thulasie01’s Reviews > 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl > Status Update

“I tell her I’m honestly not that good. Really, I’m—
“You are,” she says. “I wish I had your discipline.”
“You did there for a while,” I say, looking away.
For a while, Mel was pretty committed, using her mother’s old Exercycle, living on Diet Coke and Michelina’s Light. In fact, for a while there, Mel began to look like the unstoppable force of nature she was when she was seventeen, the girl who wore black bras you could see through her white Catholic school blouse and who blew all the boys I ever professed to love in her bedroom postered with obscure Goth bands, while I sat in the downstairs den with her mother, who taught me how to cheat at solitaire.
That was a couple of years ago, when we were living together. I was still more or less an agoraphobic whale, switching my major every quarter—from English to French Literature to Art History to Medieval Studies to Film—going to the random lecture when I could bring myself to leave my bedroom, adding and dropping electives like Gaelic, collecting syllabi-like travel brochures for destinations I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to. When Mel “You look great, but you don’t want to go too far.” You know, things a friend would say to a friend. But Mel would just sip her Diet Coke, sort of smug, like she had a secret, leaving half her salad for the waitress to clear away. She lost steam after a few months though. Couldn’t keep it off. Gained it back plus, plus.”

so real but why would she say that

“We were cute,” she says now, meaning it.
I want to talk to her more, but she’s spotted the bus in the distance, so I say okay, good-bye, and tell her I’ll text her later, but she’s already out of the car, running toward the stop.
”

sigh

“At the office, it’s the usual midmorning drudgery. I’m doing the seven steps it takes to open the mail while drinking black coffee. Itsy Bitsy is scheduling, while secret-eating a kardemummabullar, a cardamom bun, at her desk. She’s pretending to secret-eat for my sake, to make me laugh, like look what a pig she is, she can’t even wait until lunch. She over-crackles the paper bag, does shifty eyes before each superbite. She’s wearing this sixties minidress with matching white go-go boots like something stitched out of my nightmares. Seeing me watch her, she waves, her cheeks plump with kardemummabullar. I wave back, and the hate I feel is bottomless. The hate could drown us both. She swallows and mouths, Lunch, at me like it’s a question and I nod in spite of myself.”

itsy bitsy is evil i know it theres no way she has good intentions

“I wrench off her knotted handiwork, revealing the gap in the teeth again. The other woman, the big-assed one in the too-tight jeans who is being placated with belts, looks at me like I’m being mutinous.
“Because it really is too tight, isn’t it? I mean, really?”
My eyes say, Say it, Trixie. Say it for both of us.
She smiles, looks both ways like a caged animal before she bores her eyes into me and nods a little. It’s a barely perceptible tilt of the head, as if being this honest isn’t allowed but she’ll make an exception just this once.
Then she adds, aloud: “I don’t think so. Not if you wore a scarf. But you don’t want to wear a scarf, you said, so . . .”
She shrugs. Like that’s the last trick in her bag of tricks.
She turns on her heel and trots off to get more belts for the big-assed woman.
And I feel suddenly deserted. Discarded. Cast off like an ill-fitting dress. Suddenly I want to bathe in the light of Trixie’s eyes again. I want her to ask me to turn for her. I want her to fix her eyes, the eyes where everything fits, where it’s just a matter of the right accessory, the right attitude, on me. I want my mother’s eyes.”

yeah this is insane wtf trixie

“She sighs into her cup, waggles it at me. “This is okay, right? Just milk and ice?”
“Right,” I say. I stare at the road ahead.
When she pulls out of the parking lot, I notice she’s driving very slowly, squinting hard at the road.
“How come you’re driving so slow?”
She’s quiet for a while, then, “I can’t feel my feet,” she says to the windshield. “Right now.” “That’s still happening?” I turn to look at her but her profile gives nothing away. “Mom? That’s still happening? Are you going to a doctor for it?”
She’s shaking her head at the windshield. “I’ll be fine. Still be able to go dancing tomorrow night.”
“Dancing? I think we should take it easy.”
“It’s your last night here before Tom comes. We can have a quiet day on Friday. Just you and me. How does that sound?”

aww what this is so sad

“Can we go home now, please?
But she wouldn’t leave until the floor had emptied of men and the band had begun to pack up. I thought for sure she would want to go home after that, but when I mentioned it, she said, Are you kidding? The night’s young! Go where you would go if I wasn’t here, if you were with friends. The truth is I’d go home. Instead, she retrieved a city weekly from a trash can on the corner, made me hunt for a Goth night in Capitol Hill.
You sure about this? I asked her as she handed two fivers to a man in bondage gear who stamped black snakes on our hands.
Go on, my mother said over the blare of German industrial, giving me a small push into the swishing columns of dust-ridden light. She watched me turn under the mirror ball through the smoke from a table just off the dance floor, chin on her fists.”

