It was 9pm on a Wednesday and I was standing in line at Fairway on east 86th street.

My skin was glistening and my clothes were clinging to my body with perspiration because I had just put in major work at the gym. In my cart was a roasted chicken, 4 apples, a bag of spinach, two bottles of seltzer water and a box of frozen fruit bars. As I stood in line I was giving myself a mental high five for 1.) a super intense workout and 2.) walking by the nutella without tossing a jar into my cart.

That’s when I saw her… a fairway worker swooping through the aisles with a tray of cookies. “Free cookies!” she called out as she weaved her way towards the registers explaining to the clerks that the bakery had extras and she just hated the idea of throwing them away.

Before I continue this story, let me give you a visual (for those of you who don’t live in NYC). Walking into a grocery store on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is like walking into a Lululemon commercial. The place is swarming with men in gym shorts and women in yoga pants and racerback tanktops and it would be safe to say that I was the biggest girl in the store.

Of course, I didn’t notice any of this until the woman with the big tray of cookies began to make her way down my line. With every step she took, she offered a cookie to the customers in line on either side of her… they all declined by holding up a hand or shaking their heads and she moved right along to the next person. Then she got to me.

“Cookie?”

“No thanks,” I reply.

“Oh c’mon… you know you want one!”

“I’m not hungry, really.”

“They’re freeeesh!” she says, then she takes the tray of cookies and waves them under my nose so that I can smell them.

“I just finished a really good workout, I don’t want to ruin it,” I say.

“I won’t tell anyone…” she whispers with a wink.

I step forward with the line as I get closer to the check out counter. The woman with the tray of cookies steps backwards so that she is still next to me. At this point some of the clerks are watching.

“Will you please tell your coworker to stop harassing me?” I say to them, half-joking.

“Yo! she said no…” one of them says.

Finally, the woman dances away, but I’m livid. She didn’t push anyone else in that line to have a cookie and when I told her that I’d worked out, she attempted to bond/conspire with me by sabotaging me.

One of the hardest things for a Plus Size Princess to do is turn down food. Not because we can’t say “no”, but because people don’t allow us to say no. If I order light on a date, I’m told by men not to “be shy”… if I take small portions at a barbecue someone will whisper Girl, I know you want more than that!! in my ear and now I’ve got chicks chasing me down in the grocery store to shove cookies down my throat.

I know it stems from different things for different people; the first ways men show they can provide is usually through lavish meals/wine/desserts. Some people want to make sure you’re comfortable “being yourself” and that you feel at home around them so they encourage you to overindulge at their functions.

The woman with the tray of cookies was different though- almost like that skinny pal who orders something “bad” when you go to dinner… asks if you want to share it, then takes two bites, announces she’s full and leaves you to finish the chocolate cake/french fries/creme brule by yourself. I want to look at people like that and ask… do you want me to stay fat? But I’m scared that the answer might be yes. I’m nervous that deep down they feel like the bigger I am, the smaller they are.

I hate to sound paranoid, but things like this keep happening… so I’m thinking it can’t be a coincidence. The only thing I can do is stay aware and not fall into the traps. Go home, eat my roasted chicken and veggies. Drink my seltzer and have a frozen fruit bar for dessert which is much better for me than a cookie.

…Thoughts?? Does stuff like this ever happen to you?

Somebody “pooted” in Zumba class on Saturday… and let me start by saying it was not me.

About halfway through the hour long class, we were doing choreography where we turned in a circle with one leg in the air. I made my turn and by the time I was facing the mirrors again, I wanted to gag.

Something you should know about me is that I’m a bit prissy when it comes to bodily functions. A lot of my friends have the “everybody does it” mentality when it comes to matters of the tummy, I do not. When Robert tries to talk about poop or farting, I just look at him with doe eyes and say “I don’t do that, sorry” he just laughs and rolls his eyes.

Sometimes I wonder if I’d have an easier time with “tummy talk” if I were skinny. I mean, when Cameron Diaz burps and farts, somehow its cute. On the other hand how many movies and TV shows have we seen where fat people fart… and fart… and fart? How many times is that the punchline for fat-suit humor? Its referenced so much that I think people assume its true.

When I was a chubby little PSP, I remember being in a group on the floor with my classmates. Out of nowhere someone cried out “ew, CeCe!” I had no idea what they were blaming me for- until a foul odor permeated our area. Someone had pooted and again, it was not me. But somehow when the smell hit the air, it was my name that the kids called.

