Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions (21 page)

Of course, when they didn't, I felt inferior.

I assumed everybody else got the good breasts and that all of the good breasts looked exactly alike.

It took me a long time to figure out that everybody's breasts were different.

Like until last year.

And I didn't realize that
everything
about everybody's breasts was different, whether it was shape, nipple size or color, or anything like that. Nor did I realize that breasts change with time, and gravity, so that even if they were perfect once, they won't be perfect forever.

Because breasts are no different from every other part of your body, which is different from everybody else's parts, all of which change over time, and it generally ain't for the better.

But for some reason, women still want to be perfect.

Whatever that is.

And it's not only breasts.

Nowadays it's faces, too, and we're flocking to plastic surgeons and paying them to inject and fill and puff our cheeks and lips, too, so that we all look completely alike, evidently closer to the ideal.

Which is a fish.

To be precise, a very young fish.

So, in my opinion, what constitutes the perfect female breast?

Answer: Whatever you've got on your chest.

If it's little or if it's big, if it's flat or if it's skinny, if it's old or if it's young, no matter what it is, it's perfect.

If you have two breasts, that's perfect.

If you have one, that's perfect.

And if you've had breast cancer and had your breast reconstructed, it's perfect.

And if you had breast cancer and decided not to have your breast reconstructed, that's perfect, too.

Why?

Because you're alive.

Because you're an individual, and as such, unique.

And because nobody's perfect.

At least nobody human.

 

If I Were Beyoncé

By Francesca

Beyonc
é
is the spiritual leader of our time. She's like Oprah if Oprah could twerk. And while her wisdom reaches from big topics like feminism all the way to not being ready for this jelly, Beyonc
é
has helped me most with solving problems of the heart.

When I couldn't get my first boyfriend to say those three little words after a year of dating, he could at least put “Crazy in Love” on a mix CD.

Yes, kids, in my day, people listened to music via a saucer called a compact disc. And we walked six miles to school.

When my college sweetheart and I broke up in a fiery argument, he tried to get the last word by leaving a shoebox of my belongings outside my door the next morning, including such precious items as bobby pins, a hair elastic, and one plastic earring.

I thought, is this your, “Everything I own in a box to the left?” Are you trying to out-Beyonc
é
me? Please.

I'd already made “Irreplaceable” my new ringtone as soon as I left his dorm room.

But this most recent breakup had no pyrotechnics. To quote a poet nearly as popular as Beyonc
é
, we went out not with a bang, but with a whimper.

My birthday and our anniversary fell on the same day. We had planned to have a special dinner and exchange gifts. I had gotten his anniversary gift months earlier and kept it hidden in my closet, counting down the days until I got to give it to him. But when the day came, he had nothing for me. He was very sorry but didn't have much of an explanation. He'd been really busy. He's no good at picking out gifts. There was bad traffic that day.

It was so difficult for me to process and acknowledge that he didn't think about me the way I thought about him, that I spent that night, my birthday, consoling him for his oversight. I still tried to fix things for another month.

After we broke up, I wondered why it had taken me so long to see the ways our relationship was uneven, and worse, why it took even longer for me to recognize that unevenness as a reason to leave.

My default is to assume I don't deserve all that much, because I don't
need
all that much. But need and deserve are two different things. Theoretically, I know I deserve good treatment, but in practice, I often feel guilty asking for things.

I never hold the men I date to the same expectations that I hold myself to. I go above and beyond for the person I love, but I don't expect or demand that in return.

That would be high-maintenance. That would be too much to ask.

But that wouldn't be too much for Beyonc
é
to ask. Beyonc
é
understands that if she gives her all, she can expect the same in return. She needs someone who puts her “Love on Top.”

Top, top, top, top, to-op.

And yes, I can do all the key changes (and the runs).

And I thought of another song, Beyonc
é
's 2008, double-platinum hit, “If I Were a Boy.” In the song, Bey imagines herself as a man, first to indulge in all the perks of boys-will-be-boys behavior, but then vows that she would be better because she knows what it's like to be on the other side.

What would Beyonc
é
do?

So I put myself in the shoes of my ideal man—not some Mr. Big fantasy, but a good man, an equal partner, the type of boyfriend I would be if I were a boy. And thinking of it that way, my next step was clear:

I needed to buy myself a birthday/breakup gift.

And it had better be sparkly.

I took my best friend to the jewelry store to help me choose it, to get a female opinion. We settled on a necklace with a short chain and a wide, horizontal pendant—it looked tribal and strong, and in fourteen-karat gold, it complemented my skin tone.

My mom and me at Beyonc
é
's concert/group therapy session

Well, technically it's only gold-plate, but I won't know the difference.

And I pinky-swore my friend that if I backslid with my ex, I'd have to give the necklace away and take the loss.

