I woke up officially too fat for all my clothes – and I’m loving it!

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This post is about as PC as sending back an adopt Namibian baby after the novelty of carrying the little tike round on your hip has worn off. You’ve been warned! I woke up fat today, with a couple tike’s worth of pudge cantilevered out over my own hipbones. Not one single waistband would button or zip. A winter’s worth of last-hurray-before-milestone-birthday denial fueled debauchery, combined with a classic feminine retention, conspired to maximize the bloat factor – and on a Friday no less!

But I have a secret, I kinda like it. Actually, I feel like I’m breaking all the rules because I’m loving my new pounds in a sneaky, indulgent sort of way. I’m deep into a one night stand with a new partner, a strange woman with hedonistic appetites and soft, yielding flesh. I can’t help but wonder… Is this what it’s like to be a man? The lure of a novel body is intoxicating. How do men survive surrounded by so much flesh? Do they feel the same intense, driving curiosity to explore, and by exploring, possess? These curves are fresh and foreign, and I’m drawn into the passionate exoticism of knowing another body for the first time. The temporal (oh please dear gawd let it be temporal!) nature of my current weight allows a sense of detachment; my internal body image has not had time (or my permission!) to adjust. I am free to explore, to indulge – but what to wear?!

The temptation to dress for concealment, rather than display, is strong – and entirely culturally driven. But the logic is all backwards… What joy can there be in hiding? Hiding implies shame, and I feel no shame for maxing out my humanity in preparation for said epic B-Day (maybe a wee smidgen of guilt, but let’s not go there). Blank Canvas Living is, in essence, about honouring our humanity, and what could be more human than breakin’ out the cleavage.

My back-of-the-drawer-fat-day clothes don’t celebrate shit. Neither do yours. Let’s not kid ourselves. We all have go-to uniforms for when we wander too far from our own, uniquely personal, weight baselines. Instead of camouflage, I started searching my closet for something, anything, that would highlight my new curves. After various exercises in claustrophobia, I finally settled on an outfit: an extremely forgiving stretch gray A-line skirt; a serious push-up bra; and a fuchsia faux-pashmina, draped over my shoulders and cinched at the waist with a wide, embroidered belt.

So far the outfit has prompted at least one “is that Scottish…?” coworker complement. But more importantly, I think I look how I feel – powerful – like a medieval knight strapping on my house’s colours (heralding… pink?) before charging into battle. And as an added Friday bonus, I get to enjoy the delightfully fleshy treat that Tia Carerre (see left) was such a dear to sign last time I found myself in a similarly salacious situation.

Note: Ever notice how the holes on your belt form a statistical weight bell curve? The indents on my belt (shown above) reduces my waistline to a mathematical function through time. But any further ‘reducing’ requires a less numerical form of ‘crunching’ … sigh.

In fierce anticipation of meat

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Office lunch scheduled for today… at a steakhouse I can’t possibly afford. Except once this past summer, by myself, in full surrender to the experience – each bite a betrayal of my budget. The madness of it pushing the moment as far as my senses could stretch it – a complete indulgence. While others around me were simply, unceremoniously, having dinner.

Meat. There’s something dangerously primal about an animal giving its life, not just for my sustenance, but for my pleasure. I know the resource costs, the methane, the suspicious hormone side-effects, but I don’t care. Nothing about humanity is efficient, no matter what we’d like to believe. There is no underlying nobility. I confess, albeit blushingly, that it gives me a wicked thrill to think that somewhere out there a creature is plodding out its existence solely in service of my most selfish, base desires. An entire life lived for that first blissful bite…

And for the occasion, I’m in full carnivore uniform: knee high Harley Davidson boots, primal cleavage, and you can be darn sure I skipped breakfast… (which I’m sure you can already tell!) Update to follow…

Update: Fully sated, I now feel the prerequisite amount of guilt. I have sacrificed a living being to satisfy a primordial need for fleshy, sacrificial consumption. But darn it, the steak, a New York Strip, was – not to blaspheme – divine. I hang my head as one driven by the baser laws, and I wish I also felt the prerequisite amount of shame. But alas, if I am a fool, I am one of the grand old fools, and I live in the torment of my weakness. I am human. I hunger. And I eat.

