This is Nourishment

Today I was walking to the the mini fridge on my floor to get my afternoon snack when I was struck with a feeling of normalcy.

As I mentioned before I have struggled with some very disordered eating since a very early age. Food has always been about so much other than food. It is pleasure, punishment, and distraction all at the same time. In the past, when I was feeling sad or overwhelmed, I would want to eat a pan of brownies so that I could experience the pleasure of eating something delicious, while punishing myself (my body is very sensitive to large amounts of sugar and wheat), followed by a period of obsession over how many brownies I ate, as well as a ghastly stomachache. But then the stomachache would wane, and I would be left with regret over my sometimes masochism and frequent incapability to really care for myself.

It amazes me how valuable it is to learn how to dialogue with oneself. It is not that I don't binge eat anymore, though I do it much, much less; it's just that I know how to come back from it. Years (or months) ago, a night of binge eating would lead to a week or weeks of more binge eating. And the longer it went on the harder it was to come back from. But I feel now as though I have some idea of how to talk to myself about the binge: to frame it as self-care (learned from Geneen Roth), to drink a lot of water, to journal, to combat the thoughts of "you don't know how to care for yourself" with viable proof that I most clearly do know how to care for myself.

I keep wondering how I got here from there. How I got to a point where there is an element of true nourishing when it comes to food, if even just for one snack. I suppose it has to do with the work I've done to love my body just as it is. It has to do with how I clothe and wash myself. It has to do with letting my body be, with letting her want or reject whatever she needs. It has to do with all the times I let it be okay that I ate ice cream every day for a week or had two cupcakes (or four) at a party. It has to do with the freedom to have cream in my coffee and to sometimes drink that coffee in bed, in my pajamas, even though I should be doing other things. It has to do with riding my bike, with feeling connected to the world through that little 15 pound mass of metal and rubber. In yoga, I felt connected to the earth. But when I am biking I am a part of the whole round world. On my bike, as I learn to yell at drivers about to hit me and ride in a lane clearly designed for cars, I am learning how to protect myself, how to take up space in the world. It has to do with going to my dance class and seeing my body in the mirror, back fat and stomach fat and bruised, scarred legs, and thinking, "that is MINE." And then plie-ing like I am a graceful swan. Because I am. Just a fat one.

What else have I done?

Lots of crying. And talking. Lots of eating. Lots of drinking. Lots of journaling and biking and sad dancing and happy dancing and online shopping. Lots of reading. Lots of reading the same thing over and over until I get it. Lots of hugging. Lots of anger. Lots of forgiveness and grace.

And then today I got hungry so I walked to the little mini-fridge to get my yogurt and honey, mixed together in a little tupperware this morning, and I ate it, and I licked the top of the tupperware cause it was so delicious, and I wasn't thinking about anything else, just how delicious that yogurt was. Every meal or snack is not like this. But this one was. And there have been others like it. And there will be more.

How Mr. Bates Made Me Cry or Why Downton Abbey is Awesome

I was at a small get together at a friend’s house on Sunday and overheard a conversation between two women. One woman, explaining what she did for work, said, “I deal with research on different diseases. You know, cancer, obesity... things like that.” I responded to this by saying very loudly, “OBESITY IS NOT A DISEASE,” which was, of course, followed by an awkward silence.

My grandmother died of cancer in 2004. She was first diagnosed with Breast Cancer years before. She went through Chemo, and her cancer went into remission. Then it moved down into her intestines, and it never stopped spreading. My grandmother was a lifetime member of Overeaters Anonymous, and I remember, when she was still lucid, she would joke that it took chemotherapy to get her to her goal weight (it makes me sad to think that my grandmother was struggling her entire life to attain a weight that she could only get to by dying).

As far as I know (and to be honest I could be totally wrong as I know not a thing about science) it is unknown what causes cancer. Yes, there are correlations, but it is very unclear why some people get cancer and others do not.

Fatness is similar. Some bodies are fat and some are not. It is not known why some bodies are fat and some are not because, contrary to what most people would believe to be true, not all fat people eat more and exercise less than thin people. There are so many different components of fatness: genetics, environment, stress, lifestyle.

This is the only way in which fatness is similar to cancer.