Last year, I was a counselor for a church youth trip. On the charter bus as the kids were drifting off to sleep, I went to adjust my seat but the latch was broken. It sent the back of my seat flying into the lap of one of the girls and I said “oh excuse me!”, what I didn’t realize is that in the silence of the drowsy bus the seat also made a “farting noise”. So me saying “oh excuse me!” sent the teens into a fit of laughter. I, of course, was mortified.

As a Plus Size Princess, when someone farts anonymously, I get anxious that everyone assumes it was me. (Does anyone else feel this way? or am I just too prissy for my own sanity?)

Anyway, back to the “Zumba Poot”. Long after the smell was gone, I found that my annoyance was still hanging in the air. The class was packed and I was towards the back, so it could have been anyone but as I continued dancing, my annoyance just didn’t go away. Maybe it was the blood flowing to my brain from Zumba that made me so clear headed about the whole thing… I knew I didn’t poot and that’s all that mattered.

Living in NYC, I’m learning that people love to fart in a crowd. Zumba class… a crowded subway train… in line at the grocery store. Even though I feel like everyone looks at me, there’s nothing I can do about it.

I guess I could yell out “IT WASN’T ME!”, but that would just be weird.

Yesterday I was having a “cute day”.

I wore a frilly white blouse, tucked into a grey pleated skirt with a burgundy belt and my favorite suede heels pulling it all together. I also wore a pair of fishnet stockings which created the perfect flirty secretary style outfit.

At around 9:30, Robert called my extension, “I want to show you something, can you come by my desk?”

“Sure,” I said. I reapplied my lip gloss, ran my fingers through my hair and stood up from my desk. Dating a guy that works in my office makes having a “cute day” even more fun. As I made my way to his department on the other side of the building, I had a little pep in my step.

My heels click-click-clicked on the granite floors.

But between each click there was another noise… a SWOOSH.

click-SWOOSH-click-SWOOSH.

I stood still to stop the SWOOSH from echoing down the hallway.

I took a few more steps, slowly but the noise was just drawn out click-SWOOOOOOSH-click. My full thighs were betraying me once again with dreaded Chub-Rub!

I thought I had experienced all the Chub-Rub I could handle with my torn jeans and chaffed skin, but apparently, there’s more. Outside in noisy New York City, the noise my thighs were made as they rubbed against each other was masked. But in the quiet halls of my office, the lycra in my tights was announcing my arrival by SWOOSHING loud enough to be heard before I even turned the corner to Roberts desk!

Normally, I would just turn the tights inside out like I do with my spanx, but with fishnets it doesn’t make a difference.

For the rest of the day I tried not to walk around too much, not to mention I had to cancel all of my secret ninja surprise attacks for the day (thanks Lori on fb for reminding me). Thigh Swoosh killed my swag a tiny bit, but once I got out of the quiet office, it wasn’t an issue anymore and I went back to having a “cute day”… Plus Size Problems!

Has this ever happened to you?

As Robert and I continue to date, I’ve started thinking about the type of girlfriend I want to be. Not to him, but to my female friends. There are so many annoying things my friends do when they’re in relationships, but I don’t think they notice it because they’re not single. So in the spirit of last months Big Girl Rant, today I give you: A Single Girl Rant.

Because TBGB is such a personal blog, I didn’t tell very many people about it when I first started. As time went by, I decided to share it with three close friends. All three of these friends were in serious relationships and although I was very specific about not wanting everyone to know about and/or read my blog… all three of them told their boyfriends.

Of course, they told their boyfriends about TBGB because they were excited about it, proud of my writing and wanted to be the bearer of good news; but it wasn’t their news to tell. If I wanted their boyfriends to know what I was doing, I would have told them myself!

Sometimes I feel like people in relationships need to be reminded of a few things:

• You are an individual!
• You are my friend/confidant, your boyfriend is not
• You are in a relationship with your boyfriend, but I am not
• You may feel the need to tell your boyfriend everything, but I don’t
• You may trust your boyfriend, but I don’t (I barely know him!)

It takes a lot to build a friendship. Trust, vulnerability and sharing aren’t things that happen over night. Those are things you earn, and sleeping with my friends isn’t a quick pass into my personal life.