UGH this is so sad i love mother x daughter relationships

“I teeter closer to the stall, evaluating the different men behind the glass case, their biceps flexing as they throw and sing, throw and sing.
I pick the one with the Hellraiser hair and the missing incisor and the eyes the no-color of oceans. We’ll do it in the dark of the truck full of ice and fresh-caught fish. And he’ll kiss my neck with a hot mouth and tug on my hair with his fish-gut hands. They’ll streak watery blood all over the dress and the sweetheart neckline that has fallen down to my navel, and I’ll grip his spikes tight in my fists. He’ll fuck me so hard, I’ll lose one of my mother’s clip-ons and underneath me a red heel will snap. And I’ll stagger from the truck, earring-less and one heeled, to where my mother and Tom are waiting for me at an elegant oyster bar down the way. Clutching the blood-strewn bag she bought me by its rhinestone handle. Fish guts in my hair. Blood and ice running in pink rivulets down my biceps, but I’ll be grinning from ear to ear. ”

yeah i thought it was wild that she was (thinking of) cheating but ugh ew tom irl was worse fuck you so much

“Years after she dies, when I’m on vacation in a small seaside town, I will think I see her in an outdoor café. A woman in black wearing Jackie O sunglasses. She’ll look exactly like my mother except she’ll be thin. Seated alone at a table for two. I’ll watch the afternoon sun lick her black hair red for I don’t know how long, her nose tilted into an open book. Elegant sips of espresso, each one leaving a plummy lipstick imprint on the china. Ignoring a chocolate torte right in front of her. I’ll look at her “with my mouth open and tears in my eyes until she’ll suddenly get up and leave. I’ll follow her from the café to a butcher shop and then to a flower shop and then to a market and that’s where I’ll lose her. I’ll turn circles in the midst of the stalls for what seems like hours before giving up and walking back to my hotel.
“Just you’re beautiful,” she says now to the empty plate. “Just I’ll miss you.” She reaches out, runs a hand along the side of my face, brushing a lock of hair back from my eyes. She tucks it behind my ear. There.”

omg!!!! :((

“Tell her I tried, okay? But maybe not to bring this one back in again.”
Good choice, the funeral director said when at last I pointed to one of the vessels at random. Elegant. Tasteful. And who doesn’t love blue?
She takes it off the rack and into her arms, gently now, like it’s a maiden, Snow White fresh from her glass coffin. There is such great care in the gesture that it brings another mother back to me briefly. One I didn’t see very much. Happy. At ease in her flesh. “I’ll tell her,” I say.”

sigh this book is a mix of ed and motherly emotion

“He takes a swig of his Fat Tire. Back when she used to visit him in her heavier days, she was content to enjoy dinner in what he thought was an amicable silence, smoking a Camel Light while he slurped takeout in front of an old monster movie. Now that they eat boiled grains over candlelight, she demands dinner conversation. As he yammers on about various parts of his day, often trailing off, only to be prompted by a clipped What else? he feels like one of those old mechanical toy puppies being forced to do flips.
It’s after her third What else? that he ends up telling her about Dickie’s foray into gastro sex. “He even offered her to us. Hot Pocket and me. Isn’t that sick?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Just thought you would find it funny,” he says, taking another swig of his Fat Tire.
He didn’t mean to mention that last bit about the offer, but now it’s out there. He can’t take it back. ”

UGH i hate tom so much wtf

“He sits beside her on the couch. She’s watching the final episode of cycle ten. He knows this because this is the one cycle she has on iTunes, the one she watches the most often, where a plus-size model wins. The first time they watched the fat girl win—he didn’t so much watch as look up every now and then from playing World of Warcraft on his laptop—even he was moved. He thought, Good for her. Good for society. He turned to look at Beth thinking she would be ecstatic, and was surprised to see a punched-in look of abject pain on her face.
“Jesus, Beth. What is it?”
“I just think that Somalian girl should have won. She had prettier features. Overall.”

oh wow what this feeling that beth is feeling is so so real omg as an former fat girl (don't jinx i hope it is ALWAYS FORMER!) i still feel very astounded to see fat women being loved ! like im like what????

