Kathy joined Weight Watchers. Shut up. Because it apparently breaks some weight loss commandment to display even a scintilla of cynicism at meetings, Waisted is where she bitches about eating, not eating, oversharing weight watchers, and probably you.

By Kathy Cacace [Archives]

Though they are probably the least nautical thing on the planet (they don’t float, you can’t surf in them, and they don’t even have a sailor waist), my anchor is a pair of Trash and Vaudeville jeans.

To explain: every Weight Watcher is supposed to have an “anchor” that you think about and dream about and sleep with a picture of under your pillow and wish for on every twinkling star that somehow propels you toward your goal. When you think about it, this is just “thinspiration” more appetizingly named. Everyone on a diet has something that keeps them turning down the Reese’s Pieces (which I have not wanted in something like five years AND which appeared in the work vending machine this week for the first time I can remember, proving once and for all that there is a god and he fucking hates me), and whether that’s a pre-pregnancy pair of jeans or a picture of Kate Moss taped to the underside of your toilet lid it doesn’t much matter to anyone but you.

Except when you have to listen to a pack of hungry retards talk about it on a weekly basis. “My boyfriend bought me a diamond anchor necklace and I wear it all the time to remind me of my goals.” Yeah? Really? And you just walked into a door, right?

Anyway, so, my thinspiranchor is a pair of fucking Trash and Vaudeville skinny jeans, which I have never been able to fit into and that everyone in this motherfucking city seems to take for granted because their legs are the size of my thumbs and how they manage to walk around on their coke-atrophied little pipe cleaner limbs is beyond me but WHATEVER, they get to wear good pants while they do it and I am wearing Old Navy.

The sad fact of being a size 16 is that all of your pants are skinny pants, but not in any of the right places. They are skinny in the waist, which in turn causes odd bulging in the real estate surrounding Vagina Junction, and then they are baggy and dumb everywhere else, which I attribute to the secret fashion commandment spaketh forth from on high that ALL PLUS-SIZE WOMEN LOVETH THEM SOME FLARES.

I can’t possibly bring this up as my anchor at a meeting because the ensuing conversation would be too painful to bear. I would say “Trash and Vaudeville jeans” and then the 75 year old bewigged self-described “gym girl” who sits in front of me would be all “WHAAAT?” and I would have to say it louder, and then she would be all “I saw a poodle dance in a Vaudeville revue when I was 13!” and then I would have to actually kill myself.

But it’s all I want, and I don’t care if they’re hopelessly out of style when I’ve lost enough weight to wear them. Besides Old Navy, the only other place I can find pants is Torrid, my secret shame. It’s the fat people version of Hot Topic, which I have only ever referred to as “Fat Topic” because Torrid is a stupid fucking name for a company that does not sell massage oil and floggers. As if having to shop at a store that sells XXXL Emily Strange t-shirts to dateless prom-skippers despite the fact that I am a 25-year-old bill-paying health-insurance-haver isn’t enough, Torrid, for some moronic fucking reason I will never understand, equates being fat with being a diva. They have Diva Sales and Diva Style discount programs and Diva Cards and all kinds of other Diva Bullshit, which is unfair, because fat does not equal sassy.

It equals needing a goddamn pair of pants in the mail right fucking now, because I need an outfit for Friday and it is Tuesday and I cannot run to Trash like the rest of you for the pants of my dreams.

It’s like I’m buying a Quippy Sidekick costume every time I order from that fucking shitshow.

I dwell on clothing to take my mind off the fact that I am currently hungry and my boss has, for the first time, put out a dish of dark chocolate Dove Promises on her desk. This is bullshit. The other reason I’m thinking about clothing is because it’s almost Fashion Week once again in our fair city, the twice-yearly reminder that I love clothes that I can neither wear nor afford. It is so brutally unfair that I know who designs for Balenciaga, that I have opinions on Marc Jacobs, that I care about Gareth Pugh and his rat coats, and that I know I could forage some amazing clothes from sample sales if my size were only its square root.

The fucking kicker is that I get to plus-one my way into Fashion Week parties, but I’ve got to work voodoo outfit magic with Old Navy jeans, a couple of H&M dresses that are fitted in places where they’re supposed to be flowy, and the few XL gold nuggets I’ve been able to pan from the river of American Apparel XSs and Ss.

That’s the thing you skinny bitches need to appreciate, the right to style self-determination. I have no idea what my personal style is because I buy whatever fits, mostly black, because that’s the closest I can come to mining a look from what is offered to the size 16s that walk, unfairly paisley-ed and bell-bottomed, among you. I don’t know whether I’d be adorably retro or completely punk rock or super high fashion or Eurotrash or nu rave or J. Crew or riot grrrl or business casual or sporty or spandex or sparkly or slutty if I had the option of buying whatever I liked instead of whatever I could find. My style is more hunter-gatherer.

I am the turkey vulture of fashion.

I lost weight again this week, though not as much as last week, and not enough yet to squeeze my caboose into a pair of legitimately decent jeans. Dove Promise me you’ll keep your fingers crossed in my favor.