Its frustrating because once I figured out that my friends were sharing things I asked them not to with their boyfriends, I suddenly had to reevaluate what I decided to share with them moving forward and that was awful. I had to accept the fact that things that used to be sacred, weren’t anymore.

The crazy part is, now that Robert and I are dating I find myself wanting to update him on my friends lives. I feel like such a hypocrite, but he knows a lot of them, has met their boyfriends and sometimes I want to mention things that are going on, but then I remind myself what it feels like. I know when my friends confide in me, they don’t expect things to go farther than me, and if course… I know how it feels.

I don’t know… maybe my expectations are too high and this is just what happens when people are in relationships.

Has this happened to you? What do you think?

Two things happened to me last week that bothered me, I mean really bothered me. I’m going to give you the two scenarios and then I’m going to try my best to explain why I was so annoyed:

Thursday: My girlfriend Kayla invited me to have drinks with a few girls from her grad school program. We met up at a hotel bar for happy hour and Kayla, who just moved to New York from California, was asking us about New York Men. As we all shared our thoughts on men in the city that never sleeps. Suddenly, one of her friends paused the conversation, “wait a minute… Kayla, what kind of guys are you attracted to?”

Kayla laughed, “well, that’s the problem! The guys that have been approaching me since I moved here are not my type!”

“What’s your type?” I asked.

“I really prefer a guy that’s kind of… round, like… chubby,” she took a breath “the guys in New York obviously spend a lot of time in the gym, which is great. But, I like a guy with love handles!”

“Oh,” her friend stammered, “that’s not at all what expected you to say! That’s weird… you like chubby guys even though you’re like HOT!” then her friend looked at me “I mean- not that hot people can’t be attracted to chubby people- but, I dont know that’s interesting!”

Fast Forward to Sunday: I was catching up on my DVR and lo and behold there was a plus size Millionairess on Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker named Robin. If you didn’t see the episode, you should watch it. Robin is pretty clueless which makes for the kind of train wreck episode that you can’t stop watching. I’m not going to recap the entire episode but in a nutshell, Robin is only interested in dating someone that is super attractive. Common interests? A good heart? those things are not important to her. She just wants someone who looks like Matthew Mcconaughey.

When the “Matchmaker”, Patti, heard that Robin ( who’s easily a size 24) wanted to date someone who looked like Matthew Mcconaughey her reaction was to focus on how “superficial” Robin was and then to ask what made Robin think that she “deserved” a Matthew Mcconaughey look-alike.

*deep sigh*

After these two incidents, my mind has been swirling with “Why’s”. I’m going to try to organize them here, hopefully I make sense, here goes:

• Why can’t a Plus Size Princess “deserve” an attractive guy? I would love to know the equation to find out who “deserves” who as a mate. The word “deserves” implies that attractive people are worth more as human beings, which is absurd. People are soooo much more than their looks! I believe that I deserve a guy with a good heart, winning personality who cares about me and if that guy happens to look like a Calvin Klein model and I don’t, that doesn’t mean I deserve him any more/less than the next girl. If you end up watching the episode, you’ll see that the most attractive guy in the room was not a good person! So, no one really deserved to be with him.

• Why is it that the minute a plus size girl expresses ANY kind of physical desires in her mate, she’s considered superficial or shallow? I know that being overweight is considered by many to be the ultimate human offense, but… when a woman gains weight she doesn’t have to gain an “I’ll take what I can get” mentality. We all have things that turn us on/off and that’s okay. I’ll tell you what Plus Size Princesses do “deserve”: PSP’s deserve to be in a relationship where there is MUTUAL ATTRACTION. A fat girl with preferences is not “picky”, “shallow” or “superficial”.

• Why was the idea of my friend Kayla (who is gorgeous, with the perfect hour glass shape) liking a chubby guy so outrageous? She didn’t say she liked serial killers, she said she liked love handles! Give me a break.

• Why is it that even though I have strong opinions about this stuff… I’m still surprised when hot guys flirt with me at the gym?

Thoughts???

I was standing at the bus stop last Saturday wearing a new pair of jeans. As I glanced at my reflection in a store window, I realized that my new jeans were about a size too big and I needed to exchange them. As I thought about whether or not I still had the receipt a strangers voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Girl, stop looking at yourself in the window- you look fine!”

I looked over and a woman I’d never seen before in my life was staring at me, “YOU LOOK FINE!” she said again. I never know how to respond to strangers yelling at me, so I stayed quiet. Of course, she took my silence as permission to continue talking to me, “you look like you’ve lost a lot of weight, ‘cuz your jeans are REAL BAGGY in the leg area! GOOD FOR YOU!” she said, then she gave me a wave and crossed the street.