“Saturday. Fourth of July. He and Beth are driving toward Hot Pocket’s house for the staff barbecue. She’s sulking in the passenger’s seat, hunched over a veggie platter with a ramekin of fat-free hummus in the center. Hunched as much as she can be, given that she is wearing yet another far-too-tight dress. New. Black, like she’s in mourning. Patterned with small, prim flesh-colored flowers. Fishnets. Heels. To a barbecue.
“Is it too much?” she asked him on their way out the door.”

ok lizzie it is def too much

“Seriously, you choose,” she says to the glass. Probably she’s upset because she’s missing what she calls her “treat day.” Every other Saturday night, she permits herself two double margaritas and enchiladas verdes at the Blue Iguana, followed by a Brownie Bonanza at Ben & Jerry’s. Though it scares and saddens him a little to see her hunger let loose upon a small complimentary basket of tortilla chips, he too looks forward to these Saturday nights. It’s the only night when her smirk goes slack, the noose of restraint loosened enough for her features to soften, her beauty at last unbuckling its belt. She is never more expansive and easygoing in conversation than when she’s snatching chips from the basket with quick fingers. He’s learned not to look at the fingers. If he does, she’ll stop. On those nights, they discuss what they used to discuss on those long phone chats and during her first visits: movies and books and their mutual music loves and hates. It’s good for a while.”

this is kinda sweet if only he actually made her feel loved instead of just letting her maintain her ed😂😂😂😂😂

“I can’t eat there,” she says now.
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
The rain’s coming down again, but it’s one of those brief, intense showers they often get in summer.
“No, I really don’t.”
“I can’t eat in front of her.”
By her, she means Brindy, the ex-stripper Hot Pocket’s married to. Ever since that one time Tom let his eyes linger a little too long on her cleavage as she offered him pigs in a blanket from a tray, Beth has had it in for her.”

thsi really is so gross

“In Beth’s dark glare, Tom is careful, supremely careful not to let his eye dwell too long on the long supple legs, the firm breasts of his buddy’s wife.
In the kitchen, Brindy offers them both watermelon daiquiris. “You have to try them. They’re so yummy!” In his peripheral vision, he sees Beth’s face darken, becoming an abacus of sugar and carb counting. Unable to watch, he leaves them there in the kitchen before he can hear her ask, Do you have any dry white?”

YUCK and shes so real

“Yeah,” he mumbles. People keep telling him this. They look at Beth, Elizabeth, whatever the hell her name is now, at her long black hair and her smooth, fair skin and how what’s left of her flesh is packaged so daintily into a neat, hot little dress and tell him this. But what Tom sees is the stooped-over way she carries herself like her thinness was a punch in the gut, the air of heaviness around her that will never leave. How her heels are scuffed and her stockings full of rips because she spends all her money on dresses that she cannot afford and that are not fit for any occasion. He has fantasies about burning the little short-sleeved black cardigan she feels compelled to wear even in the dead of summer, over this dress, over every dress regardless of its color and cut because she buys them all too tight. He’s seen the deodorant stains in the armpits, smelled the stink of its sweat and trying and perfume. And he doesn’t feel like a lucky man. He doesn’t feel lucky at all.”

why does bro hate his wife

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Tom?”
Tom doesn’t answer. Keeps his foot in the door, his eyes sifting the dark hall beyond Dickie’s shoulder.
“Fuck off!”
That’s when he hears a woman’s voice from within: “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Dickie calls, glaring at Tom.
Tom’s gaze grasps for her shape in the dark but as far as he can see there’s nothing. Her voice sounds nothing like Beth’s. He looks back at Dickie, who’s still scowling in his hula girl shirt. He feels Hot Pocket tugging his shoulder while offering mumbled entreaties that they should probably head home. Sighing, Tom removes his foot from the doorframe. The door slams in his face.”