Six months later, I still have my necklace.

And every time I wear it, I'm reminded that I deserve a man who can care for me at least as well as I can care for myself.

Or better.

Because that's what Beyonc
é
would want.

 

Hot Mama

By Lisa

I have met the love of my life, and it comes in a box.

I'm talking, of course, about ThermaCare.

For those of you who have yet to fall in love, allow me to explain.

ThermaCare is a heat wrap you can buy in a drugstore. It has some kind of black pods attached to a piece of paper, and you stick the paper on various parts of your body that happen to be aching, like your lower back.

Me!

In no time, the black pods start to heat up and your lower back will not only stop aching, but start feeling loose, relaxed, and ready to twerk.

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the bottom line is, you'll feel better.

While you werk.

At least, I sure do.

Of course, this isn't a scientific explanation of what makes the wraps get hot. I didn't know what was inside the black pods, but so I could be your faithful reporter, I looked it up on the website, and it is evidently pods of iron that begin to oxidize when they hit the air, emitting a low level of heat.

As far as I'm concerned, the black pods could be magic.

Black magic.

I started using the wraps when my lower back started hurting, and the one for your back is like a superwide paper that fits around your waist and has heating pods on the back. You can wear it under your clothes all day, like the unsexiest undergarment on the planet.

Think of it as a chastity belt for your back.

It's hot, but not in a good way.

You can also wear it to bed at night and you'll drift into a toasty slumber. Plus you'll save money because you'll never have to turn the heat on. Your dogs will cuddle up to you, because you are the new furnace.

If you get hot flashes, you might start a fire.

Don't ask me how your husband, wife, or significant other will react.

My guess is they'll want one of their own.

I suppose a heating pad would do the same thing, but you can't wear a heating pad to the supermarket and have a telltale slip of paper peeking out from underneath your shirt.

They have ThermaCare for aching knees, elbows, joints, wrists, shoulders, and “multipurpose muscle.”

Luckily, none of my muscles are multipurpose.

They have only one purpose.

Which is to relax.

They also have ThermaCare for menstrual cramps, which makes me wish I still had my period.

Just kidding.

And by the way, please don't write me an angry email saying that I'm shilling for a product. I didn't get any money to write this, and I wouldn't accept any. I'm writing this out of love for ThermaCare.

I Care about ThermaCare.

Why?

Because now I'm an addict.

I started using it about a month ago, only at night, and now I have it on continuously. I started out with the heat wraps that last for eight hours but graduated quickly to the ones that last sixteen. They're expensive, but no junkie complains about the price of heroin.

There are only twenty-four hours in a day, but if you wear two wraps that last sixteen hours apiece, you have the luxury of changing your wrap before your initial high begins to wear off.

The more you have, the more you want.

I sense that I'm not the only addict, because if you look at the frequently asked questions on the ThermaCare website, one was, “How many heat wraps can I use at one time?”

Answer: You can wear more than one, but not in the same location.

Damn.

In other words, if you wrap two around your back, you might spontaneously combust.

You have to be ThermaCareful.

 

Princess Lisa

By Lisa

I live a fairytale existence.

But not in a good way.

When I was little, I remember reading old-school fairytales, and there was one in which every time a princess spoke, no words came out of her mouth, but only snakes, newts, spiders, and mice.

Well, it turns out that princess is me.

And they're not coming out of my mouth, but they're coming out of my heat vents.

Or from under couches.

Or even from my oven.

I don't know where to begin the fairytale.

Maybe just to remind you that every year in the autumn, I always have an invasion of wolf spiders.

To be fair, they don't invade. They have better manners than that.

They merely wait for the front door to open and run in, usually in a flying wedge.

There are NFL teams that don't have the formations of these spiders.

Mine are professional spiders.

I can't bring myself to kill them, so I try to catch them under drinking glasses, flip the glasses upside down, and throw them back outside.

I've made my peace with the spiders, as I have with the mice that tend to appear this time of year, too.

I found one in the oven last week, and he wasn't helping with the cooking.

So I set a bunch of mousetraps, because I don't cut mice the same slack that I cut spiders.

You have to draw the line somewhere.

Anybody who has had a mouse in the house knows that the best and worst sound is a snap of the trap.

Then a few days ago I noticed a horrible smell coming from the wall of my bedroom closet and all the dogs were going crazy every night, at bedtime. When I couldn't take the stench anymore, I called a contractor. The dogs told him exactly where in the wall to dig.

They're cadaver dogs.

Kind of.

Anyway, in five minutes, the contractor had opened the wall and found three dead mice.

Presumably they were not blind.

Still, I can live even with dead mice.

I'm not a picky woman, and everybody's just looking to keep warm for the winter, myself included.