the perfect fit

Magic Numbers

The colour of my eyes is dependent on how much I weigh today. They are either the silver grey of a morning mist across a Canadian lake as the sun rises and catches the cold gleaming water. Or they are the colour of dishwater, greasy and thick with grime, dirty with all of the family's Sunday roasting pans, and forks and knives, and casserole dishes and baking trays - murky and grimy and ugly.

Depending on what I weigh, my hair might be the browns and caramels of a thick chocolate bar that melts and shines and drips promise by the fire. Or the flat brown of a library carpet, laid in 1972, and trampled on by cheap shoes and schoolchildren every day since - tired and thin and lifeless...

Depending on how much I weigh today, my breasts may be round and full, reminiscent of a Russ Meyer vixen, ready to be grasped, voluminous and juicy. Or they are veiny and sagging, the skin at the top indented and ravaged by stretched tears, sitting lazily on my ribcage, flattened, blotchy, and dry.

I will love or hate myself, depending on how much I weigh today.

the first chapter in The Perfect Fit, a book by British novelist Louise Kean. i'm only on page 78, but so far, it's a very insightful look (ohmigod, that's me!) into the conflicted life of a former fat girl. what to do when you've lost the weight, you still have oodles of problems and you don't have the weight to blame or diet to keep you distracted anymore?

exactly.