I Have a Dream

So I went to see Click with my best friend and some other friends last night, and then out to dinner at Chili's. Included in the group was a guy whom I haven't seen in a year or so. All went well, we all had a good time and whatnot.

Then, climbing into the car to go home, my best friend says to me -- "You'll never guess what [N.] said about you when you got up to go to the bathroom. You'd have kicked his ass. I almost kicked it for you."

Knowing [N.] to be pretty much an intolerable jerkwad with no respect for women whatsoever, I asked, "What?", fully expecting it to be some off-color double entendre about my having asked the cute waiter for extra whipped cream, or perhaps a snide remark about how I then proceeded to eat my tortilla chips with whipped cream. But instead, they were those five unforgivable words which every woman from puberty till natural death dreads hearing: "God, she's put on weight."

I blinked in astonishment. It was just so utterly ludicrous. I mean, I suppose it's true, in a technical sense. Three pounds. I just got on the scale, and I do, in point of fact, weigh a lousy three pounds more than I ordinarily do. Pardon my French, but WTF? This is the same guy who rails about how unattractive Hollywood waifs are and drools over curvy cuties like Jessica Alba and Scarlett Johannson -- and he has the unbelievable gall to call me overweight as I sit there in my size-six jeans. Talk about your double standards.

It's been fourteen hours now, and I'm still seething with anger. I'm desperately trying to get my health back on track, and prats like that are really not helping me. And so, I've had it. I'm through worrying about turds like that. I'm a pretty girl, and if [N.] and his ilk are too brainless and/or retarded to recognize that -- whether I'm three pounds up the scale or three pounds down -- that's their loss. I don't need some guy ogling me to validate myself, and I certainly don't need to have a protruding ribcage to be beautiful. I'm not built to be tiny -- I come from good, robust English-colonist and German-peasant stock. I'll never be a waif, and guys can deal with it. I'm not going to put my body through hell and back again anymore for the sake of attention from jackasses who I'm better off without.

I have a dream that someday my little girls will live in a world where they will not be judged by the size of their waistline but by the content of their character...