I just got back from a lovely, mostly relaxing long weekend at the beach with my husband’s family. Everything on the trip went as smoothly as we could have hoped: the five kids (our two and three cousins — all eight and under) behaved and got along great. The weather was perfect, the ocean clear. And I got to beta read an awesome book for my friend Emily Carpenter, which proved to be an excellent beach read. (I have a feeling you’ll be seeing it on bookshelves in the near future). So why only mostly relaxing?
Bathing suits. Ugh.
Like most women, especially those with a bit of meat on our bones, being in a bathing suit is not a part of summer I look forward to. Okay, that’s an understatement. I’d rather clean a frat house bathroom after homecoming weekend with a box of tissues than wear a bathing suit in public. Really. As many of you know, I am not a slim girl — never have been. If I’m honest, there are probably twenty-five well, maybe forty, alright, seventy extra pounds I’ve been carrying around since… well, a while now. Like that jar of spare buttons you have in the closet that you never use, but you’ve packed and moved it six times, and you’re afraid to throw away because as soon as you do you will need one of those buttons.
Some of the extra weight is from way back in college. At UGA, I misunderstood about the “freshman fifteen” and thought it was an annual requirement. (Hey, if I were smart enough to understand stuff like that I would’ve gone to Georgia Tech like my dad wanted). Sigh. Then there was the oh-sweet-I-found-a-husband-so-I-can-eat-what-I-want weight in my early 20’s. And shortly thereafter, the oh-crap-I’m-getting-a-divorce-this-is-so-depressing-help-me-Ben-and-Jerry weight. I didn’t fall for the marriage weight gain on the second time around, but then we had two kids, and… suddenly I am 38 with pudge in totally new and interesting places. You know what no one tells you about your late 30’s? It’s friggin’ hard to lose weight at this age! Okay, maybe they told me and I wasn’t listening. Anyway.
So here I am, battling a middle aged body and a lifetime of bad eating habits, trying to exercise regularly and make healthier choices (like not eating a whole can of chocolate frosting with a spoon just because “Psych” went off the air. Seriously, WHAT is Dule Hill going to do next? Does anyone know?) I’m experimenting with different ways of eating and making a little progress, day by day. I’ve lost fifteen pounds in the last year, with a few setbacks along the way. I’m accepting that this is going to be a process for me and I just have to love myself through it. More love for me, less love for the chili cheese fries.
In the meantime, summer comes. It just keeps showing up, whether I’m ready or not. Despite the fact that I tried to slow time starting in about April, trying to warp the space-time continuum in such a way that I could lose forty pounds in two months, summer came anyway. Meanwhile, I lost four pounds instead of forty, and a one-night-stand with some fried chicken tenders put two of those back on. Again, sigh.
So I put on my bathing suit and go out to the beach and the pools anyway. For one thing, I tried swimming in a suit of armor and it didn’t work out well. For another, I made a big life decision a few years ago: I promised myself I would never not do something just because of how I feel about my body. Life is just too short to sit on the sidelines muttering about cellulite. Fuck cellulite. I’m going down the waterslide with my kids because I love them more than I hate my thighs.
Still, when you’re a bigger person, a woman especially, it’s hard not to notice the occasional sarcastic leer or suppressed giggle when you walk past a bunch of skinny people at a bathing suit venue. You try to hold your head high and walk on. You tell yourself that they aren’t laughing at you, that there must be some really hilarious dolphin doing a Groucho Marx bit right behind you. You tell yourself that even if they are laughing at you, it doesn’t matter because sticks and stones and all that garbage. I’m beautiful and skinny on the inside…. blah, blah, blah.
And it still hurts.
When we got home from the beach, I went online to check the reviews for Tammy, Melissa McCarthy’s latest movie, directed by her husband Ben Falcone. I’ve got a bit of a girl crush on Melissa McCarthy right now because I think she is one of the funniest people on the planet. She made me cringe and laugh along with the rest of the world in Bridesmaids, and I finally got around to watching her in The Heat with Sandra Bullock, which made me laugh so hard in a couple of places I almost peed. Also, there’s this hilarious video (thanks, Chris Negron for sharing it with me). I mean, the woman drives a golf cart through basketball practice. How could that not be funny?