Michelle Harper and the illusion of universal individual style

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Michelle Violy Harper is a delight. Her quirky, oftentimes whimsical personal style is a celebration of…. yada yada – the articles have been written, Vogue, Style.com, etc. The tributes are effusive and entirely deserved. She’s spectacular (period).

We are inspired, millions of us, but to do what? Theoretically, we’re supposed to dig into our own psyches, moods, and fave cultural/fashion references to root out an individual style that best expresses who we are and/or how we wish to be perceived. Pretty straight forward, right?

Individual style is an illusion. For every time, for every trend, there are those who lead through exaggeration: Grace Kelly’s 1950s elegance, Kurt Cobain’s layered grunge jeans, Louis XIV’s Sun King ornamentation. Costuming these characters differently is unthinkable because their style is so closely linked to their psychologies. Their brains demand an outward expression of their eccentricities – they have no choice. To dress differently would be a betrayal of self, cause chaffing personal conflict, and render them invisible within their time.

Culture is pulled ahead by powerful personalities and powerful innovations. Fashion’s game changers are innately sensitive to the evolving culture around them and engage in a (often unconscious) back and forth influencing that, when successful, aligns them perfectly with the moment, even as they effectively pull it forward – making them inspirational touchstones to the public. Such sensitivity, combined with an exaggerated, ambitious personality, is a rare and sometimes dangerous mix (eg: Cobain, Leigh Bowery). The personal costs are high; it’s not often worth being envious beyond the clothes.

A brief stint working at Michaels Arts & Craft Superstore made something very clear: there are those who innovate, those who adapt ideas, and those who simply emulate. At Michaels, the innovators bought loose beads, those who needed inspiration bought kits, and the emulators preferred kits with full patterns/instructions. The same follows for fashion, and there is nothing wrong with it! This is the world! But this trend (and yes, it IS a trend) for universal personal, individual style is a philosophical fallacy.

Michelle Harper, born with a driving need to explore and experiment with her physicality, should be held aloft as inspiration. Because she, out of dozens of street style stars, is one of the very few able to transcend the trends hidden in plain view within the individuality movement (as patterned over time on sites like TheSartorialist.com – eg: fedoras, cameos). She is our latest, brightest touchstone – leather paillettes for all! ~wink

When doing the dishes becomes a not-so-natural disaster

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There are moments when everything changes, and in an instant, your world – or at least your kitchen – becomes a very complicated place. Last night, at exactly 9:43pm, something happened that made everything up to that moment seem so manageable, so innocent. It was something I’ve seen coming for years, “only a matter of time,” as ‘they’ say.

Doing the dishes after watching a documentary on the awesome perils of constructing the Panama Canal, my mind was full of hydro engineering, spillways, and human suffering – all of which would soon cross a continent and a century to turn my kitchen into a perfect diorama of disaster. Clearing the drying tray, I leaned over the counter to toss a Tupperware lid up to the top cupboard shelf, but it didn’t quite make the right sound. It was too loud, as if instantly echoed. Then I felt it, a cold, clammy liquid seeping through my long johns and woolen socks. I knew right away what had happened. I looked down, and time stopped.

Sure enough, my shirt had caught the edge of the George Foreman Grill (brim full!) drippings tray and yanked it off the counter. Brown and sludgy, the watery fat had exploded… everywhere. I thought of Panama, of the flooding and yellow fever, and I thought of the men and women who had battled far deeper demons than the greasy mess I was facing. But I couldn’t blame the mosquitoes, or the weather, or even the French, it was my own fault for leaving the stupid thing so close to the edge.

After a very brief (but entirely necessary) mourning period, I stripped down, tossed my socks in the sink and got to scrubbing. There I was, nearly naked, on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor, scouring the linoleum. In a moment my evening had changed from routine to grim nightmare, but compared to Panama, I suppose I really don’t have shit to complain about.