Wednesday,
March 20, 2002

Hand me the Clue Bat -- no, the one with the iron studs

*sigh*

Have you ever been out with someone, doing shit and picking up birthday gifts for your nephew, and you stop off for dinner? You sit down, order iced tea and some lovely Mediterranean food, and continue to gab as you've been doing all evening. Somehow the subject of dating, ex-SOs and perceived levels of attractiveness comes up, and someone who's sitting across from you comments, "I mean, you know what this is like -- if you'd been at my college (a technical place with a highly male-skewed gender ratio, for the readers at home), you would have been considered a hottie -- men would have been all over you in droves. Whereas in Dallas. . ."

And someone pauses, obviously wondering how to phrase this so as not to offend. Unfortunately for him, it's way too late.

"I'm not?" you fill in helpfully.

"Well, yeah."

Gah. I should have beat him over the head with a loaf of Greek bread right then and there. Yes, I know he wasn't being deliberately insulting, but this isn't something you say to a woman. Not even if you're the best of buddies -- you simply don't make negative comments on her appearance, not if you want to retain a working set of testicles.

And I don't know what is pissing me off more -- the implication that only sex-starved, desperate men would find me attractive, or the assumption that I would agree with this implication. I dealt with that shit for years from the parental units, until I finally realized they were idiots -- now I'm catching it on my doorstep yet again? Does anyone here remember my trip to San Francisco, where a complete stranger (and a fucking drop-dead gorgeous one at that) came up to me and told me I was absolutely lovely?

So I don't fit into generally accepted standards of beauty. So fucking what? Yeah, I'm fat. I'm also pretty, bubbly, sexy, warm, and guys on the whole do tend to like me. Unless they're fixated on a certain body type, of course, in which case that ain't my problem, holmes.

I also wish I'd stop having these delayed reactions about shit like this, because now I can't SAY anything to someone without looking insane. Although after listening to me rant for an hour after I got home, Lyndon mused, "I've got to meet his wife someday. It must have been hard these last few years, what with Mother Teresa not writing her fan letters anymore."

And then he offered to "break 'im" into little pieces for causing me offense. It's good to have a husband from the Midlands.