Category Archives: Fat

P.S. Ms. Bern (CEO of Charming Shoppes, Inc.)

Posted on 11 March 2009 | Leave a comment

P.S. If you would add a concession stand in each of your stores, you might see your revenue increase. I know I could do with a nice refreshing beverage after grunting and sweating in and out of clothes in your tiny little dressing rooms. Why do you install heat lamps above them?

P.P.S. You could sell beer, too, but not Rogue’s XS Imperial Stout. The taste of the beer isn’t worth the ceramics wasted on the cool container, although I do like the little rubber stopper. My dislike for the beer has nothing to do with my lack of testes or testosterone. I simply like my beer to taste like beer, not bourbon. I am a machine when it comes to drinking beer. I don’t need more crankcase oil, which is what this beer tastes like. This reviewer, Dan, must have had a bit too much to drink before writing. In fact, I am sure Dan had the entire $15 bottle. Dan, it is always a bad idea to drink and write.

So, Ms. Bern, you should offer Cabernet, Shiraz, Avery’s Old World Porter, St. Peter’s English Ale, St. Peter’s Porter, Guinness, and Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale. Maybe for the Scottish lasses you could offer a Wee Heavy. How about some foot-long coney dogs and nachos, too?

P.P.P.S. Did I mention that you need to teach your machines how to sew on buttons? Mine are always falling off at inopportune times, like when I am teaching.

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Posted in Beer, Fat, Just for Fun, Teaching

Dear Lane Bryant (Chairman, CEO)

Posted on 10 March 2009 | 2 comments

Dear Dorrit J. Bern:

I have enjoyed shopping at Lane Bryant since I was in high school, and I have always appreciated your selection of stylish, hip clothes for bigger women. While I sometimes feel that some of the styles of clothes you sell are better left to thinner women or to no one at all, I recognize that you are trying to be equitable in offering plus-size women many options for their dressing pleasure.

I do appreciate your attempt to stylishly clothe large women; however, I am appalled at the fact that you have been charging what can only amount to gross mark-ups for your clothing. No gauze shirt is worth $45. No ill-fitting pant suit is worth the $150-$200 total that I paid for pants, jacket, and button down shirt. I didn’t even get the job. I blame my current unemployment on the jacket’s tendency to creep up in the back, producing what I call the Dracula effect in which my ears are hidden by the collar as I gesture, cross my arms, or breathe.

I also wonder if you have taken into consideration the fact that not all fat women have large breasts. I weigh 240 pounds, but I am 5’2″ tall and wear a size 40B bra. I do not have the voluptuousness to fill out your clothing’s more than ample bust lines. Where cleavage should be, onlookers find glimpses of my bra or my sternum. Very attractive. And, the darts don’t help camouflage the fact that I am not breast-blessed. In fact, they amplify the space between the cloth and my breasts until the resulting flaps resemble front-side angel wings.

Similarly, I wonder if you have considered those of us who are fat-petite. As I have indicated, I am 5’2″ tall. Spending $55 or more for a pair of pants should prohibit the necessity for me to take them home only to spend an hour or so altering them to fit my short legs. I don’t mind my jeans dragging the ground, but I draw the line at dress pants. What about the shorties who can’t sew? Will you also open a shoe store specializing in high heels?

Now that I have spoken my mind in generalities, I would like for you to turn your attention to a specific situation. Today, I went shopping with a friend of mine and we left Lane Bryant in the Muncie Mall in low spirits. It appears that you no longer stock size 30 pants in your stores. In addition, we were informed that Lane Bryant no longer carries size 30 on their website or in their catalog. We were not directed to another store or given any advice about where to find size 30 pants. They did exist once upon a time. Surely, they were to be found somewhere.

When I got home, I discovered that Charming Shoppes, Inc. does, in fact, carry size 30, but at Catherine’s, Lane Bryant’s sister store. Had we been informed that we could simply go to another store that was nearby, my friend may have purchased five or six new pairs of pants. Since your company systematically and monetarily rapes fate women, knowing full-well that we have few other option, today’s little debacle means you lost about $400 in sales.

