An honest examination of living life as a conventionally un-attractive, overweight, middle-aged woman in a hyper-visual society.

It’s not low self esteem. I have hobbies, friends, a cat (because I believe in leaning all the way into stereotypes, and love cats, and the Cat Distribution System won’t leave me alone), run a nonprofit, serve on a civic committee, etc. etc.

But I’m not pretty. Even if I lost 100+ pounds, I had Bell’s Palsy when I was nine and my face is now asymmetrical, thus rendering me permanently unpretty by objective scientific standards. There would be loose skin and I don’t have the healthy insurance to fix it and, even if I did, it probably wouldn’t be covered. Also, is that really where I would want to spend $10k at this point in my life, in my mid-forties? Or fifties, if I won the lottery and found myself in possession of such largesse? I think if I did have that money I’d rather finally travel or experience something off my bucket list (maybe; I do understand that loose skin can be physically debilitating). It’s such a huge thing to do to make other people, most of whom will be strangers, more comfortable looking at my body.

Although I didn’t have particularly bad acne as a teenager, perimenopause has apparently decided I’m going to make up for that now. I don’t want to wear makeup because I hate how it feels — I literally find it difficult to concentrate when I wear it because I just want to claw my face off, and then I’m focused on not touching my face, and then I keep picking at my eyelashes and the entire experience is just fucking exhausting and expensive and pointless.

Which is another part of this: I barely make rent in any case; I don’t need another expense or something else to monitor, refill, track. I love maintaining a good home — I’m organized, a neat freak, and welcome my weekend deep clean the way some people anticipate a yoga class or workout session — but it just feels like yet another thing. And it doesn’t help that much anyways; not once when all dolled up by professional has anyone suddenly realized I’m gorgeous and they’re in love in with me. It was not a magic balm to heal decades of fat shaming by my mother, grandfather, brother, random strangers, etc. So, it’s just not for me.

At any rate, most of the time, I don’t hate my body. But I hate that so many other people do. I hate that I spend so much time wishing so desperately that I was pretty while simultaneously resenting how nothing else about me matters, at least not in the way I want it to, which is — bad feminist alert — romantically and sexually. Because yes, I have incredible people in my life, and deeply emotional and fulfilling friendships that mean more to me than pretty much anything else in my life.

But I want to be held at the end of the day. I want to not wake up alone on Christmas Eve morning (my family is German so we celebrated Christmas Eve). I am, despite my age and weight and society’s ruling that I am not entitled to it, still a red blooded woman with a sexual appetite.

Yet as a friend once told me — not meaning to hurt me, and he apologized, but in truth the sentence burrowed into my mind and was a thorn in my heart for weeks afterwards — I am objectively a “non-competitive woman.”

This is a space for those experiences, over-thinking thoughts, and anecdotes. I’m just at a point in my life where I need to say the quiet part out loud.