To call Obesity a disease is, if you ask me, kind of insulting to other diseases. My fatness is not the same as my grandmother’s cancer. Or a brain tumor. Or this child’s disease. And though I have more body fat, my fat is not slowly killing me (whatever the media would want you to believe). I do not feel weak. I do not feel sick. My body is able to digest food, to move, to function properly in every way. My body is not, in anyway in fact, diseased and to call it such is insulting.

I am going to let you in on a secret: everybody dies. From the minute our bodies are fully formed they are deteriorating, some faster than others. We want to think that if we can make our bodies a certain way that somehow we will have some control over our own demise, and though that is true to a certain extent, whether I or anyone else wants to extend or shorten their life is just none of your goddamn business. Maybe I will die from a heart attack in the next 10 years. Maybe I will get hit by a bus on my bicycle. Maybe I will live to be a fat 82-year-old just like my dad. Or maybe I will get an actual disease. I just don’t know. No one does.

I’ve been watching Downton Abbey with my glorious roommate. There is a character named Mr. Bates who has a pronounced limp from a war injury and walks with a cane. Mr. Bates is handsome and kind, but many of the staff look down on him for his limp. They assume he can’t do certain things even though he can. He decides he will attempt to fix it. He goes to a store where he purchases a terrible metal contraption that, if tightened a certain amount everyday, claims to correct limps. Mr. Bates wears it. Throughout the episode we see him in terrible pain. Finally he shows his leg to the housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes. His leg is bloodied and raw. We then see Mrs. Hughes marching Mr. Bates out to the lake carrying his limp corrector. She hands it to him to throw into the water and as he goes to throw it, stops him, saying, “No. Say your speech.”

Mr. Bates says, “I promise I will never again try to cure myself.”

You say Obesity is a disease?

My response is: what Mr. Bates said.

This is an Angry Post

I have been or felt fat my entire life. I developed a binge eating disorder when I was 10 (that is at least the first time I remember looking forward to everyone being gone from the house so I could eat whatever I wanted) and by the time I was 16 I was a size 20 and weighed 250 pounds. I thought I was a big, fat piece of sh*t. I am being candid here. I fantasized about what it would be like to be thin. About the person I would be, the things I would do, the people who would be inextricably drawn to me. Whenever anything in my life would go wrong it was clearly my body’s fault. Clearly.

Three years ago, I started Weight Watchers. I lost 60 lbs. and all of the sudden I was available to the world. Every one told me how great I looked. I could shop in normal stores. I tried running. I did Yoga 6 days a week. Did I mention everybody kept telling me how good I looked? Cause they did. Over and over again. My weight loss was even a rather common topic of conversation. I am not saying this judgmentally towards those with whom I had the conversations but factually. I and everyone else talked about it. A lot.

But here’s the thing I want everyone to know. Even when I was thin I wanted to be thinner. It wasn’t enough. Even when I was thin I would binge eat. Even when I was thin I was worried no one would ever be attracted to me. Even when I was thin boys didn’t ask me on dates. I went to Yoga, and yes, I did/still do love doing Yoga, but I would freak out when I would miss a class because I was worried I had somehow lost that all the important muscle mass that would keep me from getting fat again. I was obsessed with not getting fat again. OBSESSED. I read Health at Every Size for the first time when I was at my thinnest and the book made me terrified that my set point weight was above my current weight. Anxiety-attack terrified. Couldn’t-sleep-at-night terrified.

And then I hurt myself. I fell up an escalator and dislocated my shoulder, an injury I still deal with today. I couldn’t do Yoga, at least not how I wanted anymore. So then I started gaining weight. It was slow. But over the course of the past two years I have gained back every pound I lost. This is while trying different dietary eliminations to keep the weight off, and trying Weight Watchers again. And then I read Health at Every Size for the second time, once again a 250 pound woman wearing a size 20, and I actually got it.

This is what I got:


My weight has no bearing on my health, IF (and only if) my habits are healthy. If I am eating the foods my body wants in the amounts she wants them, if I am moving consistently, if I am dancing and riding my bike and experiencing love and joy and good things then my weight has no bearing on my health.


Being thin will not get me the things I want. And this is contrary to everything you will probably ever hear from the media. To be honest I have more of the things I want now that I am fat again because I don’t have to wait for my body to look a certain way to have them.


