God Bless my mom, really. She means well, however, her approach to life’s issues is a little brutal at times. She’s convinced the reason I haven’t been hired is because I’m overweight. I’m not monstrously huge, I look good in my clothes and dammit, I’m cute. But convincing her it isn’t my weight, it’s the lack of intelligence of those who have interviewed me, isn’t working. The following is a snippet of a conversation we had earlier:

“Can you get on that internet and look up lingerie?”
“Yeah, why? You’re wanting me to find a sexy nighty for you? That’s sick.”
“No, I saw on a show the other day about overweight women who are wearing this body suit that holds in their fat.”
“So, I can go from fat to skinny just by wearing a body suit? Was it built by NASA?”

This leads into her, a thin woman, telling me, a fat woman, items I should have on hand to distract people. She wants me to distract my fat. The only thing that is going to hide my fatness-is a fatter woman standing next to me-it’s a fact. I need more fat friends. Per my dear, sweet mother, fat friends won’t work, the items below will.

• Lipgloss. Sure. Shiny lipgloss is going to make me look skinny. Look, I just put some across my lips. Jesus, I’m a size 8 already.
• Nice earrings. What? How are earrings going to make me look skinny? Well, since she’s an expert, it leads people’s eyes to my face. No-it leads them to my ears. Then again, my ears are quite thin.
• Control panties. Have you ever put a pair of these on? I might as well bind myself in duct tape.
• Nice hair. Not that you can have it handy, but, I’m to always have my hair fixed. Gel, hairspray, goop-this will make me look thin. Maybe I should just shave my head and tell people I’m the “Stop The Insanity” woman from a decade ago-gone wrong.
• Manicured nails-toes and fingernails. I do this now-and I’m not looking any thinner.
• A blazer. At first I got all excited and thought she meant the vehicle. Of course not. She meant the one thing a fat woman should never wear simply because the damned things can be uncomfortable and heaven forbid a button pops.
• Black slacks. Got ‘em. I’m still fat.
• A small necklace. Again, to distract. With all this distracting I might as well be invisible.
• Nice clean shoes. Great, I’ll be trying to talk to people while they’re looking down at my feet. That’s a definite social go-getter.

I have a solution? A diet? Huh, mom? THAT would work. Which is what I’m attempting to do-a little difficult since I have no idea when a food product will make my gall bladder act up-but hell I’m trying. Maybe I should go get a manicure/pedicure in a pair of control top panties and say screw it.