I would encourage you to carry bigger sizes at Lane Bryant, or at the very least, you could inform women who wear those sizes that they can purchase similarly priced and styled clothing at one of Lane Bryant’s sister stores. I mean, you shamelessly advertise Cacique on the radio as we shop. Why not advertise Fashion Bug and Catherine’s as well? As it is my friend was so upset, that she went home and ordered from Ashley Stewart. Your loss.

If you want us to continue to patronize your business, you could begin to heal today’s wounds with a few gift certificates. Perhaps a couple of gift cards, maybe $200 on each one, would help us to get over our ill-feelings and trauma.

Sincerely,

A Natty Heifer

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Posted in Fat, Feminism

Two Beers: Both Un-exceptional.

Posted on 1 March 2009 | Leave a comment

I have never been disappointed in a beer like I was disappointed in Dad’s Little Helper by Rogue Brewery. The Beer Advocate, which I finally broke down and joined, gave the only slightly flavorful piss-water a B-. Actually, I should say the readers and reviewers of Beer Advocate gave it a B-, because the grade the beer receives is the average of all the reviews.  I would probably give it a D, but then I should probably stick to rating Porters and IPAs since they are really the only beers I love. Those and good, cold, thick-headed Guinnesses.

Part of my disappointment in Dad’s Little Helper came because my first beer was also lousy, so bad it’s name escapes me. What do I expect for two beers and a twelve inch banana pepper pizza that still cost less than $10? I just wish the Heorot would bring back those $1.50 Avery Porters. I could have had four of them and a pizza for under $10 with money left for a tip!

*

Yesterday, while tripped up on cold medicine, I got lost at the Muncie Mall. Sounds funny, huh? I would normally laugh. However, I felt like I was in one of those fun-houses they use in B-grade horror films, all mirrors and clowns and shit. Not fun. In fact, quite scary. Abbie said, “It’s one hallway, you just keep walking around until you get back where you started.” And, she is right.

I have never been able to keep track of my car at shopping malls. I don’t know why with three weeks of poor sleep, being sick, and taking cold medicine I thought I would be okay to go shopping by myself. All of that combined with the fact that the last time I went to the mall was with Abbie and Ed before Christmas, not counting the time Jacob and I walked straight through to go to BWs to get some spicy chicken arms, should have made me feel less insane. I left the mall feeling slightly dodgy, overly sensitive, and oddly disoriented. I might still be standing in Books-a-million looking at books I would never buy had Shannon not come over and said, “Hey, Lady, can I help you find a book?”

I came home and wrote about what it feels like to be inside my head sometimes. I am afraid to read it today. I don’t want to know what I wrote.

*

Last night we went to Welliver’s for Abs’ birthday dinner.

I ate too much. I couldn’t stop myself.

I felt gluttonous. I smiled the whole way through.

I don’t think I need to eat again for days.

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Posted in Beer, Christmas, Fat, Writing

A Conglomeration of Magnanimous Proportions

Posted on 23 January 2009 | Leave a comment

Today I had two more beers on the quest o’ beers. I had Hoppin’ Frog‘s Gulden Fraug Belgian Ale. Gulden Fraug wasn’t nearly as Belgian as Gulden Draak, but it was still tasty. And had a lot of alcohol. I wouldn’t mind trying their porter, but I don’t think the Heorot has it. In fact, they have been out of several of their good porters the past few times I have been there.

I also had a wheat ale, whose name I can’t spell. It was soft and sweet, like a new lover. Unsullied. Crisp. I was surprised because I usually abhor wheat beers. Every day is a new day.

The quality time spent with the Nathans and Stephanie was well worth not remembering the name of one of my new loves.

*

Last night I went to watch my brother coach. He continually amazes me with his compassion and sweet spirit. Where I am all abrasive and in your face, he is laid back and kind. I guess we compliment each other like that.

There were no diving catastrophes despite the few reverses that were attempted. They were all completed with room to spare. There were no Greg Louganis moments.