Being thin will NOT HEAL DISORDERED EATING. Not every fat person has an eating disorder, but I know a fair number who do. Restricting your caloric intake and upping your exercise, even if it results in temporary weight loss, will never heal an eating disorder. Ever. My binge eating was worse than it had ever been when I was thinnest because I was so obsessed with the amount of calories I was eating as they pertained to how I looked.


Loving my body has brought me an incredible amount of joy. I love my body. I love what she can do. I love what she looks like. I LOVE how wide my hips are, and how strong my legs are. And apart from what she looks like I love that she houses me so well. I love that she reflects the largeness and delicacy of my spirit and of my heart.  I am proud of her.

Why do we all want to lose weight so badly? We want to be enough. We want to be loved or admired or beautiful or healthy or whatever other words our diet obsessed culture tells us we can be if we are just thin enough. But what if we could be all those things right now? Wouldn’t that be worth transferring all the effort we have been putting into wishing our bodies were different into enjoying our bodies for what they are?

I think it would be.

It was for me.

Fat Shaming

Yesterday, after a rousing lunchtime ZUMBA! class with my dear Travis left my workout clothes unwearable, I was forced to bike my way home in my rather tight, denim pencil skirt. It must be noted that when I am bike riding in a skirt all of my almost non-existent modesty goes out the window. I love when the wind blows up a billowy skirt, or I get the chance to, as I did today, show a little leg. As I started my ride home, I passed three college students: two very thin girls, maybe 19, wearing distressed short shorts (the ones with the pockets sticking out the bottom) sitting on a curb, and a muscular boy, probably around the same age, working on the gears of his bike which was turned upside down near where the girls sat. As I approached these three young people they openly stared at me, and as I rode by one of the girls whispered something that made the other two giggle. I knew they were laughing about me. What they were saying I couldn’t hear, but all of the sudden I felt very self-conscious about my chunky girl thighs working so strongly to pedal my bicycle.

I have been lucky enough to be a victim of fat hate infrequently in my life. My brother’s best friend growing up would most unmercilessly call me “Whale,” a name that resurrected itself in middle school when I sat in front of a boy named Zach who would say it under his breath when he was feeling surly. But that was the worst of it until I got to college. One day while walking to class I was talking with a friend when a man yelled something out a truck window and then sped away. My friend instantly grabbed me, pulling me into a tight hug, and whispered in my ear, “He's a jerk,” at which point I registered that what had been shouted was, “LOSE SOME WEIGHT, BITCH.” I didn’t cry. Well, not then. Not until I got to class and sat in the back of the room silently weeping. Eventually I excused myself, and my darling teacher, Angie, followed me. When I told her what happened, she hugged me saying, “People are so cruel.” Aren’t they just.

Most of my discomfort as regards these fat hate stories is less that they happened at all and more how passively I let them happen, how easily I let those people make me feel bad about my body. Now granted I felt pretty terrible about my body before they said anything. I did think I was whale, and I did think I was a fat bitch, but you know what? That doesn’t matter. Nothing will ever, EVER give another person the right to make judgments about my body, whether you are my best friend or a stranger in a truck. I wish I could go back to that day so that I could stare at his car speeding away and flip him the bird. I wish I could turn around to Zach, slap him across the face and say, “If you call me that again, I will kick you in the nuts.” And I wish I HAD, in fact, kicked my brother’s best friend in the nuts the very first time he thought it appropriate to address me by such a cruel nickname.

In many of my fat acceptance books, women claim that if every time they were fat shamed their response was to hide in their rooms they would never leave the house. And I want to have this IAMFATGETUSEDTOIT attitude, but the truth is, I felt a little broken by those kids today. And I continue to feel broken by that one random stranger. It is of course laced with, “How DARE you,” but there is still all that deep, internalized, terrible shame.

But this is not to say I won’t fight back. In a brilliant essay by Lesley Kinzel in the book Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere, she talks about being catcalled while wearing a bathing suit and crossing the street to her local beach. Her response is this:

“Given the choice between restricting my movements and being assured of never being catcalled again, versus going out shamelessly and risking (or demanding!) attention—I will gladly take the latter. I like being visible. Even when I become a bull’s eye upon which the insecurities and savagery of others are exorcised. Even when I lose time processing and remembering the emotional risks I take just by being myself, time I would have otherwise spent relaxing in the sunshine. When I began my self-acceptance process, I decided first off that I never want to feel afraid of what those people—those who would mercilessly catcall me from a moving car, for example—might think or say about my body again. I never wanted to avoid life out of fear. And I’m still there, still fighting to be fearless. So I say fuck those people. I’ll be on that beach tomorrow, and this weekend, and for months to come, and if they don’t like it, good. I’m glad to displease them. They cannot stop me.”

