Gimme Gimme Gimme

Earlier this week I attended some fashion press days, which are like attending one excruciatingly boring cocktail party after another without even the promise of a cute boy (or a friend you haven’t seen in a while) eventually turning up. You check out the samples of the brand’s new line (in this case, spring/summer ’09), and make polite conversation about its inspiration, detailing, or anything else you can think of that conveys how totally omigod totally fabulous (did you hear me? Fabulous!) you think it is. talk vaguely about how you really must meet said PR for lunch one of these days. Oh yes, definitely. (How about the fourth of Never, about 6 pm?)

And then, if you’re lucky, you get a goodie bag for your efforts. (More often than not, the goodie bag is nothing to write home about – I’ve deliberately left mine on the Tube before – but sometimes it’s nice, like the summer cashmere tank top I once got from Pringle. Never mind that the moths got to it before I did…)

Even down nearly 80 pounds, I still feel hugely uncomfortable around PRs and fashion journalists. I feel like a fraud. I feel like they’re looking at me and thinking: What is this fat girl doing writing about fashion? (Much like making a fat joke before anyone else can make one first, I feel the need to insert at the earliest possible opportunity that I write about fashion, but it’s not prescriptive…) I also feel like the PRs are thinking: There is no way she will fit into any of this.

So imagine my delight when a PR sized me up and checked tags on the goodie bags. When I got outside (it’s poor form to check out your loot until you’re safely out of view) I checked the tag myself: size small!

My mind being what it is, I promptly managed to dismiss this as: Oh, the sizes were probably small, XS, XXS, and XXXS. (I know, I know…)

But then at the next shop I got the PR full-body size-up and the checking for the proper bag. And when I got outside, I checked the tag: size small.

* * *

Today at lunch I found myself unreasonably excited by the Godzilla-sized potatoes. For background, I should explain that there are days where I have specifically chosen not to have my baked potato/cottage cheese/apple (a staple lunch for me – though sometimes I add a hardboiled egg or two) because the potatoes were just too tiny, and I cannot be bothered to figure out what would be an appropriate addition to round out the meal.

Actually, I shouldn’t say I can’t be bothered. I should say I am still too scared. I don’t do well with too much choice, and to walk around the cafeteria weighing and measuring and calculating in my mind – well, it usually ends up nowhere good. (I’m slowly branching out, but the key word is slowly. I like foods I feel safe eating, and I do enough restaurant eating where I have to weigh and measure and figure that I figure I’m justified in having some “safe” meals when I can.)

But anyway – the potatoes today. Huge. I’m talking the Potato That Ate Manhattan. So big I’m sure they would elicit a comment if someone else saw me eating one – and so big I’d quite possibly be embarrassed to be caught eating one. Definitely the sort that nearly 80 pounds ago, I would have eaten awfully quickly lest I be caught.

I took a huge potato (it was in the front – I didn’t even have to hunt for it) and thought about how ridiculously, unreasonably happy I was about its size – about the thought of a lot of food and, quite possibly, the thought of feeling very, very full. And how happy I was about what seemed like a legitimate cheat – hey, my lunch is supposed to be a potato, but nobody specified the size.

And then I thought: Who am I cheating? (Yes, really.) And I thought about the chain of thoughts a hugely oversize potato would set off in my head.

When I got back to my office, I cut off a small chunk of the damned potato and threw it in the bin.