Memoirs of a Fat Girl

Question:

Is it possible to be totally happy with yourself, if your significant other is totally happy with you?

During a couch potato phase a few years ago, which clashed with my limited cable only getting nine channels, I got addicted to reruns of Just Shoot Me. I couldn’t recall every character’s name if you paid me, never mind the running plots of the show, but one episode stuck.

Maya, played by Laura San Giacomo, is one of the main characters. She’s a very good looking and well-built woman (translation: hot body), and in this particular episode, she’s dating a smart, attractive man. They talk, they have fun and great times in general, but there’s one problem: he’s always shoving food at her.

After gaining a few pounds in record time, Maya gets the nagging suspicion that this new boyfriend is trying to fatten her up. Of course she dismisses this idea as ridiculous, until they run into one of his ex-girlfriends at a restaurant. Go figure, Ms. Ex is obese.

Maya corners her man and gets him to admit that yes, he’s got a thing for really large women. He likes Maya a heck of a lot, thing is, he’s attracted way more to her mind than her body. What he wants her to do is start racking on the pounds.

Maya is disgusted by this, until he says something on the lines of, “Think about it. You’re 100, 150 pounds away from being super hot. You could eat anything you want, never go to the gym again, and I’ll adore you.”

For a moment, this makes her stop and think. But in the end her answer is no, and fetish boy is cut loose.

This is a bit of an oxymoron in that dude is trying to change Maya, but the question still applies since the change isn’t one you anticipate. How often do our significant others want us to gain weight instead of lose it?

If you were overweight and unhappy with yourself (as Maya would undoubtedly have been), yet your better half was just crazy about you, would you still lose the weight? If you did have a hot body but were always under pressure to keep it, then along comes Mr. Most Understanding Man on Earth and he just happens to love his women rounded out, would you throw caution to the wind? Would you be happier, fatter, because he is?

After all, a huge part of the reason women do the things they do, is to attract fairer members of the opposite sex. Coco Chanel reinvented the hemline, but it’s mostly men that lust after the shapely legs defining it. To have the attention of your beloved, emotionally and physically, is a big thing.

Then again, we still have ourselves to look at in the mirror. Is his happiness enough? Will it convince you that you were all right all along, or would there still be that pull to do better? Would you still do it for yourself?