This is the price we pay for not hiding. This is the price we pay for being visible. Am I going to hide because those dumbasses don’t want to look at me? Because they are somehow OFFENDED by me riding my bike, wearing my brightly colored helmet and GOD FORBID being fat and free and happy?

No. Fucking. Way.

Fat Clothes

At a most excellent party this past weekend a friend of mine was telling me about having recently taken stock of all her skinny clothes. For those of you who don’t know skinny clothes are the clothes a woman holds onto in the hopes she will someday fit into them. They are the clothes of which mere thoughts catalyze patterns of shame and self-hatred, the clothes which usually represent the skinnier self we could be if we just tried hard enough. My friend explained to me that as she rifled through these particular skinny clothes, which she had fit into in her early 20s, she would hold up pieces and feel shocked by how small she had been.  She didn’t remember feeling small.  She remembered thinking she was fat. My friend has an incredibly kind, devoted and savvy husband who, when she shared this said, "I know. I thought you were insane."

I remember being in middle school and thinking I was the fattest, most unattractive person in the world. I went on my first self-imposed diet when I was 14, limiting myself to 20 fat grams per day. I look at pictures from that time, before and after the diet, and I see a 14 year-old with a beautiful, strong body. The skin on my legs was soft and tan, I wore terrible clothes and my hair was a mess, but I had rather piercing green eyes that looked so sad and that round, warm face that wanted so clearly, more than anything, to be told she was perfectly all right just the way she was.

That was just the beginning. I hated myself quite a bit for quite some time. I didn't want people to look at me so I wore things that helped me blend in, that enabled me to be overlooked. I remember buying a sweater in college which I loved. It had green, blue, yellow and orange stripes with long bell sleeves. I kept that sweater for 3 years, looking at it in my closet, sometimes even trying it on, and then never wearing it. I thought it drew too much attention, and the idea that someone would have the opportunity to take stock of how fat I was terrified me. I eventually donated it to the good will. I hadn't worn it in public a single time.

So then, about 3 years ago, I lost weight and for the first time in my life I wanted people to look at me. I started wearing tighter clothes, brighter colors. This was when I developed my penchant for large flower headbands. I looked more put together. I started wearing thick colorful bracelets and necklaces that actually matched my outfits. It was as though for years I had no concept of what I liked and now had all these resources to experiment. It was wonderful. It felt like coming alive.

I have, over the past year, expanded out of all of those clothes. Every single skirt, t-shirt, blouse, pair of pants (jeans, dress pants and exercise pants).  Everything. I have gotten rid of a thousand dollars worth of clothes in a size 14. Every time I would clean my room I would give away more pieces, and it felt not only like a financial loss. I felt as though I was losing my capability to express myself through what I wore.

Here's the thing: regardless of whether or not you want to we say things with our clothes. My Soul Twin shops almost exclusively at Anthropologie and always looks light, billowy, romantic and beautiful, like she is from another era. I imagine she is saying, “I, sir… am a LADY.” Some people don't care about clothes (my mom for one) but even not caring, even being slovenly, says something. In the past I thought that, because I was fat, I didn't get to wear things that reflected my personality. I just had to wear what they sold in the plus size section of Kohls (a sad selection indeed, my friends) and that it was my job to just learn to like these things.

So I gained weight and, yes, I am just as fat once again. But the things I learned about myself during those years of thinner-ness I have not forgotten. I learned about my own sense of style. I learned what I like and just because I am fat doesn’t mean I stop wearing things I love. Every person should get to express themselves however they want to when it comes to how they dress. And if some d-bag doesn't like what you are wearing they don't have to look at you. The. End.

