Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Why I'm Doing This

I don't mind being fat most of the time. I'm pretty, I'm healthy, and I don't feel bad being in my body. I have plenty of really worthwhile friends who actually think I'm smart and funny and don't seem to mind that I'm overweight. If the world was just, I could eat what I want to and look how I do, and like my friends, no one would think anything of it. But the fact is that according to a big chunk of society, I'm not attractive simply because I'm fat.

And I wouldn't care what society thinks, except that I have a few very personal blogs that right now seem pretty impersonal to me, because I rarely post photos of myself in them. My friends and I gallivant all over New York City, dining at the best restaurants and vacationing in the Hamptons and drinking on rooftops, and I take literally hundreds of pictures a month on a really fine camera that I spent a whole hunk of a paycheck on, but almost none of them end up anywhere public. I don't want to be judged.

I'm hesitant to add my blog readers to Facebook, because my blog is full of photos I've carefully selected to show me at my best, while my Facebook albums are full of the life I actually live and the way I look living it. I don't want anyone who's read my writing and liked it to have a different opinion of me when they see I'm not "normal". I hate having to hide all of pictures my photographer friend took of me in 50s pinup poses on the beach that made everyone laugh. I hate not being able to be myself.

I want to look good in photos. That's my number one motivation for losing weight. I want to never have to worry about hiding a double chin or belly fat or sausage arms. You sometimes see these things on thin people in pictures, and you don't even think about them, because you know it's just the angle of the camera or some awkward lighting. I want that to be me.