Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

October 24 2006

A Short Account of My Morning

The butcher did it.

I was minding my own business, jumping for joy (in a very discreet way) after discovering that the market had whole salmon for 49 cents a pound, when he came up to me and said, "Can I help you with that, cutie?"

Now, I love it when RT calls me cutie, or sweetie, or honey, but I'm not at all thrilled when strangers do it. And while I don't like any of those familiarities, the word cutie is especially hard to take. It wasn't easy when I was 16 and wanted to look sexy, and it isn't any easier at 54.

I guess I should be more appreciative. After all, when I was a big chunk of a woman, no one called me cutie. Heck, they didn't call me anything. Fat people are invisible you know, unless we are being laughed at or cruelly taunted.

I have now returned to semi-official cutie status.

I know I am never going to be seen as a beauty, or have a stranger come up to me and introduce herself as a scout for a modeling company. It wasn't going to happen 40 years ago, and it sure isn't going to happen now. At any age, that kind of experience is reserved for women who are a whole lot taller than 4'11" me.

There are a whole lot of things I love about being, urmmm, vertically challenged. I delight in feeling tiny when I snuggle up against my big strong husband. It's convenient to be able to crawl under our desks when we need to do something with the tangle of cords that reside there. I've never had to duck when I go down the stairs to someone's basement recreation room either.

I do have days though when I would really enjoy the experience of being tall and lithe. I'd like, at least briefly, to look glamorous or stunning or statuesque. It's just not in the cards. Truthfully, I pretty much want it in the same way I sometimes think I would like to experience the world through my cat Beanie's eyes, but still...

I was thinking about this (the tall and lithe part, not the Beanie part) when I was watching Project Runway, also know as my guilty pleasure, early this morning. Yay, TiVo.

The models were all lined up in their one piece black slips, waiting for the designers to choose who they would work with for the next challenge. Not all of the models were drop dead gorgeous, but all of them were thin and tall. In any case, I decided to look at the auction site where the clothing designed for the show is sold. I wasn't expecting to buy anything there. My most recent big clothing purchase was six pairs of socks at Payless. I was looking, well, just because.

What I saw was that all of the clothing the designers produce for the show is made to fit women who are between 5'10" and 6'2" tall and wear a size 0 or 2.

That is so not me.

It took me awhile to remember that it is not just so not me, it is also so not 99% of the women in the real world. In the real world, women wear socks from Payless and it's a good day when the butcher calls you cutie.