Just because my thinking is magical doesn't mean there's no such thing as luck.

Kate had a great time in Vegas recently. I really love Vegas. I mean really. I've been to casinos in the Caribbean and Europe and nothing compares. I like to gamble and my preference is to shoot craps but I also like to play blackjack and play the slots. I'd like to go to Monaco one day but mostly because I loved the movie The Good Thief. It's not so much about the gambling itself, but rather gambling in the midst of the crazy non-stop glitter party of Vegas. I win a bit but then I don't gamble much. I play $20 at a time, I take frequent breaks and usually leave up about $200 but once I won $400 in one spin at a progressive slot machine.

Besides the casino gambling I have found $10's and $20's in the back of cabs and on the street several times and occasionally I win some money on a scratch-off instant lottery ticket. Did I mention that I like to gamble?

The biggest luck that ever came my way is something that I haven't told many people about so let's keep it between us OK? About 10 years ago I found an old desk on the street. I asked the building superintendent if the desk was garbage or was someone moving in to the building (sometimes you can't tell the difference in NYC) and he told me that an elderly woman had died, her family had cleaned out her apartment and that they lived out of town so I could help myself. "Died in her sleep," he said. I remember that I wondered how he would have known but it's just one of those things that people say to make themselves feel better about their own eventual mortality. As if saying that someone died in pain and awake might somehow jinx their own personal demise.

I brought the desk home and I turned it upside down to clean it and to make sure that there wasn't a termite nest hiding in a drawer. There was a jagged piece of wood attached to a corner with poorly hammered rusty nails. It was obviously not a part of the desk so I ripped it out and tucked away inside the makeshift pocket was a plastic Ziplock baggie with a manila envelope inside. After stacking up all the $100's, $50's, $20's, $10's and $1's I found I had over $2,000. I went back and asked the building super if he knew some way to reach the dead woman's family and he did not. I guess this was her little nest egg. Perhaps she had even forgotten about it. One thing for sure, she didn't need it where she was going.

I told one person about this and her immediate response was, "Did you do everything you could to find her family? You did? Well then I suppose it's OK to keep it." I decided to not tell anyone about the found money after that comment. She questioned the good fortune and looked for a way to justify having it.

I had a hard time understanding this as it had never really occurred to me to work very hard to find anyone connected with that money and truthfully, even if she had been alive I would have had no discomfort about keeping that money. I held that green stack of bills in my hands believing that God had sent it to me to as it was pretty much the exact amount that I needed to pay my back rent and not be evicted. If it came to me then it was meant for me - no luck about it.

But that other viewpoint, the one about questioning whether or not it's OK to have good fortune come my way has crossed my mind in terms of my body image. I have lost weight and thought (believed, hoped, prayed) that I would never be fat again. And then when I gained the weight back I felt like I hadn't deserved it because, as everyone knows, thin is good and fat kills. I was thin and I was a winner. I gained the weight back and I was a loser.

I love my life. I love my strong, healthy, size 18/20 body. I have made my peace with my wild curly hair and hot temper and I continue to make my peace with my body every single day of my life. I deserve everything good that comes my way. And I keep my eyes peeled for desks with hidden compartments.

Random Rants and Dubious Doubts

I am obsessed with food. I just am. That is the truth of my daily existence. I am constantly thinking about food. How much time has passed since I last ate and how soon can I reasonably eat again? What will I eat next? Where am I going to eat? Will I cook or will I order in? I am happy - what can I eat? I am sad - what can I eat?

The question of whether or not I should be obsessed with food is really no one else's business. It is just a fact of my life that I deal with the same way I deal with everything else in my life like flossing and determining the best location in my kitchen for the compost bucket. I just deal with it privately and with as much grace as I can muster.

My point is -- it's my life. I don't get in your face about how much makeup you wear, but since you asked -- I think you are wearing too much foundation. You look like a clown with that heavy pancake on your face, that shade of lipstick makes your skin look green, and heavy blue eyeshadow went out in the 1970's and honestly, it didn't look good back then.

Haters Not Welcome Here. People who post comments on this blog about what other people eat, how much other people eat, whether or not they should eat what they eat, and what type of person is a person who eats whatever it is that you think is the wrong amount of food will just not be tolerated and will be promptly deleted. I am horrified by the virulent comments that I delete on a regular basis. This is a free country and your viewpoints are protected by the constitution. I'd like to remind you that mine are too.

