I used to be cute...

I used to be cute as everyone was when they were young and feisty and running “the streets” as my mom would say we did. I am certain I ate and slept back than I just have no memory of sitting down and eating or properly going to sleep in my bed. I must confess I was a gypsy in my late teens and spent a majority of my nights at my friend Michelle’s home until I finally moved out at 15. Today in my middle years I feel decidedly un-cute for natural normal reasons and although it would be lovely to fit in to the same size jeans I wore back than (size 4) it ain’t happening today and I know the work it would take or the terminal illness I would have to be suffering from to get that small. Ugh…I do know playing tennis is my excuse for favoring too short skirts and I play tennis to get away with it seriously. I am so sad to think my body will be forever changed from now till I die. On the other hand as I was studying a photo of the very un-cute Gertrude Stein looking at her made me feel quite glorious. She who was brilliant and gay and rich and cranky and supremely un-cute…maybe not even “handsome” yet she is interesting still but she was frumpy and challenged in the look department, oh but, she was a genius. I am not a genius and I have my definitely frumpy days where I look like my version of Gertrude. This is so shallow to say but… I miss that simple carefree cute because I am young and thin because my metabolism is just so. Okay I cannot complain I have hair like a wild animal that just sticks up and makes a statement, I am different looking because I am an ethnic hodgepodge and that is never dull. I may be chunkier than say someone like Cate Blanchet and not nearly as actor-y or as popular and I have that haunted eerie inkling that if I were whippet thin I would work more, yes people, corporations would hire me for something lucrative. I think this to be true but as I sit with my chunk and my wrinkles which will never see a needle filled with Botox or a scalpel either and maybe soon I will stop shading my hair in my fight against that tired looking grey (maybe) I can’t help but feel happy. Be damned you lucrative contracts that I have missed because I am fat! I welcome aging not as a badge of accomplishment but as a foe that is winning the fight and is much stronger than me. I mean time keeps marching on…and when my sweet supporters say lovely things like you never age I know they are lying in that good white lie kind of way. My chunk, my middle aged spread is exactly my age. Oh it may be firm since I run around like a kid but it is still “there” and even my fat phobic father once compared me to Kirstie Alley because fat is so forbidden in his household and my glorious chubba wubba offended him. I may not be as fat as a Kirstie Alley who I admire by the way and think she is so “out there” and I love her and think her fantastically talented as an actor and doing fabulously well on “Dancing with the stars”. Which by the way I could not do for a million bucks, so leave us alone! I say…let us be and okay it would be nice to get booked for some endorsement or say a lovely role on a major network with a fascinating character to portray every week, I admit it would. Still I suppose I will just have to see if my “kind” ever comes into vogue and if not I suspect life will continue as it does in its sweet, imperfectly perfect way. So yes I will just jiggle my way into the sunset, filled with appreciation for all that I have and love, thank you!