After watching and reading a few interviews with McCarthy, and knowing my affectionate bias for creative couples who work together, I was looking forward to finding out how her latest movie was faring. The answer is not well, I’m afraid. The review I found the most informative was this one, which basically says that intensely, embarrassingly funny is funnier when it’s put into context with other strong, less funny roles. Sounds like McCarthy and Falcone missed on this one (not that this will keep me from watching Tammy, but I’ll probably wait to watch it in a way that doesn’t require hiring a babysitter and eating $10 extra-buttered popcorn with Reese’s pieces, um, gourmet carrot sticks).
The thing that disappointed me more than the low ratings for the movie, however, were some of the nasty and hateful comments below the review, many of which focused on McCarthy’s weight rather than her acting ability or the movie itself. People referred to her as a “behemoth” an “elephant,” and one person attributed the lack of success in this film to the “problem with overweight comics,” namely that the only joke they have is that of their weight. At least in McCarthy’s case, I just don’t think that’s true.
It would be ridiculous for Melissa McCarthy to ignore her weight when trying to portray an embarrassingly funny character – in the same way it would be stupid for Chris Rock to act like a white person, Will Ferrell to ignore his immense height or for Chris Katan to pretend he’s not built like a spider monkey (yeah, that’s right, I mentioned Chris Katan — how ya doin’ 1998?). The best actors of all genres use everything at their disposal to make a role perfect, and for comedic actors this means setting aside normal human self-consciousness about themselves — their race, gender, language, religious background, accent, and even their bodies — to get the laugh, often at their own expense. I think that’s incredibly brave no matter who you are.
It’s sad that the anonymity of the internet allows people to write hurtful, attacking things they would never have the courage to say to someone’s face and be rewarded with attention and fake relevance. It’s sad that while nearly 100% of us have access to the media required to “review” and “critique” the work and behavior of others, the percentage of people who can separate objective criticism from personal attacks is far, far smaller than that.
It’s sad that women, who carry, bear and feed children and are more often than not responsible for a family’s food purchases and meal preparations, are fair game for attacks and insults when it comes to weight. It’s sad that women who are less than supermodel perfect are denounced for their appearance the minute they have the nerve to show their faces in certain industries, as though being overweight makes you less funny, less talented or less capable than a skinny woman or… well, let’s be honest, any man. (Somehow I doubt that Marlon Brando or Alfred Hitchcock got panned by audiences for being rotund — they were able to use their weight to their advantage, as part of their persona.)
The saddest thing of all is that whether we want to or not, we read the comments. We hear the sniggering. We see the disapproving glances. And despite our best efforts, those things become a part of our internal conversation with ourselves. Tiny things that stay with us, like grains sand in the carpet of the minivan weeks after the trip is over. They become a part of who we are, and make us a little less sure of ourselves each time they come up.
We’d like to think we are impervious, that we should be impervious, but we’re not. We’re human. That’s kind of the whole point.
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I’m M.J. (Manda) Pullen, an author and mom in the Atlanta, Georgia area. I blog about writing, publishing, motherhood, health, psychology and whatever else strikes me in the moment. I’m working on a beach-friendly suit of armor as we speak.
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My current roster of books includes The Marriage Pact series, a trilogy of Contemporary Romance/Women’s Fiction novels. You can find them for all eBook formats and in paperback here.
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MJ Pullen
Her career is still way better than her Playboy Playmate cousin, Jenny’s. Maybe because her humor comes from a place of knowledge. Even if it is crapping in the sink. Great blog post, you’re gorgeous, don’t think otherwise.
Thanks, C. I didn’t realize they were cousins. It makes sense, though!
You have such an amazing talent. You articulate your thoughts so well. No matter the topic, I am almost always immediately relating to what you are saying.
Funny, when I see you I see a beautiful, funny, accepting, outgoing, intimidatingly smart woman who truly inspires and amazes me with your talent and accomplishments – not the woman portrayed above. The woman you described is who I see when I look at myself. I see the too many French fries, one too many glasses of wine thighs and the post baby sagging belly pudge. Sad thing is, even when I was 18, size 5 and stretch mark free I still felt the same way.
You are too sweet, Kenya, thank you. I wonder if we all see ourselves this way sometimes. We need to spend more time and energy focusing on what is beautiful about us than all the little things we would change…