There was a time when I looked better naked than I did clothed. I was short-waisted, small breasted, with generous hips and thick thighs. My top and my bottom were different sizes and it was hard to find clothes that fit well and didn’t gap at the waist. That is until spandex came along. Spandex is a friend to all those with curves. Spandex got me through the 80s and most of the 90s.
My top and my bottom have evened out, now they’re both extra large and it’s easier to find clothes, just not clothes I want to wear. Or more accurately, I don’t have a body I want to put clothes on. I have a body that looks better draped than it does clothed, better clothed than it does naked.
I know this is the time when everybody is talking about not body shaming, how you’re supposed to learn to love the body you’ve got and on and on. But this body is new to me. When I was in my twenties, my thirties, and even my forties, I thought I was fat.
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That is what’s known as body dysmorphia. I didn’t know I had that, just like I didn’t know I had an eating disorder. The fact that an average meal consisted two Stoned Wheat Thin crackers, one slice of Kraft Processed American Cheese perfectly cut to fit on the crackers with no cheese left over and no bit of cracker showing, and one glass of diet iced-tea, wasn’t a disorder. That was discipline.
Now, I know I’m fat. And an average dinner consists of a large bowl of popcorn with garlic salt and a 22 oz. container of Kozy Shack rice pudding. I’ve ditched spandex for caftans and tunics and empire waists. And I refuse to buy pants a size larger than the size 16 I’ve grown into, despite the fact that they’re tight, sometimes painfully so. That’s not loving the body I’m in. That’s hating it.
It’s hard to breathe sometimes. Or bend down to tie my shoes. My knees are shot. And while thought nothing of running through the streets naked for art at one time, now? 
Now I’ve signed up for the gym twice, cancelled once, and still haven’t shown up because I don’t want anyone to see me in my underwear in the dressing room.
I spent ten years wearing pretty much nothing but a g-string and some glitter and now I won’t change my clothes in a public dressing room.
I’m not very good at doing things for myself. Online classes for no credit? Never finish them. Regular cleaning schedule? Lasts for a day, maybe two. Even keeping my regular writing time, without someone to be accountable to, I let things drop. So I have a writing partner I check in with every morning. And I pay money for classes that take place in actual brick and mortar buildings. The cleaning schedule I’ll never manage, and I’ve come to love that part of myself. The messy part. But the wiggly, jiggly, double D, buddha belly parts? Not so much.
