Figs, fruity femininity, behind the scenes

[Tabouli]

Steering adroitly from sandwiches to that other lunchbox staple, fruit, figs are in season in Melbourne!

A fine thing.  I love fruit (my father used to call me a fruit bat... hmm, by SUAVE advocates' logic, that should make me a vampire, eh? :-) ), and my fondness for figs is continually being thwarted by the fact that their season seems to be both very short and extremely obscure.  I mean, I'm sure I've seen them towards the *end* of the year, but no, here they are, in all their plump glory, in my local fruit shop.  I admit when I read that figs are fertilised by a small fly that crawls in through the little hole at the end I did flinch slightly, but hey, honey's slobbered in by bees, and rump steak, well, need one say more.

(Tabouli, noting that no fellow fig-chested females have joined her laments on list, wonders whether there is some mysterious connection between cup size and Harry Potter fandom.  Could it be that Harry, a vulnerable, motherless little lad, is apt to attract female fans of the maternal, melon-bearing (or at least mango-bearing) persuasion?)(not that I mean to imply that my fellow flat-chested females have less maternal instincts, of course...!)

Mary Ann:
> Having done informal surveys such as this myself (sinister social scientists 
unite!) I have found the same results amongst male heterosexual friends of 
European origins.  Some like 'em perky, some like 'em big, though in my 
experience it was the bigger men who prefered the more petite women.  As a 
point of interest, my DH is small and slim-framed, whereas I'm, well, 
bovine-ish.<

Curious.  Yes, I have heard this rumour about big men liking dainty women, but haven't actually encountered it much first-hand.  Maybe we should pool the fruits of our sinister social science!  All the European-origin men I can call to mind who profess to be fig-lovers are slim, albeit of varying heights.  A couple of them said they found the bodies of voluptuous women intimidating and overwhelming.  The big men I've known have varied in their *body* size preferences, some liking 'em little, but seemed pretty keen on a bit of melon on them regardless, so to speak (!).  It was all a bit depressing.  All the same, even in the darkest depths of body paranoia, I've never been tempted towards breast-enhancement surgery (eye-bag removal once or twice, but never boob job).  Ouch.  I've *had* surgery under general anaesthetic twice, and it's not something I'm keen to repeat voluntarily.

Jenny from Ravenclaw:
> And now I must add another exciting element to our body discussion: 
Big Butts.  Ask any of my male students what they like and they'll 
tell you confidently and a little too excitedly that breast size is 
nice but there's nothing like a girl with a nice... ass.  I personally 
feel that the only reason Jennifer Lopez is popular at all is because 
of her butt.  My male students have even gone so far as to admit that 
they'd be happy to have sex with an ugly girl as long as she has a 
"fat ass".  It's lovely, isn't it?  It's also probably why I've been 
asked out by my students, as my butt is *not* petite.<

My!  Clearly I need to spread the seeds of my sinister social sciencing further afield!  'Big ass'='nice ass'?  What?  Are you telling me all my years of teen angst over not having a small, round, pert bum were wasted??

My mother, in her tactful maternal wisdom, used to poke me in the designated area regularly when I was a teenager and laugh hysterically that with a bum like that I would have to go and look for an Italian man, ha ha ha.  As a result, my teenage paranoia centred mostly around this area, rather than higher up.  I tied jumpers around my waist and never tucked my shirts in, trying to hide its monstrous expanse from the world.  I wore long T-shirts over swimwear.  I pored over obscure "ass-shrinking" exercises in magazines.

You see, *this* is why I have such nightmares in getting clothes to fit me properly.  I am just under 5'2" with a size 8 bust and leg length, size 11 shoulders and rib cage, a size 10 waist, and size 12 bum and hips.  On average, a size 10 is the most likely to fit me, but it depends completely on the shape of the garment in question.

Gah.  I suppose this is the inevitable outcome of having an ideal body shape hammered into us, isn't it?  The ol' Meat Market Index at work.  There's always someone closer to the ideal than you to envy and feel insecure about, and someone further from it than you who's incensed that you have the temerity to complain at all.  It all depends on who you're comparing yourself to.  After much angst, I eventually concluded that the solution is to think of yourself in absolute terms instead of comparative terms.  Not easy, in a comparative, competitive world, but worth striving for, I decided.

Tabouli (wondering what bizarre picture of her body shape she is conjuring in the minds of her fellow OT-Chatters...)


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