UGHHH hes so gross so desperate for a glimpse of a random womans fat ass man wtf 😭😭😭😭😭

“Reeling through the apartment door, he calls her name a couple of times. No answer. But the living room pillar’s there and she’s lit it up. He walks toward it like it’s a beacon, sees on the mantel of the fireplace all these photos of the new her—of her and him, her and her mother, some just of her, of Elizabeth—not his Beth but Elizabeth. Looking pared down and stiff, clad in tight-fitting, sharply cut dresses of every shade, her lips a hard red line that is only half-smiling on one side. In the center, the urn filled with her mother’s ashes, which she refuses to scatter. As he turns and makes his way to the bedroom, he passes the workout gizmo she ordered off the Home Shopping Network, something between a NordicTrack and a treadmill, called the Gazelle. The Gazelle is for days, she said, when she doesn’t feel like “facing” the fitness center, whatever that means. There are so many things he no longer understands.”

he doesnt get it but I DO

“My fat dress, she calls it now. That night, some asshole coworker’s skeletal wife apparently took a cheap shot at her weight and he didn’t defend her. At least this is what she claimed when they got home. He doesn’t remember not defending her. He guesses she Gazelles about five miles a day now while looking at this half of the picture, in which she is smiling but also looking a little scared, like the camera could give her a clip to the jaw anytime. This was the girl he fell in love with. The girl who loved sad music, the girl who wanted nothing more than to lie with him in the dark and let wave upon wave of lush, dark electronic sound wash over her. This might be the only photo of her left. Maybe she keeps the others hidden in a box somewhere, but probably she just got rid of them.”

he didnt defend her...and he needs to stop the pity party TF bro she is fighting an ed you cannot go jerk off to fat women

“I did this for you, you know, she always tells him.
Did you? he wants to say.
Because he doesn’t remember ever asking for kumquats or hybrid cardio machines, but who knows? Maybe all this time, all the little ways he looked at her and didn’t look at her, all the things he said or didn’t say “or didn’t say enough added up to this awful request without his knowledge or consent, like those ransom notes made from letters cut from different magazines.”

this is sad youre a bad husband tom

“He takes the picture of Beth off the Gazelle, scratches the tape off the corners, and holds it up to the blinking purple lights. As he gazes at it, swaying a little from the beers and pot, his fingers itch to do something with it—set fire to it, put it in a frame. He’s about to tear it up when he hears sex sounds, forced, violent, and oddly familiar, from down the hall.
He finds her sitting at the desk with his laptop open before her. Her back is to him, her bony shoulder blades pointed at him like arrows of accusation, the moans of all of his uncleared history boomeranging through the small, thin-walled room. It looks to him like the one he watched the other night about the two fat maids, specifically the scene in which they demonstrate their versatility to their employers. Only he doesn’t remember it being this loud. In the window’s reflection, he can see her hand covering her mouth, her expression frozen in horror and disgust and fascination.
“Beth,” he calls like a question, but it’s no good. He can see she is far too transfixed by the fat girls, by the ecstasy which she is now too “hungry and tired and angry to summon. And he knows that she must see him there in the window’s reflection, standing in the dark doorway, softly calling her name.”

YUCKKKK i would actually to hate to find the porn my husband jerks off to of women whose bodies do not even look like mine...ughhh youre so gross ew im glad they get divorced omf

“She looked from the von Furstenberg to me, then back to the von Furstenberg, sizing both of us up. We two? Never we two.
Sighing, she led me to a fitting room, rearranging items as she went—insect hair clips, Baggallinis, peacock scarves—so it wasn’t a totally wasted trip.
The whole time I was in there being asphyxiated by the von Furstenberg, I felt the fact of her clicking on the other side of the door, waiting for me to admit defeat, to come to my senses. Come on.”

see idk if the saleslady actually thinsk this way or if its lizzie's anxiety...hmmm...either way so very real

