Olivia: yeah about the jewelry and clothes

I feel the same way. I pretty much feel that I'm not "womanly enough" to wear jewelry. I have also felt that because I'm not womanly enough (in any area, because I'm a fat fat fatty) that it doesn't matter how I dress. I can show cleavage--who cares! I'm not attractive and no one will notice or care if I'm showing miles of boob.

I've always felt this way--that not only does it not matter what I wear, but that if I do dress up, put together an outfit, try to be attractive, I will instantly be outed as an IMPOSTER WOMAN. Someone who wants to be an attractive woman, but who ISN'T, because she's Fat, capital F. So, I didn't and don't try.

The awful thing is now I look back at that poor young woman--me in the old pictures--and I think, you were so cute. You should have tried to look prettier. No, to be beautiful. Fat girls get stuck in the "you're so cute" zone, they forget (or, like me, never realize) that they are beautiful.

I still don't realize this. I still feel the same way: trying to be attractive is a fraud, doesn't work anyway, why try. Jewelry is for real women. Even make-up. Even lipstick. For a very very long time, I just didn't, and even now I only wear make-up rarely. It's for women, and I'm somehow not in that group, for all my boobs and hips and chromosomes, and stretchmarks from childbirth . . .

So I basically hate everyone who told me I was fat. Because I wasn't. Until you kept on and on and on about a few extra pounds until I freaked out about them and started dieting and fasting and freak-show yo-yo-ing and emotional eating and yep, finally, I fulfilled your prophecy and got fat. And now I'm fat. Happy? Now, if you're my mother, you can hand me the Plus Size catalog and say, "I got this, but I don't wear these sizes, so I thought of you." Or, "I found this enormous sweatshirt at a yard sale, and I thought of you."

Lily, sorry this is rough-drafty and angsty, but your jewelry post just Set. Me. Off. and made me hate people I should love because they should have loved me, but they didn't. Or they thought rude criticism counted as loving. FYI, it doesn't.

Is it possible for a woman in her SIXTH DECADE to finally and really see herself as an attractive woman, as someone who deserves to be loved, as someone who can be pretty. I see women in their fifties who are lovely. They are all thin. I see fat women who wear jewelry and make-up and put-together outfits and they don't look ridiculous, though I think I look ridiculous when I do that. They look good. They certainly look better than the trailer-trash style (jeans/t-shirts) I throw on my gross fat self.