MOOP!

Let's start this essay with a disclaimer: I am not fat. I am nothing resembling fat. As a matter of fact, I am hella attractive, and about eighty percent of the time I remember this fact.

So, this brings me back to my original point: I am damn sexy. But I still need to lose some weight.

I'm a big fan of being comfortable in your own skin, and accepting that most people are really quite lovely, especially when they smile¹. I like superskinny women, and I like women with heaps of big squishy lovely curves, and I like women who fall somewhere in between. That's because they're pretty much all quite lovely to look at, and yes, the same basic filters apply to men. Most importantly, I like people who can realize² they're attractive.

I really don't like that people (largely women, but I've met men who fall into this category too) feel they *need* to mad diet in order to be attractive. I've met folks who seriously stress out about gaining weight --they might break 110! I don't like it when folks can't be comfortable with themselves unless they make their body meet someone else's standards first.

But while I hold these views, and appreciate when other people share these views, I don't much enjoy it when people get rabid at all mentions of diet or exercise, regardless of why the person is doing such things in the first place. Because there are more reasons to get yourself into better shape than to fit society's views of beauty.

Most recently, this has been happening to me with Alys. See disclaimer, but I've gained weight since coming to Maryland for the summer --about seven pounds. Nothin'⁴ in the grand scheme of things, but the weight has translated largely to squooshyness about my middle.

((My middle already tends to be squooshy, as, while I'm reasonably active what with the walking everywhere and the dancing a lot, nothing I do really works my abs. I'm coming to peace with this.))

So I make the (what I find just) comment of "I should make myself less squooshy". This causes Alys to get all upset at me and emphatically tell me I'm beautiful and not fat and all that jazz. Which, on the one hand is nice and true and stuff. But honestly?

In Maryland, I have more access to food, and less access to both walking and dancing. Consequently, I eat more, and exercise less, and oh shock, that makes me squooshy! I prefer to have a slightly better sculpted body than that, so I want to fix it.

I don't want to diet until my tummy is flat, that's a lost cause and probably really not fun. Honestly, I could probably ignore this whole thing and just wait until I've got places worth walking to and dancing every single week and it'll solve itself. But I believe that I've got the right to say I want to return to how I was four months ago, without igniting a lecture about how I'm perfectly beautiful already.

Because, well, I'm damn sexy. But I'd still like to lose some weight, or at least gain some muscle.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I am a *complete* sucker for smiles, or at least real ones. They are just so utterly perfect and beautiful and lovely and *right*. It's part of why I try to smile at strangers a lot, because then they smile back.

2: Because, let's be honest here, people³ who are constantly whining about how they are not pretty when they very clearly are are lamesauce. Also, *annoying*. And make me want to answer "yes" to "does this make me look fat" just out of spite.

3: I mean people who aren't me. I am always awesome. By which I mean, please feel free to slap me around if I start whining about not being pretty.

4: Being a dork, I went and figured out how much it really *is* in the grand scheme of things. Seven pounds is 5.6% of my body weight.