I stayed to watch the entire meet, and I remembered why I loved swimming in high school. I love that coaches and spectators alike yell at the meets. When you are under water, you can’t hear. Try it. I wish I could replicate the sound here. But I can’t.

Maybe try turning the stereo way up. Put your fingers in your ears, then take them out. Then put them in; then take them out. Do this over and over again for a minute and a half or so, and you will know what it sounds like to swim the hundred-yard butterfly or breaststroke.

Now leave the stereo on. Go into another room and cup your hands tightly around your ears. Wiggle your fingers around and listen to your skin rub against itself while still trying to listen to the music. This is swimming freestyle. You cannot hear the words. You only know that someone, somewhere is yelling for you.

And backstroke? You might as well buy some industrial strength ear plugs. Back strokers can only hear their own most secret inner thoughts.

Each time someone went off the block, I could feel my adrenaline rise. I wanted to be competing. I think the reason I was so well adjusted in high school was my focus on athletic competition. I wasn’t so interested in academic prowess, though I got the job done, because I was interested in pushing my body to its physical limits.

I need that again. I need to feel my body pushing through the slick water, propelling along by the power of my hands and feet. I want to be a human submarine, diving and cutting and slipping past the enemy.

In truth I am slow. This is me swimming:pig_swimming

I do not cut. I do not dive. I do not slip past the enemy.

I sort of bob along with my arms moving and my legs kicking. But it’s therapeutic and athletic. And not really so much like a pig in water.

*

Today I jogged/walked four miles. It took about an hour.

See? I am SLOW. But I did it. I finished. And that is where I am. On finishing.

I would like to finish anything: the mini-marathon, coursework, reading the Bible all the way through. Really, some sense of completion would be healthy.

I’d like to be done.

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Posted in Beer, Fat, Relationships, Running, Swimming

I Remember Now

Posted on 19 January 2009 | 3 comments

I just finishing jogging.

I remember now why I was a distance swimmer.

I remember flinging my body from the starting block into the cool slick water, not wanting to surface. I always wished I could stay under water like a fish or a mermaid, breathing through gills, and propelling along with my flippers. Only I wasn’t a mermaid or a fish. I couldn’t even pretend to be Aquaman. I was just Corby.

My body never warmed up—by warmed up I mean cooperated—until well into the first two hundred yards. those superficial warm-ups Coach made us do before the meets never helped, particularly because my my first event was the butterfly, which was right before diving. Diving was a good forty-five minutes to an hour after our team warm-ups.

The middle hundred yards were spent talking myself into finishing the race. I ached. My shoulders were sore. I wanted to quit.

And the last two hundred yards was spent making up for the time I had lost in the first three hundred. I usually finished a respectable second or third. Once, I even made it to the sectional finals. I came in twelfth. Obviously, I was not Olympic material.

I have kept this same mentality into adulthood. Even though I try to warm up by walking the dogs before I jog, my body takes about the first third of the jog to decide it wants to get warm.

The second third is spent reminding myself why I am doing this: to resurrect my adolescent athlete. The young woman I once was wants to get out. Don’t be mistaken: I was never thin or muscular. I never looked like a jock. When I came in twelfth at sectional, I weighed 170 lbs. Most of my competitors weighed around 100 pounds. Wet. With clothes on.

Sometimes when compared with my teammates I felt a bit like this:beached-whale-15Regardless, the athlete who is trapped inside me is slowly coming back out. Slowly. Like a sloth. But without claws.

The last third of my jogging workout is spent in relative ease, jogging along, not wanting it to stop. I think I need to find a psychological trick to get me into the last third mindset sometime during the first third.

I still like the endurance aspect of distance exercise. I like long, slow exercise.

Please, if you are a speedy guy—like one of my professors, who also happens to be a distance guy—I know the two can go together. I just happen to be slow. I happen to like the leisure that distance events give the participant.

For example, in high school I had 500 yards to plod through. Now I will have 13.1 miles to plod through.

And I do mean plod.

Like a horse.

Maybe like a Lipizanner Stallion.

Only I am not a stallion.

Like a Lipizzaner Mare.

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Posted in Fat, Running