For much of my adult life, I have experienced a bizarre phenomenon that I can find little explanation for in any logical terms. People constantly tell me that I look like I've lost or am losing weight.
Just last night, as a matter of fact, my father said, "Squirt, you look like you're getting skinny again." I'm sure he meant is as a compliment.
Now here is where things get really odd. I admit, I came home from grad school in London in 2007 with roughly 20 more pounds than I had left with (the physical kind, not the currency). Six months of spin and yoga classes and I dropped to below my pre-grad school weight and looked, from my own perspective, pretty decent. Then again, I look at the photos of my brother's wedding from that time and I can dissect all the problems with my body in about 3 seconds, but that's what our culture has done to us as women.
Since then, I regained a bit of weight and have stayed, since about 2008, around the same weight, which is about the same weight I was in undergraduate school. Sure, I"ll fluctuate 5 lbs. or so, but generally, I know what the scale is going to say. That means that for about 8 of the last 10 years, I've been almost the same size and weight. I still fit into jeans I wore Sophomore year in college, and wear blazers that have come and gone in fashionability twice in that time. Which is why I can't understand how often people mention that I look like I'm losing weight. Family members, friends, acquaintances, veritable strangers have, on a regular basis, mentioned that I look like I've lost weight throughout my adult life. The only reasonable explanation for that is that I imprint on people's memories as perhaps the type who will inevitably need to be airlifted out of her own house, so they're consistently pleasantly surprised to find I am, in fact, human-shaped.
Maybe it's because I could care less about fashion, so much so that looking schlubby is my MO. Therefore, misshapen clothes might lend themselves to the appearance of weight loss, rather than the fact that I'm wearing 10 year-old Old Navy jeans that weren't exactly well-fitting to begin with. They also have holes in the crotch, but that's between you and me. They're small holes. I'm cheap.
However, maybe it's because I'm not a toothpick. I've never been super-skinny, at least not as a full-grown adult. I like food and I like beer and frankly, I prefer to run only if Leatherface is chasing me, complete with chainsaw. (Thus far, he hasn't done so.) I go through spurts of exercise, running nightly on the treadmill in the basement and struggling to do obscene numbers of crunches or lunges or push-ups or any other matter of self-inflicted torture humans have invented to make themselves look and feel better. I inevitably fall off that wagon and have a beer instead.
The equation is simple: food + beer = happy. Exercise - food = not happy.
So knowing that I could, by our cultural standards, stand to lose a pound or fifteen, perhaps implies that I, like so many other women in our youth and beauty and thinness obsessed culture, am actively trying to lose weight. Ergo, it stands to reason that telling someone she looks like she's lost weight is supportive! It's encouraging! It's nice.
It's not nice, really. It's weird and it makes me a little paranoid. While I admit that I'm a bit squishier than recommended by our broken healthcare system, I'm generally okay with what I look like and how my body behaves. I'm naturally quite strong and have a decent amount of endurance for fun things like hikes or bike rides or David Lynch movies (that last one is a lie, I hate David Lynch movies). I have a wonky right knee from a dance-class mishap in high school (a foutte turn gone awry), and a plate and eight pins in the ankle of the same side because the Euston Square tube station decided to kick my ass one night in early 2007. So I have so-called injuries to account for, but for the most part, my body performs as advertised, save the mornings I'm reminded I can't drink like I used to. Sometimes, it performs even better than advertised! Or at least, better than people expect.
For instance, when the farmer I worked for in 2011 (a lovely man who I still adore) asked me to clear a part of the goat enclosure and re-affix the fence while he ran to town, I did precisely as requested. He was shocked at how quickly and effectively I had cleared the farm muck and sorted out the collapsing fencing, as I was completely finished with the chore by the time he returned to the farm an hour later. I was surprised that he was surprised. Shoveling shit and earth isn't complex, and like I said, I'm stronger than the average bear.
But all that aside, all the fantastic strength and, you know, processes that my body can perform, I often feel reduced to the packaging, rather than the workings of my corporeal form. Never mind my master's degree from one of the world's top schools, never mind the strange array of jobs and exciting (cough cough) professional choices I've made. It's important that I look like I've lost weight.
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