I don't talk much about my eating here and maybe I should but I fear that once I start to be truthful about obsessive eating then I will want to talk about painful memories like the misery of childhood taunting from kids at school, teachers and even my own parents. Once I start to openly write about weight loss and weight gain I will want to talk about all those emotions that we share but that I would rather intellectualize about in terms of society and philosophy. Once I start then there is no going back and I would so much rather tell you about the new Danskin plus size line of Activewear and Dancewear in sizes up to 4x. Finally something to wear to Big Moves classes! Click here to purchase Danskin Women's Dancewear. Enjoy Free Shipping on orders of $75 or more!

Fashion is fun. Fat hatred sucks.

I don't come to your house and make fun of your curtains but now that I've brought it up...you should probably reconsider those sheers in your bathroom.

Am I A Fat Traitor? If I (a) have gained weight and (b) I want to lose weight then am I a traitor to the fat positive cause? I think that many of my body positive blogging friends would say yes. I used to be thinner. I don't hate myself and I actually spend an embarrassing amount of time admiring myself in mirrors. I will tell anyone who stands still long enough to listen that beauty comes in many shapes and sizes, and yet I still think about losing weight. Marilyn Wann told me to stop thinking about losing weight and to surrender all hope of being thinner. Kate Harding told me that my desire to be thin is based on pure fantasy. And yet I still think about losing weight.

I do agree that my desire to be thinner is completely connected with societal pressure and, as Kate shared so eloquently when she wrote The Fantasy of Being Thin I agree with her that I want to be thin because I imagine that I will magically become a more fascinating, more beautiful, more creative woman when my body fits some ideal size and I know that this is complete bullshit. I-agree-completely-with-every-word-Kate-said. But I still want to be thin.

I told my husband last night that "I want my body back." Yes I said that out loud. To a man who sees me - yes he really sees me - and loves me. I have gained 35 pounds since we met. I have no children but I did spend a year caring for my sick father and I just couldn't leave the house, I couldn't work and I stayed home with him and I ate. But my father died two years ago and I have gained more weight since then.

I know my fatosphere blogging friends might be thinking, "You've gained weight? So what?" But you don't understand I've gained 35 pounds! I know that some of my fatosphere friends might be thinking "You've gained 35 pounds? Who are you to complain? I've gained...insert number of pounds here! No matter. Each of us has our own thing about our bodies and this is mine.

I shared with a friend recently that at one time I was so consumed with self-loathing that I had to force myself to say nice things about myself in the mirror before I left the house just to be able to function through the day. And not just nice things about my personality but nice things about my body. I've been asked to write a longer article about that experience for another web site and honestly I've been avoiding it because it's so hard to go there.

Writing about those days will mean reliving them in some way and it is just so damn hard to do that.

Lurkers welcome. I know you are here because Google Analytics tell me you are. You don't post comments but I know you are reading and I thank you. Please don't do anything you don't want to do and if you don't want to comment then please continue to read and not post comments. I just wanted to take a moment to say hello and I appreciate you. I really really do.

Working out the Blogging Kinks

For some deeply mysterious reason (at least to me) my blog feed is not updating in a reliable way. I'm working on it but if you are reading this blog through a feed reader and not receiving regular updates please post a comment and let me know. I am trying to get it all worked out by Monday.

Thanks.

In the meantime I will have the next exciting installment of Toxic Personality Week posted soon.

Toxic Personality Week, Day Three: The Drainers

Day Three of Toxic Personality Week and we are on a roll! Can you feel the negative vibes absolutely melting and morphing into positivity? Woo hoo! Let's keep this one simple shall we?

I love your hair! Where did you get it done? Oh yes...I used to go there until I found a much better place! Of course it costs a fortune but I'm worth it. Yours is nice too.

I have been struggling all day with this. I am actually feeling completely emotionally drained. Each time I try to write out specific examples from my life, as I have previously in my series These are the Toxic People In My Neighborhood, I just stare at the screen, my lower lip trembles and I want to go in the bathroom and cry. I had wanted to post this at 11:00 a.m. but here I am at my laptop at 8:15 p.m. finally pulling it all together. This is the effect of The Drainers.

The phone rings at 2:30 a.m. and it's your friend who has just:
Broken up with a boyfriend/girlfriend or taken their pet to the vet emergency room or lost their job or had a bad dream that reminded them of some crappy childhood memory.

And they are calling you because:
They are sad and need someone to talk to; or they have run out of their prescription anti-depressants and are contemplating suicide and you are the only person in the world who can convince them that life is worth living, or they have just taken a handful of speed/snorted a few lines of coke and are flying on high octane and want to convince you to jump in your car right now and go to Vegas.

