Sexy & I (am trying to!) Know It

Dear Friends,

Let’s be honest from the get-go…this letter is not for all of you.

It’s not for my friends who have kids. Ok, let’s be honest again – it DOES include my friends who have newborns. Because y’all will feel the sentiment more acutely.

It’s an advance apology letter. An apology for what I have done to you, and will continue to do for years to come, completely without remorse.

I apologize for talking about how my baby is a genius (suck it, she totally is), about her last bowel movement, and making you watch me wipe her drool on my pants. Yeah I do.

I would also like to apologize for disappearing. Or was it you? Either or, we are all incommunicado. I’m old enough now that the friends I have do not need to see me or talk to me every six months, let alone every day. And we all like it that way, so forget it – I retract that apology.

First and foremost, though, I apologize in advance for being comfortable in my own skin, all 250 lbs of it. I’m not, yet, but I will be. Because not only did I give birth to a genius superbaby, but I also started a weight loss program. While I would love to be able to live in my body without shame, I cannot. So the apology lies in making you listen to me talk about the unfair pressure that media puts on women to be back to their pre-baby weight in 13.5 hours.

I am sorry about how hard it is to lose that weight, yet all we see is thin women who probably avoided breastfeeding so they could live on tuna and lettuce while women, like me, would have loved to breastfeed but could not.

I am sorry that I love and adore my daughter’s massive thighs and baby-fat-wrinkled wrists and look at my own thighs with disgust. When did it become ugly? Believe me, I am more than aware of the health problems related to obesity (non of which, thankfully, I have), but I am sad that a world that used to value a curvy women now places that value on women with so little body fat they resemble tween boys.

I do not blame the media or society for my size – it’s aaaaaaaalllllllll me on that score. Well, I do place some blame on the advent of poutine. What I do blame them for is my inability to see myself as beautiful, thereby perpetuating the vicious overeat-depression-overeat cycle. And let me be clear here: partaking in that cycle is MY choice. I take full responsibility for every action I make.

All I am saying is that it is unfair that society as a whole places so much value on thinness. And ladies, no one is more guilty of fat-shaming than we are, and we all know it. We have to stop being so mean to each other, and cut the bitchiness. We are all in this world together: fat, skinny, thinny, fatty.

So I am sorry. I am sorry for my own pot-calling-the-kettle cattiness, and I am changing that immediately. I refuse to pass that on to my daughter.