should have checked the crisper!). So the industry is gonna skim the surface, maybe talk about my emotions in the general and not the specific, and it's gonna tell me how to eat healthy. Fair enough. My work is to hold onto all of that. My work is also to recognize when everything else I've ever learned (emotionally and physically [as in on the cellular level]) about food and feelings sneaks in and corrupts this new, balanced way of living I'm trying to embrace. That work, like all the other work I undertake with myself, is longterm (as in lifelong).

There will be an epic, Wagnerian commercial that I make for myself. It will involve an endless loop of me opening the fridge, then opening the window and tossing out some black cloud that I've pulled from my head/heart/ass. Rising out of the one superlatively great aria playing (how Wagnerian is that?), comes my voice:

say goodbye to your fat head

Did I mention the part where I get to wear-- with my girls all pushed up and heaving-- the taffeta gown? Oh, yeah. Fuschia, my power color.