Look

Today on her show, Oprah is going to have Kirstie Alley come out and parade about in a bikini.It’s a repeat and I’m glad they are repeating it because I missed it the first time.
What a world.Kirstie who is no longer “young” and young in my mind means anything before 50, is going to reveal her personal triumph,her penultimate acheivement in life,by wearing a bikini.I wouldn’t wear a bikini past the age of 8 which is the last time in my life that I was skinny enough to do so.
Being 50 and female in America doesn’t seem to give one an automatic ticket to relax on the whole being sexy thing. It isn’t enough to be smart and successful you’ve also got to prove you are still sexually viable.
I know-K.A.’s “look I’m in a bikini and I used to have to wear tent dresses” isn’t really about proving she’s still sexy, it’s about proving she isn’t fat anymore.
She did ok by being fat.She had Veronica’s Closet for a few season’s even though the show was situationally ridiculous.But she was “fat” the entire time.She then began her Jenny Craig commercials and I guess that was how Fat Actress came to be.Or was it the other way around? I think I did read something about how she said she was proud of getting that show despite weighing more than 3 Hollywood starlets…
I recently watched The Biggest Loser-I’m not sure if it was the season finale- but I remember one of the women competing– during her personal video montage– picked up a pair of size 12 jeans and said “it’s my dream to fit into these jeans”.
I wear a size 12.And I was confused as to why she didn’t pick up a pair of size 2 jeans and declare her dream to fit into them.Size 12 is only small if you are a size 24.But she and I both would be considered massive by any media standards.
I try not to think about the fact that a lot of clothing companies have rigged their clothing sizes so that a size 4 is really a size 8 and so forth. I thought this was a paranoid fantasy of my anorexic pal but it turns out she was right.
I know I would rather not go up any higher than a size 12 myself. But I did have to for Hilfiger cargo pants! It was my firm belief that cargo pants shouldn’t be skin tight so I bought a few sizes up in order to have looser pants.This in rigging terms probably means that in Hilfiger I wear a tent ish 18 to 20!
This was when (and I guess it’s still going on) everyone else was winching themselves into skintight ultra lowrise jeans–the kind that gave even thin girls the “muffin top” look where your hip flesh bulged over the waist- band…and you topped it all of with a shirt that revealed all this bulging glory by not quite covering your stomach.
I can’t tell you how many plump backsides and tiny thongs trying to remain intact while struggling to contain the abundance they were encircling I saw on the bus merely by glancing anywhere but into my own lap. I couldn’t make up my mind if these women were fools or just very comfortable with the way they looked.
Personally, I don’t like to show much that much skin. Perhaps these women are “big losers” themselves and are proud of the way they look now? And so they are showing it all off,not on Oprah’s stage but on the B61 bus.