I think one of the most annoying things about being a bigger girl is that people think its okay to comment on my body. Men think its okay to say “Hey Big Girl!” instead of “Excuse me Miss…” Friends think they can grab your love handles or back rolls… I’ve had strangers stop to ask me what size I wore because they were “shopping for a friend” who’s around my size. I even had a coworker who would refer to me as “Big Sexy” all the time. Um… why couldn’t I just be “sexy”?

I can’t prove it, but I also think people touch me more because I’m big. I worked in retail during college and I found that customers were constantly reaching out and petting me, nudging me, etc. it was very strange.

Its almost as if because I take up more space than other girls, people think I’m suddenly public domain. I’m not!

Its MY Body… MINE!

Ever since the thermometer rose above 55 degrees I have been annoyed. I like warm weather, I like wearing little dresses and hanging out in the park. What’s annoying me is that when the weather gets warm, all of the couples in New York City decide to come out of hiding.

When the summer comes, suddenly the city is flooded with pairs of people holding hands on the street, cuddling in the subway and dry humping in the park (no, seriously… I’ve seen it and its not cute). I had to wonder where these couples were during the coldest parts of the year. I mean, when I slip on a cute outfit and then cover it up with three layers of clothing just so I can trudge through the snow to meet my friends for a drink, the train is full of small clusters of single people doing the same thing.

Then I realized that couples don’t go out in the winter because they don’t have to! They stay home. Alone. Together.

Maybe that’s why, when they make their warm weather debut, they are beyond excited to rub it in my face show their coupledom to the world. I guess anyone who’s been inside their apartment since November would be a little overzealous to take their love to the streets and in theory I understand that, but as a single girl in New York City, it makes me sick!

The other day I rode the 2 train from 14th to 72nd street sitting across from a couple who was happy just to play with each others fingers and a fit of rage (and maybe jealousy) took over me. I found their simple affection nauseating and unnecessary even though I love love! I’m happy when my friends find someone and when I see people making each other happy. But these first few weeks of warm weather have been brutal for a girl who isn’t in a relationship.

I had to ask myself if it was the couples that were annoying me or the fact that I’m not in a relationship that’s driving me nuts. I have to be honest, I think its the latter. If given the chance, I would probably be one half of an obnoxious summer couple in a heart beat (minus the dry-humping, ’cause that’s just weird). After all, I shave my legs every other day during the summer and it would be nice to know that at some point someone was going to touch them.

You might get mad at me for this one, but here goes….

I’ve been noticing a trend among the big girls that I see in New York City and its not good. Whether I’m on 125th, in Soho or navigating the sea of tourists on 34th street; lately, if I’ve seen a big girl her style catches my eye (and not in a good way).

These days when I see a group of girls, the big girl is the one who’s outfit is over the top. The abundance of piercings, extreme extensions, crazy hair dye, unflattering leggings in awful colors, offensive cleavage, color contacts… etc. is mind boggling!

Just so we’re clear, when it comes to this issue, I’m not sitting on my high-fashion-horse looking down. I’ve been that girl. I’ve died my hair, pierced my nose and while I love my boobies, I’m sure I’ve been a little over zealous in sharing them with the world. But ultimately, I realized that I was doing instant changes to my looks and ignoring the one change that I actually needed to spend time on, my weight.

I was in a bar bathroom about a year ago and there was an advertisement for a local gym next to the mirror. It said “Putting on Lipstick Wont Make You Thinner!” So many PSP’s are attempting to use external things to distract from their weight and it doesn’t work!

That piercing wont make you thinner!
Having hair extensions wont make you thinner!
Changing your eyes from brown to blue wont. make. you. thinner!

For the record, I think you can be fat and fabulous (duh!), you can be fat and fashionable (double duh). I’m talking to those of us who’ve become fat fashion victims. It’s like, instead of embracing trends and personal style we’re being overtaken by these things. Its an easy trap to fall into because it’s instant gratification. Hearing “you look cute today” feels good, especially if we feel like our weight keeps people from seeing us a certain way… but lets keep it all in perspective.

Because at the end of the day when we take out our piercings, fake hair and contacts… if we don’t feel comfortable in our own skin- it doesn’t matter.