My grandfather died. Don’t offer me sympathy; he was a hidebound, racist, sexist, homophobic, malicious old arsehole, and our relationship was strained to say the least. This did not get me out of having to go to his funeral, though.(More on that later.)
So I came down from London to spend some time with my birth family. And one thing that my mother and her boyfriend just never shut up about the whole time was the issue of my weight.
I’ve always been big-hipped and big-chested, but these last few months I’ve gotten bigger in those areas and all-over, really. According to the doctor when I had my medical checkup I’m four pounds shy of being clinically obese. Me, I say ‘wut?’ to this. I wouldn’t call myself fat. Plump yes. But I don’t feel I look fat. Not that looking fat’s a bad thing necessarily, it’s just that I don’t think I do.
My birth father Vella’s made a few comments about this, but he is a fashion designer and has gotten used to stick insects in makeup and thus I generally ignore him. Besides, it’s mostly due to his cooking and choices of snacks that I’ve put on weight.(Mmm, fried aubergines...)
Even though Vella considers it his bounded duty to evaluate all apparent women for attractiveness, though, he has not made anywhere near as many comments as my birth mother Sarah and her boyfriend Michael.
I was there Saturday 24th to Tuesday 27th, and all the damn time it was ‘you have put on a lot of weight dear, you’re really less attractive, you used to regulate your own weight so nicely, you need to cut down...’
And the crowning idiocy, the crazy diamond of dumbassery, ‘This is because you don’t realise what a pretty girl you are, your self-esteem has always been too low, you need to make more of an effort with your appearance and then people will like you and you’ll feel better about yourself!’
The sheer stupidity of it floored me, I swear.
Fuck you, Mother Dear. Most of my self-esteem problems were your fault in the first place! And they never revolved around appearance!
Yeah, I did-at one point-have issues with the look of my body. Thing is though, that was because it was too Milesian, and I’d been hanging out with chicks from the people I called the Tuatha de Danaan then. I was holding myself to standards that bodies from this world just cannot meet no matter what their genes are like, no matter how they diet or work out, no matter how much surgery they get. And the appearance wasn’t the point in and of itself, either. I wanted to be like my de Danaan friends because they were tough, smart and mostly happy, and I felt that a Thulcandran could never be any of those things. The face in the mirror just rubbed that in every time I saw it. Maybe if I’d had some good Thulcandran mentors earlier...ah, well. Can’t change the past, and I did eventually find a very cool Thulcandran-Milese wingsister who helped me out with that whole tangle.
Anyway, point is, I wouldn’t say my self-esteem issues are gone totally, but I’ve given them a few good whacks, and I’ve at least got it into my thick skull that Thulcandrans can be very cool. Ergo, no need to wish I’d been born on another world. The bits of the multiverse I can reach as is-in body and spirit-can give me everything I need if I just figure out the how and why.
On a more universal note, I have NEVER thought that my physical appearance was a matter of grave importance in and of itself. You get told all the time when you’re a puggle, ‘the moral of the story is, it’s what’s inside that counts’. Now, back then I didn’t get that people paid lip service to that only. I took it as the truth! Crazy, huh?*
The important things, I thought, were: my intelligence; my basic decency; my artistic talents. In no particular order. Looks were just ‘stuff’, and I wasn’t really interested in ‘em much. The closest I got was how I loved to play dress-up in a witch’s hat or devil horns or pair of sparkly fairy wings or the Pocahontas dress and dog costume Vella made me. (Not both at once.) Oh, and one time he got me a dress with lions on. I couldn’t care less what I looked like in it, I just adored the lions. I liked the ladybird buttons on my school cardy, too. I was kinda potty about animals in general, I guess.
Then I got bigger...and was totally confused by the sudden strong messages that I did, actually, have to care what I looked like. More than that, I had to want to look a particular way, want this with all my being, and do everything in my power to achieve it.
Out of cheese error; please reinstall universe and reboot...
Really, I never lost the view of that puggle who played with hir plastic animals; sie wouldn’t have said ‘We’re born naked, all the rest is drag’ because sie’d never heard that phrase and didn’t really think the concept out in words at all, but sie did think it. Drag can be fun, but it’s not real life.
So now that puggle’s grown his spines and left the pouch, he’ll clench spiked fists and growl when someone starts saying that women have some kind of duty to spend a good portion of their time beautifying themselves. Worse, that they all naturally want to. Because that is How Women Are. And any woman who doesn’t, or who doesn’t have a conventional notion of what beauty is, obviously has something wrong with her. (Oh, and any man who takes as much time over his looks as a woman’s supposed to is a wanker, probably gay**, and obviously has something wrong with him. And let’s not even get into crossdressing...) Why, is this my fist embedded in your skull, Michael? Dear, dear. So sorry. Oh well, it wasn’t as if there was much in there to damage. A few pounds of manure and it’ll be as good as new!
But enough about the placental mammal contingent.
Ash thinks I look okay and not too fat. I am more inclined to give weight(pun not intended)to her opinion than that of placental mammals, really. Several sensible people I know of take the view that fatness is not in and of itself a bad thing in any case unless you’re at ‘cannot shift own bulk’ level. (Which most fat people are not.) I’ve come round to their point of view too.
When people first started mentioning that I had gained weight, I worried. But when I thought of actually looking at my body, that all dissipated.
My body is very female in build, earth mother look enhanced by milky-coffee skin and dark eyes and hair. I have curves all over, and yes, that includes my belly. (If you don’t believe me, Ash, I’ll have to send you pictures. Actually I may do that anyway.*grin*) This is all pretty troublesome a lot of times, what with the whole genderqueer thing; my body doesn’t match my brain. If I’d been told to pick one female body and stick to it I’d have picked something with broader shoulders, narrower hips, smaller tits. Oh, and something taller while I was at it. My body does not feel like it’s mine-it’s more like I picked up the wrong outfit by mistake and ended up wearing something sized for my sister.
I guess all trans and genderqueer folk have their own ways of dealing with this. The way that works best for me is to not think of my body as mine. Or rather, to not think of it as me. It’s a tool; it’s drag; it’s my Pocahontas outfit and dog suit. It’s a thing I happen to have, and till I can alter it so it’ll fit a touch better I’ll just use it as is. It works okay for what it is, it’s not its fault that She Who Gives All Gifts picked the wrong model for me. It can eat and drink, walk, run, dance badly, talk, listen, snuggle and kiss. It has hands with opposable thumbs. It has muscles should I ever choose to train them, and a working female reproductive system should I ever choose to use it. I probably won’t do either of those things, but I have the opportunity. It’s mine to play with.
And hey, why not?
So, Sarah, sorry to disappoint you but I’m not gonna diet anytime soon. I’m just gonna let my curves stay curvy as hell-if I’m gonna look earth mother, might as well go the whole hog. (Mmm, hog.) Besides-I was a Qu before I was an Echidna! It’s only fitting. I like looking this way, and my self-esteem’s never been better.
I offer big love with no apologies
How can I deny the world the most of me?
I am not afraid to throw my weight around
Pound by pound by pound.
*I also believed that being different was good; that people different from each other could be friends; that girls were able to do anything boys could do, and should if they wanted to; and that in his youth my dad had been Mowgli from Kipling’s Jungle Book. Hey, I never said I got them all right.
**Even if he’s had girlfriends and enjoyed it and gotten hickeys and so forth. Especially if he has had girlfriends, etc. Also any nasty traits in his personality are proof that he is gay. Apparently straight men can’t be vain, vicious and vapid, because these traits are what define gays. And you thought it was just that they liked penises.
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