Granted this is a very difficult attitude shift to achieve but there are numerous ways to remedy it. I recommend 1) finding photos of people your size on the interwebz and seeing what they are wearing. I love Soul Twin, but, in addition to being much larger than she is and shaped fundamentally differently, I would never dress as she does because my personality is baser, dirtier, very youthful and pretty rebellious. When I think of my style icons I think of Beth Ditto and Marianne Kirby. I want to be bold, slightly inappropriate, child-like AND beautiful. I look at pictures of those two women and I feel emboldened by their style. 2) Only buy clothes you love. Figure out your own style. Wear things that make you feel like you. If you don't care about clothes and that suits you then keep not caring. But don’t not care because there aren't options.

So my friend went through some skinny clothes and remembered how much, even as a relatively thin person, she hated her body. I thought I was worthless when I was young because I was fat when I wasn't even fat. But the point is not that we weren’t fat. The point is that what our bodies looked like made no difference. This really and truly saddens me, but I think feeling sympathy for ourselves as children, as teenagers, is such an appropriate reaction. If you are young, and if you have no one to tell you any different, of course you are going to internalize some sh*t ideas. But we are adults now. We know better. And when we think on these ideas, we have the chance to remember our own brokenness and to, finally, become our own advocates.

A Bit of a Relapse

It's about to get pretty personal y'all.

Yesterday while eating lunch with my dear friend, Elizabeth, while talking about a headache and feeling loath to return to work, I was suddenly in the middle of b. good crying. Let it be known that, though I am a frequent crier, I am always quite embarrassed by weeping in restaurants. Who wants to see a girl ugly-crying while he/she eats their french fries? No one. 

The crying didn’t come out of nowhere. An hour before I had been waiting for Elizabeth on a sunny bench obsessing over the idea that someday soon I was going to get so fat I was going to need to buy two airplane seats (this has been a point of anxiety for me since I watched a youtube video a couple weeks ago of a girl who was shamed into purchasing two seats, and subsequently shamed out of one of them). I was sitting on my bench imagining my body expanding until I couldn't shop even in the plus size sections of stores, expanding out of airplane seats and sexual desirability (funny how I wrote a blog just the other day about the topic, and it all comes back to this), expanding out of all my clothes and into debt and heart disease. Fast forward 30 minutes to eating a hamburger across from a friend I trust with even the crappiest of my feelings, and you have public weeping.

Fast Forward to last night. I got home, made myself dinner, watched Big Sexy (which I will talk about at some point on this blog, I'm sure) and took a shower. At this point, I remembered that I would be going to a fancy-type bar-thing for drinks the next day for my Soul Twin's birthday and needed to figure out what I was going to wear. In my current state of mind, this, my friends, was a bad idea. I tried on my first-choice dress with a pair of high heels I love but have never worn, and, because my full length mirror recently fell off my closet door and broke, wandered into my roommate’s room to look at myself in her full-length mirror. Probably another bad idea.

I was shocked at my own width. Shocked and dismayed. And all of the sudden I realized that every pound I had lost two years ago I had gained back. And this is where we relapse.

Years ago, before fat acceptance, before Health At Every Size, before I even did Weight Watchers, there would be times where I would walk around my apartment experiencing some of the most self-abusive thoughts a person could have. Sometimes I would even write them down. Terrible thoughts about how worthless I was as a person because I was fat, how unlovable I was in any capacity, how I was probably going to die of a heart attack the next day and that it was what I deserved. I could hear these things in my head, and I could see how destructive and cruel they were. In my head I was beating myself up and not in the nice way we talk about in therapy. I was emotionally bloodying myself because my body wasn’t what I thought it should be. 

This is the space I was in last night.

I feel ashamed to even write these things down. I feel ashamed that people I don’t necessarily know will read them, but I’m also pretty sure that these feelings I have are not extraordinary. I am pretty sure this is the manic, angry place many women go to when overwhelmed.

And then I woke up this morning. And picked up all the clothes that were strewn on the floor of my room, ate my breakfast and rode my bike to work.

I am tempted to end this here. To not comment on any of it. But I want it all to make sense. First of all, there are people who can’t shop in normal plus sized stores or have to buy two seats. I am simply a more socially acceptable version of fat. I feel ashamed of these feelings, ashamed that I still associate being fat in that way with some sort of personal failure even if I don’t think of those specific women as failing. Do I blame the woman in the youtube clip? Of course I don’t. I blame the Southwest douchebags. But still…

I suppose my real response to this experience is that there is literally nothing I can do but live through these really tough moments. I could sign up for Weight Watchers or resolve to exercise more, but in the end these are just temporary fixes for a masochistic belief system. And I think sometimes, while reading all my fat activism blogs written by these strong, eloquent, assertive women, I forget they’ve been thinking about these ideas for years. They’ve relapsed I’m sure. They’ve wandered their houses hating their bodies, because, fat or thin, haven’t we all done this? 

