Do You Have Body Envy?

I have never had a flat stomach. I have never been able to look straight down and see my feet. Even when I was 18, I didn't have that figure-eighty, womany, curvy type of body seen in magazines and on television. At that age, I'd watch my fellow teens on the beach in their bikinis, frolicking, confident of their skin's pulling power. I was wrapped in a towel on the sidelines, rigid with mortification. Modeling was definitely out for me, as I was also cursed with short legs. In order to survive this atrocity, I developed a personality. Only later in life did I see the benefits of having one, but during the low popularity ratings throughout my teens, I was devastated. To compensate, I married a tall person. I didn't even like him that much at the time, but I knew he could bring length to the gene pool so my children wouldn't have to suffer a lifetime of feeling like human dachshunds.

Throughout my life, the women I've hated most were the ones with the flat stomachs. I have never met one with any form of personality. I've always watched them at the gym with hatred in my eyes — on the StairMaster, trying to run away from Mr. Gravity in Lycra bottoms cut so high up that I know the crotch material was lodged somewhere in their liver, their breasts unmovable in Lycra cups and flat stomachs fully exposed. Who has to look good in a gym, and why are they there taking up room? No matter what I wear at the gym, it looks like flabby old pajamas. In the locker room, I always suffer a bout of severe depression as I watch these women undress down to their tawny flesh, moisturize it up (like it needs it), and then strap on their expensive lingerie, which looks like a couple of nicotine patches and some dental floss. I have gained 50 pounds just by standing in front of these women and looking. I am not even that large, but next to these pointy babes, I am a man.

I grew up with these women/girls and hated them even then. I remember a fellow five-year-old called Jody Smith, a golden-blond babe-in-embryo who used to shout to the boys, "Don't throw me in the pool," as they ran to her and threw her into the water. I shouted the same thing, and they never threw me in. In high school, I continued to hate the babes with their million-dollar Ralph Lauren skin and nose jobs flipped up so high, they were face-to-face with their own nostrils. If they sneezed, they could blind themselves. They used to say to me as they clicked their gum, "Oh, do you look like that on purpose?" But the good news is the first to bloom is the first to rot.