Saturday, August 6, 2011

Beer Goggles are a (Fat) Girl's Best Friend

I had some mixed reactions from people to my last post. Some found my post brilliantly funny (hell yes it was) others seemed to take exception to me saying out loud that I’m fat. Which just seems weird since I am, in fact, fat. I haven’t always been comfortable talking about my weight. For a long time I was so ashamed of it, I wouldn’t have dreamed of calling attention to it. Instead I wore a lot of black and hoped no one would notice my girth. Maybe I would blend in with the walls. Who was I kidding? At my size, the only way this was going to work is if someone thought I actually was a wall. Anyway, recently I’ve started talking about my weight—mostly joking, but also matter-of-factly. After all, it seemed just silly to never mention the elephant in the room (so to speak). I’ve started slipping in a fat joke here, a self-reference there. I’ve noticed that it makes some thin people uncomfortable when I talk about being fat. I guess it is somewhat understandable. If I say to a friend, “Oh, I’m such an idiot,” the friend will say something like “you are not an idiot.” When I say, my God I am fat, they falter. They can’t honestly “you are not fat.” That would make them a liar, an idiot or blind. On the other hand, should my friend agree with me by saying you really are a fucking fat ass, well, that seems mean. So instead they normally say something like” Helen!” in a chastising tone or they make funny, guttural noise and change the subject.

So, anyway, I am fat. And I’m officially on eHarmony! Where I currently have 480 matches! Many of them are fairly unattractive. Some are hideous. Some of them are fat themselves and yet, oddly enough, none of them have tried to date me. One of my thin, attractive friends suggested that maybe they are shy and I should make the first move. So I tried an experiment. I went through and “sent a smile” to each and every one of my matches (except for one guy who was so sad looking that I feared that it was just too mean to do so, though it is most likely he would have rejected me as well). I did this for about the first two hundred and fifty matches before finally losing interest. I got exactly two responses. Both asked me a couple of questions and then disappeared into the ether. I didn’t get enough interaction with either to tell if I would actually like them so it’s not as though I’m heartbroken. Still, I can’t help feeling a little bit put out that nearly 500 hundred men, many of whom are really unattractive and/or much too old for me, are not interested in me…even after I made the first move with half of them. I realize men only date thin women. I mean, I know this intellectually, but I sort of thought maybe my winning personality (hey, what's so funny?) would win at least one or two of them over, but alas, no. As I have pointed out time and time again, online dating is not a good option for fat girls. The problem, of course, is that there’s not enough alcohol involved. Before online dating, you had to meet people the old fashioned way...in bars where, at the end of the night, when the boys are all liquored up and facing the prospect of going home alone, even the fat girls have a chance at getting lucky. Those were the days! Anyway, I figured I'd given it my best shot with online dating. I'd proven my point and was ready to put an end to this experiment. Plus, my subscription was about to expire. So of course I got an email yesterday telling me eHarmony had auto-renewed my subscription for another three months! I’ve basically paid an additional $130 to be rejected by 500 more men. Good times.

3 comments:

Imogen Theenks said...

eHarmony charges $130 for three months? You are paying to be "rejected" by rejects? Where do I sign up?

BTW, please post more. I miss your stories.

Love, peace & hair grease,
Imogen

Kate, Dating in LA said...

Dang! I guess it's good news for me that I'm too poor to be rejected online by men. I'll just have to stick with men doing it in person. Better? hmmm

I don't really understand how online dating works for anyone, to be honest.

Dee Murray said...

I thought eHarmony's purpose was to align you on an intellectual level - over 30 of them, to be exact?? Why are there pictures in the first place? It just goes to show you, no matter how you dress it up, it's still all about what you look like. at least in LA.