March 23, 2005

Think it’s that time o’ the month again. I can tell because I am cranky and clumsy—never a good combination. I spent a good bit of time today trying to figure out how to hang my wet laundry up in my room. Now that the weather has gotten warmer the radiator is not on, so I can’t leave my wet clothes over it to dry. I now have several pairs of underwear that really need to dry quickly. I tried hanging them on my curtain rods. As well as making rather odd-looking curtains, they were too heavy so the curtain rods kept falling down. This of course frustrated me—in addition to making me uncomfortably aware of the size of my ass.

On the topic of being made to feel uncomfortable, I had a rather odd experience before I left for Italy. It was a very nice day outside so I put on a skirt and top, wrapped a scarf around me, and set out to Sophie’s place. On the way, I received several odd stares from everyone. By the second block, I was feeling horribly self-conscious—like maybe there was something really wrong with me… you know, like I had another asshole in the middle of my forehead (seriously, that is what the looks were all like). I was practically in tears when I reached Sophie’s place (okay, I wasn’t actually … but if I had been premenstrual, I would have been). I asked Sophie if there was anything wrong with the way I looked and she said no. I then explained to her what had happened to me. She said (and I swear, I am not making this up) that it was probably because I was wearing Spring clothes and it wasn’t Spring yet. I was like, Yeah, but it’s warm outside. She said that it didn’t matter; until it is Spring, it is not normal to wear Spring clothes.

While I was in the Chambery Train station I bought a French Cosmo (magazine). While the equivalent American magazine would have weight loss solutions, it would also emphasize the importance of being happy with your shape. Not so with the French one. Every other article was about weight loss, and one even suggested that all women should be under 46 kg. For those of you not living in metric, that is about 101 pound (or about 7.2 stone). How f-ing insane is that? No wonder none of their clothes fit me. Actually, I had anticipated that I would have some problems with my self-esteem in France. I have found otherwise. I think that is because the body image here is so extreamly out of my possible range that I don’t even feel like I should bother. Thus, I just ignore it and concentrate on taking good care of my American clothes. Really, most of the women here look like little girls—no tits and no hips. Sure I could look like that. If I were seven.