I was inspired to write this post by eating a donut. That could be one of the seven reasons, but I already spoiled that one for you and you are expecting seven numbered reasons based on the title, so that won't work. To make you feel better, I can guarantee you that none of these reasons will be something conventional like "Hollywood promotes skinny people" or "horizontal stripes" because those are boring.
7. Jillian Michaels
To anyone with a body fat percentage higher than 1 and a BMI higher than 15, this woman is the antichrist. This is the same woman who now is affiliated with two television shows concerning awkwardly invading the personal lives of fat people and forcing them to not be fat by yelling at people named Joelle when they don't do THIRTY FUCKING SECONDS ON THE TREADMILL RAAAAAAARGHHHH. All of this would be bad enough if she wasn't also pictured in what I'd easily nominate the scariest fucking video game cover of all time:
Skinnier guys might find this photo sexy. Chubbier guys consider the scariness of this photo about on par with getting your sleeve caught on a conveyor belt that leads to a meat grinder. Her eyes stare into your soul like she's remotely measuring your BMI and her accusatory finger definitely knows about that hot fudge sundae you ate last night.
6. Restaurants
For many years, before the massive 21st century push for "healthier food," restaurants were able to get away with putting pretty much whatever they wanted on your plate as long as it wasn't going to kill you immediately. This does not mean, however, that it won't kill you long term. Most restaurants now have nutrition facts posted on their own website, but even this resource has not at all inspired them to change their ways.
Probably about a few months ago, Applebee's began their campaign for Meals Under 550 Calories. When I first heard about this, I thought, "What the hell? Isn't that kind of high for a diet food?" I was so adorably naive. I promptly looked up the nutrition facts of all of my favorite dishes at Applebee's and found that having a calorie count that wasn't in the quadruple-digits was a luxury. Granted, that hasn't stopped me -- I, with little reluctance, tacked about 1,750 calories on to my thighs the last time I went there -- but it does give me all the more reason to be afraid of Jillian Michaels' finger of divine judgment.
5. Buttons
You know how zippers, unless the clothing is so extremely ill-fitting that the zipper breaks, do a pretty good job of hiding your actual weight? This is why jackets are so desirable. Buttons have the opposite effect.
My weight has a tendency to be in flux most of the time. I lost a lot of weight two years ago, and, in celebration, bought a lot of clothes. The half of it I proceeded to put back on disagreed with this behavior, and now none of the clothes from that era fit me particularly well. They fit me just fine, but the buttons, especially those near the bottom, struggle to hold the shirt together, producing those irritating and very unflattering gaps in the shirt where the buttons are pulling apart. I'm trying to think of something funny to say about that, but it's so traumatizing that I can't do it. My apologies.
4. Waitresses
I am an exceptionally fast eater. It's something I've done instinctively since I was a little kid when we had twenty minutes to eat lunch and 19 of those were spent in a line trying to cover your pockets so that the imaginary bully didn't steal your lunch money, even though no one's lunch money ever actually got stolen. This is not usually a problem when I'm at home, because my parents understand and they don't (audibly or visibly) judge me. Waitresses do not work in this way. Waitresses make an attempt to be as tactful about it as they possibly can, since I don't think that they have a history of getting heavy tips from patrons that they call fat (I'll have to conduct a study), but their comments like "Oh, you really must have enjoyed that!" or "Wow, did you even taste that?" are soul-crushing and demoralizing. This happens most frequently, for some reason, at Denny's. I should probably just stop going to Denny's. But their Philly Melt is so good.
(To avoid accusations of chauvinism, I should probably note that all of my experiences with this phenomenon were with waitresses. Male waiters are very rarely paying attention to what they're doing enough to comment.)
3. Pockets
Even more traumatizing than the feeling of having buttons that are slowly separating like tectonic plates is the feeling of trying to get something out of your pocket when your pocket is as tight as shrink wrap. This is usually caused when jeans "fit" in the sense that they get on, but they don't actually in the sense that the pockets are nearly fucking impossible to get into. Unfortunately, since the next size up is so baggy on me that I look like a deflated hot air balloon, I must deal with these airtight pockets that do not lend themselves well to things like tollbooths. I guess there are advantages, though; I'm fucking impossible to pickpocket. If I just kept walking, the pickpocket would probably get tugged down the street behind me.
2. Auditoriums
My school auditorium is fairly old. Space between the chairs is at a premium. At the chorus concerts, the chorus sits in a certain section of the chairs as the band and the younger kids perform first. When we all stand up to get on stage, the scenario plays out the same way every time. I see the people in front of me confidently strolling through the aisles of chairs as if they were as wide as grocery store aisles, so I try to be a conformist and do the same thing, only I find that I can't because my hips are bouncing me back and forth like a really narrow pinball table. Then I need to get up and sing on stage about shit like the beauty of the earth when I'm far more worried about why I'm a guy with seemingly child-birthing hips. That's not fucking beauty.
And the big one...
1. People at the dinner table who say "Oh, this is simply too much food for me!" while I am still eating and I ordered/gathered considerably more food than they did and am probably going to end up eating their leftovers, too
This may seem obscure and irrationally long compared to the six other reasons, which are mostly one word, but it's long because it's specific and it's #1 because it's been happening to me all the fucking time recently. I love my mother, but she has a fondness for doing this to me a lot lately, and she is not helping, especially not when she subsequently offers me the rest of her food while my face is still buried deep in a pile of calories stacked twice as high as hers ever was.
Do you agree with these things? Do you not? Are you actually Jillian Michaels reading this blog, and, if so, are you aware of the donut I ate last night...? Please don't be Jillian Michaels.
