Friday, October 26, 2007

So much for not rambling...oops

I like knowing the person behind a blog because it gives a "face", as it were, to the voice of the blogger -- not a visual image so much as a mental image of who that person is, and why they're writing. My blogger profile kind of falls down in that regard, so I thought I'd expand more in this entry.

Of course, being asked to describe myself always makes my mind go blank from information overload. What should I include? What should I leave out? Sometimes it's hard to discern what is applicable and what would be entirely irrelevant. For instance, my antipathy toward organized religion is a very large part of my identity right now, but is a bit heavy for light conversation. It's like replying toward a "How are you?" with a "Terrified by the idea of a chaotic universe but unable to reconcile the evils of the physical world with the idea of an omnipotent God." It's just ... peculiar. Which I have no trouble admitting I am, but it bothers other, more normal people when I wield the weird too freely.

Sorry about the derailment there. . . Right. Who am I. Well, I'm a college student. I've had one year at an unaccredited, Baptist church-affiliated, private college (one of the worst ideas I let my parents talk me into doing), one year at a community college, and one year at a state college. I'm sort of a failed former Psychology major. Right now, I'm going to a culinary school for Baking & Pastry -- one affiliated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, which means it's very, very expensive, but I am very, very excited. That utter joy and certainty of knowing exactly what one wants to do and how one is going to go about doing it is an incredible feeling to have, and it took me years to find it, so it's something I most definitely treasure.

Do I worry about fulfilling all those stereotypes of the fat pastry chef getting fatter on her own wares? Well, yeah, a little, but Bronwen Weber is my hero and that's certainly not how I think of her, nor is that how I think of Marina Sousa, so I'm pretty sure that worry exists only in my own mind. (And maybe in the minds of people whose opinions I shouldn't care about anyway.) I think of them primarily as freaking awesome cake decorators whose feet I am not worthy to cover in fondant, and also as fabulously gorgeous women in their own right. Sigh ... sorry, fangirling, I'll stop now.

I'm also half-Asian, half-white. Anyone watch Gilmore Girls? Remember Mrs. Kim, Lane's mom? Entirely, completely, hilariously dead accurate portrayal of a Korean mother. Of MY mother. Add in the fact that I am half a foot taller and over a hundred pounds heavier than my mother, who considers herself inexcusably fat (for the record, she's stunningly petite and incredibly in shape for a 50+ woman. I wish I would look that good in 30 years!) and I'm still wondering how I never ended up with an eating disorder. Seriously.
She has been ragging me about my weight for ... my entire life, that I can remember. I remember her utter dismay when I had my 7th grade physical -- I was 5' 6" and 135 pounds, and she was humiliated for me. I don't have many memories of my childhood or teen years, but that one is etched into my memory.

I've been the "fat" girl my entire life. I was one of the tallest of my classmates throughout elementary school and junior high. I'm also the only fat person in my immediate family. It goes without saying I never felt attractive, until a few years ago. (Ironically, at my highest weight yet.)

I've always hated diet talk, or the whole "omigosh, my thighs are HUGE, I must eat nothing but carrot sticks all week, I'm so gross" because most of the time, out of all the girls there, I am the fattest. (Growing up in an infinitesimally small private high school where girls are valued for their beauty and submissiveness in accordance with that damned lady from Proverbs 31 really warped my perception of myself and of reality for a long time.) I never liked it, I never took part in it.
There aren't words to express the astonishment I felt at the discovery of the fat acceptance movement. And part of the joy was discovering other people who had lived the same kind of life as me, as a fat person in a world that regards you as lesser/lazy/ugly/stupid for it, and they weren't obsessed with diets, and how ugly they were, and how, by default, ugly I must seem. They were fat, and they were feminists, and they were happy.

I've already gone on for way too long, and so I think I'll continue later with my impression of the fat acceptance movement and how fucking awesome it really is.

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