“I’m just thinking how I’ll wear it out of the store. Picturing how I’ll pull back the curtain in the von Furstenberg, turn my zippered, von Furstenberged back to her and say, all casual, over my shoulder, Cut the tag, please? Maybe I’ll even ask for a bag for my old dress—would she mind terribly putting my old dress in a bag? Mm? And that’s when I see the jagged rip down the side seam. Maybe I couldn’t hear the ripping over the sound of my own grunts. That happened once before, with the flesh-colored Tara Jarmon. It was impossibly tight when I bought it and then I was out one day walking, insisting, and it suddenly wasn’t. It suddenly felt easy breezy, beautifully loose. I didn’t understand. Until I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflective glass of an office building and saw the slashes on either hip.”

man this is actually insane though why is it not her first time ripping her dress

“Or maybe I could learn to live like this.
As I sit here, I can already feel myself oozing out of the von Furstenberg. Oozing from the V in front and the V in the back, the volume of my ass threatening to crack the little bows along the fault line. And I begin to think maybe this is it. Maybe this is the only way out. Maybe, if I wait long enough, if I’m patient, I’ll just ooze out. First the fat, then maybe we’ll find a way to coax out the organs. Some organs I won’t even need, like my appendix. Of course, even if we leave some things like my appendix behind, it’ll be a slow process. Slow in terms of biological time, but not if you think say, geologically, like, in ages.
I’m patient.”

i really do wonder how she got out of it how did that end omg!

“I flip through Self without really seeing, and feel as if I’m drowning—What if Cassie has forgotten me? What if she couldn’t make it in today?—until I hear my name called like a question and I look up and there she is. Spilling out of a zebra-print maxi dress. Grinning crookedly at me between red corkscrew curls. My eye runs worriedly over her frame for any signs of weight loss. Seeing there are none, I breathe out. That Cassie is even fatter than I remember sates me in ways I cannot explain.”

LMFAO omg shes so me wtf its insane actually

.

“She picks up a bottle of hot pink polish and shakes it, causing her copious, freckled cleavage to ripple. I try not to look since looking lights little parts of me on fire. Instead, I keep my gaze focused on how her upper arm flesh bleeds out of her cap sleeves. Not attractive, I tell myself, even though her flesh is young and firm. It won’t always be firm, though. It’ll grow old, I tell myself, just like Cassie. Whenever I’m hungry, which is often, I picture Cassie old. Her bloated body beneath a hospital bedsheet.
”

😊

“Cassie got married recently. I couldn’t believe it when she first told me. At first, I thought it might have to do with the fact that she’s part of a very small religious community, people who see each other with the eyes of Jesus first. Then I found out Cassie isn’t really part of this community anymore, at least not hard-core, and that the guy just happened to be a friend of her brother’s who thought she was cute. And the thing is he’s cute. At least according to the picture Cassie showed me once on her iPhone.
She shows me another picture of him now.
I take the phone and stare at the picture like it’s a pot of water I’m trying to boil, waiting for any latent sign of his freakdom to surface. A yellowish tinge to the skin, maybe? Some pervert shading under the eyes? A weird nose kink, but no. As far as I can see, he’s the stuff of the earth. Its handsome salt. I’m still looking when at last she takes the phone from my hands and says, “He’s pretty cute, huh?”
“He is. How did—well, congratulations.”
I ask if they’re still in their honeymoon period and she blushes.
Yes, yes they are. It’s sort of wonderful.
“That’s great,” I say. “Really, great.” It is.”

LMFAOO idk why she'd even begin to ask her that but ok. and yeah this is so me whenever i am absolutely astonished to see a fat woman with a hot and sexy guy its insane even as an ex fatty you'd think i'd be more compassionate? (pls remain ex)

“It is,” she says. She’s very lucky. “How are things with your husband?”
I look at her, eyes wide at her innocent question, and that’s when a video clip of two fat girls in ill-fitting bondage gear flogging one another on the floor of a fake-looking dungeon, the one I found in my husband’s recent web history last year, comes back to me in full graphic detail. I found others that night: fat girls dressed as French maids, Ukrainian lesbians, hopeful cheerleaders. Fat girls who always seem to be smirking or looking surprised that their clothes are too tight. Fat girls who, along with a few sites about trance music and conspiracy theories, had been worming their way into his web history for several months.
I say things are great, and feel the corner of my mouth do one of those spastic quivers.”

ugh its even worse wtf i hate this for her