Thursday, July 31, 2008

Strange Mirrors

On another blog, we're having a conversation about why the hell women who are perfectly attractive, intelligent, wonderful people cut themselves down constantly over all their slight imperfections -- however real or not real they might be.

Here is a great example of my insanity from just 20 minutes ago.
My mom, the kids and I had lunch at our local Denny's. Lenny's? Denny's.
I got a Bacon Cheddar Burger because I wanted meat, bacon and cheese. In reverse order.
I ate the whole burger, all my french fries and some of the kids' fries. And maybe ONE of Dylan's chicken nuggets (estimated because he kept making me eat tiny bites of each one of his nuggets).

Immediately after leaving the restaurant I started thinking, "I should have eaten a salad instead of fries. Or maybe a salad instead of everything I just ate. Yeah. Should have eaten a salad."
I was reprimanding myself even though just a half hour before we ate I was SO hungry and my blood sugar was so low that my hands were shaking. I even ate breakfast today, so I have NO clue why that happened...but anyway, suffice it to say that a salad would NOT have cut it for lunch today. AND I had a salad for lunch YESTERDAY!

ANYWAY...
So I'm already disparaging my food choices, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the friggin' car window (which is like a funhouse mirror to begin with) and I'm all giant ass and thighs. I looked like those crazy women who go on Maury Povich and they say "I'm not fat, I'm just thick" and you think "Great! A confident woman!" then they come out and they are all skinny to the waist and then ba-BOOM the ass spilleth over.
You know what I mean??
That was me in the car window.
Except the skinny to the waist part, because the boobs were boomin' in the window too.

Then of course I'm thinking, "See. Do you see your fat ass? There's your bacon burger! And oh yeah, by the way, your hair looks like shit."

I am such a bitch to me.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Should we start a contest, who is the meanest to themselves? I think I actually once said to David, "I'm so fat and ugly I just cannot stand it, I hate everything about me, I just want to kill myself." Luckily, he started yelling at me, so I think he did not hear the "I want to kill myself" part, which is totally not true, just very, very dramatic. But still.

I do not even think I'm all that intelligent, despite the valedictorian, passed two bar exams, graduated from college and law school cum laude. And people totally will think I'm saying all that just for compliments. Totally not. That is why I don't like being around people, because "I'm stupid and have nothing interesting to say." And I am supposed to have children?

And oh god, what if my daughters look like me? Is it possible to think a person who is the spitting image of ugly me is actually cute? That's a contradiction that will just make my head explode.

eaf said...

My dad and I had an interesting conversation about the whole "intelligent" thing only months before he died. I was talking about how I feel so dumb because I can be so ditzy sometimes. He said, "Everyone thinks of themselves as average. Then they measure others against their own thought of average. You (meaning me) are above average. So when you feel stupid, it's only because you are hanging out with REALLY REALLY smart people."

It helped me. Hopefully it will help you. Both of you are TOTALLY above average. Which makes you more able to see your own faults. And then MAGNIFY them a bajillion times.

I do it too... but then I knock myself around for doing it. Which is sort of the same thing as calling myself ugly, isn't it?

Jessica said...

I know my problem is that I am so freaking critical of myself that I just assume that everyone else in the world is as critical of me too.

I try to remember that saying, whatever it exactly is I don't quite recall, but basically it says people aren't thinking about you nearly as often as you think they are...or something along those lines...

But then strangely, I think I suck but I'm so friggin' self-centered that of COURSE everyone IS thinking about me at all times...duh.

eaf said...

Nah... You're self-centered because you are so full of awesomeness. Totally forgivable. :-)

Now, I wonder how I have any friends at all, I am so totally full of myself! Ha!