You are at a party and:
A friend comes over to tell you that you look really great and asks where you got that fabulous dress/handbag/date. You open your mouth to answer and she launches into a rapid fire description of her own dress/handbag/date. She then leaves the party with your date because she thought that they might be soul mates and she knew that you would want her to be happy.

You arrive for a meeting and:
The co-worker who promised to print and make copies of a report that both of you worked on (and will receive credit for) shows up at the meeting without the report. When you ask her why she didn't bring the copies she laughs at your "faulty" memory, insists calmly that she never made any such promise and tells the now laughing room full of people that you would "lose your head if it wasn't attached."

How to Deal with The Drainers
I think that there is really only one thing that works with these people. Give until you feel good and not until you hurt. When you identify The Drainers in your life be insistent on your boundaries and relate with them much less often if not at all. And as I said on Monday, "Increase your Capacity for Pleasure and Decrease your Tolerance for Pain. And as I said on Tuesday, "Walk away people. You gotta walk away."

Toxic Personality Week, Day Two: The Blamers

blame (bleym) noun
blamed, blam·ing, blames

1. To hold responsible.
2. To find fault with; censure.
3. To place responsibility for (something): He blamed the crisis on poor planning.

Sometimes it's cute, like when my friend's 3 year old was cleaning her room and knocked over the glass of water that she had put on the floor. The kid knows that mom has a rule - no glasses on the floor. Mom knows that the glass will go unnoticed and eventually get knocked over. So it was kind of cute when the kid kicked the glass over and yelled at mom, "It's your fault! That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't made me clean my room!"

Not so bad, right? Not so horribly abusive. But this attitude can be toxic to the person on the receiving end of a blame tirade, whether The Blamer is a child or an adult. And when the same thing happens on a global scale it brings countries to war, "You made me drop a bomb on you because...," brings society to chaos, "You made us tear gas you because...," and rips relationships apart, "You made me cheat on you because... ."

I think that it is harder to identify The Blamer as a toxic personality (TP) than yesterday's featured TP, The Shamer. When an authority figure places blame on you and it feels bad you might want to complain but don't because you might be accused of shirking responsibility or of just not being tough enough. Society encourages you to be tough, to be oriented on pain as a vehicle for personal growth and achievement because after all, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger - right? This seems like such a backward idea to me, but that's a rant for another day.

The Blamers seem to have the idea that they should be able to float through life untouched by pain. They resent the downs in life, believing that someone or some event is preventing them from being up. Silly silly people. By refusing to embrace the experience of being down they never really fully experience being up. By insisting on Blaming others for the things that they are unhappy about they never take real responsibility for themselves and their actions.

And so in the spirit of placing blame on others I shall point the finger at: Toxic Personalities Day Two: The Blamers

I know what I said. The high level executive who would slam his fist onto the board room table during weekly progress meetings and yell at everyone in the room that he absolutely did or did not say whatever was the opposite of what everyone in the room heard. He would insist that they were all conspiring against him, and had gotten together behind his back to lie about the projects they were assigned and their deadlines. He would insist that people had made promises to complete work that had never been discussed and that deadlines should have been met that were never on any calendar. He also would insist that he had never made any of the promises about his own work that everyone heard him make. By the time I quit that job (to spend a month in Amsterdam - but that's another story) I didn't know if I was coming or going.

But it's not my fault - God must hate me.
The ex-boyfriend who thought that being happy was a sign of being shallow and that the pain of chronic depression showed his true depth of character and is what made him a true artist. I dated him for 4 years and when I finally left him it was like I hadn't felt the sun on my skin in that long. Look I feel for you, I do. I get it -- it's hard being you. I just don't care so much that I am willing to lose myself in your misery. Not any more. It is easy to whine about how hard life is and it is hard to find the good when you feel like crap. Listening to you whine about your problems brings me down, which I suspect is your ultimate goal. A discussion on the existence of God as metaphor, metaphysical being, or myth is a conversation for another day. Today I am going to tell you right to your computer screen face that God is not holding a rain cloud of despair over your head. Really. It just is not happening that way.

No one understands how hard it is to be me!. Why are your problems so much worse than everyone else's? Because they're yours that's why. Things are tough all over and you are not the only one who thinks the boss is a terrible manager, or a manager who thinks that your employees don't work hard enough. Or that the bus driver is rude, or your parents didn't get to know the real you. Your parents did the best they could and maybe their best was crap -- I believe you when you tell me that you had an unhappy childhood or an abusive husband, or any other really horrible life experience that might have come your way. But you don't have a right to force your self-pity on anyone within earshot. Save it for therapy.

