Discussions of how I sometimes still can’t get over how Malay culture somehow deems perfectly “acceptable” to comment (usually negatively) on people’s fluctuations changes in most Asian cultures aside, I really have to confess – sometimes I think the part that sucks most about being a chubby girl is that people are always going to see you as the Chubby Girl. Your chubbiness is always going to act is an immediate signifier of your second class status as far as attractiveness (and therefore desirability) is concerned; your thinner friends are always going to look at you as the one they can use as some kind of yardstick to feel better about their own weight problems against, and most boys are going to comment (whether boldly or sheepishly) behind your back about how you’d probably be so much hotter if you could just lose the weight. Most of the time I try to force myself not to care about any of this stuff too much given that there’s no point anyway (diet/exercise have very little effect on the general aesthetic look of my body; the reason that I still work out/eat healthy anyway is because I like the way taking care of myself feels), but every once in a while when I really really want something someone and feel like my looks are the primary handicap holding me back, I do get pretty distressed about it, I have to say.

It occurs to me sometimes that in life, we all have our burdens to bear, and my burden is probably being the Chubby One in a world ruled by the Skinnies, which… it could be so much worse, right? I’m still heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, university-educated, and at least middle class, among other things; it could be so much worse. But I’m selfish, and I guess what I really want is to be able not to worry about being rejected because of my weight whenever I like a guy, or looking like the Designated Walrus when I’m with a group of girl friends, or just having my chubbiness be the first goddamn thing most people notice about me – the thing that makes them go oh, we don’t have to worry about her, she’s fat.

You know what the sad part is? The sad part is that I think that if I could find a guy, a guy who was able to genuinely find me attractive despite all my flaws, a lot of my insecurities would just…if not completely disappear, then at least dwindle to a much lower burn. Of course the problem is that the only guys I care about that way tend to be the very physically active types who are always getting crushed on by far prettier girls and therefore also always have their pick of the litter, so I guess that makes me DOOMED. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not necessarily that I need the male gaze to validate my beauty or whatever so much as it is the fact that I view physical appearance as a fitness indicator above anything else and if my appearance manages to net me a “worthy” partner, then I suppose it will have fulfilled its purpose in my eyes. They say that you’re supposed to find a way to be okay with yourself before you enter into a relationship, but I can’t help feeling like my looks are what’s keeping me from dating the kind of boys I most want to date in the first place, so in a strange way my insecurities are totally justified or whatever? I realize there’s probably a lot of circular reasoning and cognitive dissonance going on in that train of thought, but yeah. I have a problem allowing for subjectivity of taste, I guess.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the guys I like are typically shallow; in fact, it’s very possible that I’m being unfair in assuming that they’d only ever want to date conventionally attractive girls even though that’s ALL that most of them have dated in the past. It’s just, dude, if you have like, ten girls vying for you and at least eight of them are pretty and skinny and at least five of those eight have decent personalities as well, then why the hell would you go for the remaining one or two who yes, have decent personalities of their own but really just aren’t all that hot?

That is all.