So I hated my body again for an evening. And when I woke up this morning, I was still kind of hating it. But the bottom line is, whether or not we believe the truth doesn’t make it any less true. The truth is I am healthy. The truth is my body does all the things I ask of her. The truth is my body is good. And the truth is sometimes I suffer and most of the time that suffering has nothing to do with my body. And maybe I should give her a break.

The First One

I have another blog, and it was pretty funny (if I do say so myself) until I got caught up in the size acceptance movement and now all I want to do is blog about being fat and so I thought I would start a blog where I could do just that, assuming that not everyone I know wants to hear about my fat girl exploits. Now they can pick and choose.

I also must admit I feel rather silly putting out yet another size acceptance blog when I read so many blogs by women who are more eloquent, better educated and better read than I am, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. 

So here goes.

Since beginning my own Journey (Does the Bachelor franchise own this word? Maybe. Hopefully I won't get sued.) with Size Acceptance about a year ago, I have become consistently shocked by blatant body hate, my own included. As I’m sure you’re all aware, body hate manifests itself in many ways. There is literal body hate, where you look at your body in the mirror, or in pictures and think, "EW. GROSS." There is physical body hate in the form of intense dietary restrictions or punishing exercise. And there is conceptual body hate, where you blame your body for keeping you from having the things you want: a good job, acceptable healthcare, intimate friendships, or, in the case of most of my dearest friends, romantic Love (from here on out I’ll just call it “Love” with a capital L). Every fat woman I know thinks she would be more desirable as a mate if she were thin. This is no mistake, nor is it her fault. Few movies or TV shows have fat women in them, and, if they do, the fat woman is the best friend, or her overt sexuality is a big joke. We are berated with weight loss commercials and even the government is declaring war on obesity, aka encouraging body policing. Then we have people like Jennifer Hudson saying she is more proud of her weight loss than her Oscar and media outlets broadcasting this idea like it isn't horrifying. So of course, why WOULD a fat woman think she could be Loved?

But here's the thing we are forgetting. Love isn't some formula. In Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert goes on this great journey to find herself and then finds herself AND Javier Bardem. Oh, Joy! Maybe, if this movie was the only one of its kind it wouldn't offend me in this way, but we are fed the idea that, if we can just become our best selves love will come to us. And our best self is, of course, always and forever, our thinnest self. Sometimes it does come. Sometimes we lose the weight or become self-actualized and the doors of heaven on earth are suddenly open to us. But sometimes they aren’t. I am not going to try to sell you on the idea that if you can just love yourself someone else will love you. Because I know from personal experience that isn’t how it works. There are thin women who hate themselves who don't have boyfriends and there are fat women who hate themselves getting married everyday. There are things we can't know and can't understand and to blame your body isn't just unfair, it is fundamentally illogical.

So maybe this is more about philosophy than fat. Of course we want the world to be explainable. Of course we want to know WHY we don't have the things we want so that we can change the things that need to be changed and hence GET the things we want. The desire to be one’s best self is a great thing to strive for. Of course it is. But our best self is not always a thin self. Or a calm self. Or an accepting self. To be honest, my best self is pretty pissed, pissed about the injustices happening all over the world every day, pissed about discrimination happening in our country, including a political system which keeps many races and people groups in bondage. But whatever my, or your, best self looks like it comes with no guarantees. We become our best selves so that we can simply be our best selves. Because authentic living is joyous because it is authentic.

Of course I want to find Love. Of course I want everyone I love to find Love. Loneliness is a plague that infects every aspect of one’s life. But I know for a fact I am just as lonely with a small ass. I also know that my loneliness has brought me compassion, and that this compassion has brought me joy because I find joy in loving and caring for people, and for myself.

This all sounds so self-righteous, as though I have it all figured out. To be honest, I struggle to live with these concepts every day. But I would much rather struggle with these concepts then with my weight. I would rather struggle to find authentic worth in myself and in other people than make easy assumptions about my or other’s capabilities for love based on appearance.