Talking About a Weighty Issue

When I went home to Las Islas Filipinas a few months back, one of the first things many of my friends told me was how skinny I've become. Make that perhaps 90 percent of them.

I know talking about weight is really impolite and sometimes crass. You know, it's one of the few "un-mentionables", like, I don't know, money and whether you like PGMA or not.

Perhaps among friends weight-talk is all right. BUT not on the first second of meeting each other after more than a year, chai mai?

Let me remind you however that this is Las Islas Filpinas where most people have a BMI of... OK, let's just say that we really have a different weight standard. To be healthy equals being plump.

In the Tercera Mundo of Las Islas Filipinas, having a skinny frame is tantamount to being unhealthy. So when my friends first saw me the follow-up question would always be: nagkasakit ka ba? Or, kumakain ka pa ba?

I always tried my best to stop my eyes from rolling when this happened. I didn't even tell them what they actually needed to hear, which is: Look at your fat ass, dahling.

(Hi amigas, I love you all, I really do!)

Meanwhile, when I first came to BangCock one of the things I immediately noticed was how skinny people here are. At that time I was already considered freakishly thin in Las Islas but in BKK I realized I was pretty, how shall I say this... obese.

One of my first undertakings then was obviously to lose weight, which I was successful in.

Achieving a slim figure in BKK is really easy coz meals here do not constitute heaps of carbohydrates say compared to Las Islas Filipinas where people eat horrifying quantities of rice and bread.

After all, Las Islas is the biggest importer of rice in the world. Need I explain further?

A few weeks after arriving in BKK, I already fit into those uber popular skinny jeans that every guy in BKK wears. For a change I felt quite normal. *Sob.*

-- Cue in "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. --

It baffles me that many people do not still understand that some lucky bitches are just naturally skinny without being necessarily unhealthy, much less having an eating disorder. Blame it on the proponents of "healthy body image" *rolls eyes* who think that a "real figure" is having, I don't know, Oprah's body proportions.

What then do they call our sinuous, cadaverous, emaciated, and gaunt frames: imaginary??? Do we look like celestial beings to them?

No dahling, we skinny people happen to have "real figures" as well. We are as real as your double chin and those rolls of flesh spilling out of your gut. We are as real as your cellulite and stretch marks.

I don't understand why being bony is considered offensive.

Do not blame us if our mere presence makes your self-esteem plummet straight to the core of the earth. *Shrugs fragile shoulder blades.*

It is really not our fault if we have prominent clavicles, is it? Nor can you blame us if we have visible ribs, all eight of them on each side and are named after supermodels.

These days, out of delicadeza, I do not even tell my friends anymore that I buy jeans from the women's section coz nothing, and I mean NOTHING, just fits at the men's selection.

My target is really to shop at the teen's department.

But unfortunately age is betraying me. Well, simply put, I don't have the metabolism of a twelve-year old anymore.

When I turned eighteen two years ago I realized that sadly I cannot just shove anything into my mouth. Those were the good old days. So recently I started to spit instead of swallow.

Ooops, where was I?

OK, the point of this post is not to lambaste people of the, uhm, fleshy kind. In fact I have dozens and dozens of friends who are rather, uhm, plump and I love each one of them as much as my scrawny and diaphanous, bordering-on-the-invisible, friends. I swear!

Also, many of my heroes in life are considerably, uhm, portly, such as Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour. OK, maybe not.

How about... uhm... Oprah! Yes, Oprah.

And honestly, I have lately been listening to Adele and The Gossip.

The point of this post is to placate my amigas in Las Islas Filipinas that I'm really OK. Lumpy or gaunt, I'm the same delusional bastard you've always loved.

-- Cue in Bella Flores laugh. --