When The Blamer is a child. It has to be said -- people we are raising a generation of whiny brats and this is a much bigger threat to the future of our country than our waistlines. Manufactured victimization does nothing for our self-esteem. I'm gonna let an expert say it, "Charles Sykes argues that educators' emphasis on egalitarianism and building self-esteem have caused an eroding of true learning in the American classroom." A Nation of Victims.

This goes for adults tooI am a fat woman. I am not thin. I do not blame my mother's encouragement to finish everything on my plate as the reason for my being fat. I have a thin friend who felt guilty as a child for not eating more and she forced herself to eat as much as she could to please her mom. Her mom would pinch her tummy and tsk and say, "too thin" with a sorrowful expression on her face. My grandmother would pinch my tummy and say "zaftik" with a sorrowful expression on her face. Regardless of the outcome in our comparative weights these women who loved us were not abusive.

How to Deal with The Blamers. The idea that life would be peaches and cream, butterflies and sunny days, a non-stop Gershwin romantic musical if only someone else hadn't rained on your passion parade is beyond ridiculous. I believe that my life is absolutely perfect. A perfect life consists of joy and misery, loving myself and having low self-esteem, feeling pretty and feeling ugly, physical health and illness, sharing laughs with friends and fighting with someone I love. Life is an enormous menu of experience available to me at all times and I want it all, even the bad stuff. Walk away my friends, you gotta walk away.

These are the toxic people in my neighborhood.

Celebrating Toxic Personality Week

What do you mean you've never of TP Week? Didn't you get the memo?

I have decided to address the issue of toxic people in my life as a lifetime project. We all know these people personally. We have worked for them, dated them, and are related to them.

So get ready because this is Toxic Personality Week here at A Celebration of Curves. And because I celebrate not only the curves of our beautiful bodies but also the curves that life throws our way, I'd like to identify these people in my life and do my best to see the good in them. I figure it can only make me stronger.

I used to be surrounded by toxic people. I believed that because there was so much wrong with me God had sent these people to point out on a daily basis how insufficient I was as a human being. Gross right? I believed that I deserved the pain of toxic relationships. About 10 years ago – when I turned 30 – I took on a personal pledge to Increase My Capacity for Pleasure and to Decrease my Tolerance for Pain. This has been the single most impactful decision I have ever made in my life and continues on a daily basis to guide me.

I have compiled a list of the types of toxic people that we all encounter and I'm going to share with you how I have chosen to deal with them. Since I have a lot to say on the subject of toxic people I decided to make this a 5 part series.

Today – The Shamers, Tuesday – The Blamers, Wednesday – The Drainers, Thursday – The Gossips, and on Friday my personal greatest nemesis – The Devil’s Advocate or as I prefer to call them - Those People who Argue, Ridicule and Compete Merely to Put You Down and Prove that they are Better. Grrrr…they really burn me up. But for now…

Toxic Personality of the Day: The Shamers

Shamers are obvious from their Judging and Criticizing:
"I wouldn't have done it that way."
"Do you really want to wear that?"
"Let me tell you what's wrong with your idea."

I have known many men and women who think that they would “help” me by pointing out all the things about me that they thought could be improved if only I could be convinced to make a few changes all thanks to their “constructive criticism.”

Shamers Really Do Want to Improve You. The boss that would stand over my desk lecturing me about calories, carbs and the spiritual purity that comes from eating a purely organic vegetarian diet and how totally super it would be for me to realize that I wasn't happy - how could I be since I was fat - and I wouldn't even know how miserable I had been until I lost some weight and improved my skin by buying incredibly expensive veggies and skin care products from New York City's most expensive markets. Honestly! Did she even know what she was paying me? Not much I can tell you that. All while I scarfed down a sandwich in between answering her phones and picking up her dry cleaning. Maybe she didn't know that I knew all about her cocaine habit. By the way - I eat lots of vegetables and my skin is absolutely luminescent.

Shamers Who Are Bigots. The boss who actually stormed over to my desk one day red-faced and shouting so loud that people came out of their offices to see what was going on when she found out I am half-Jewish. I had told a funny Christmas story about my grandparents (which I will tell as a special Christmas Eve post). When she asked if these were my Greek grandparents, I told her that no - my mother’s parents were Jewish. I didn’t think anything of it until the next day when she threw a hissy fit first thing in the morning saying that she had been up all night wondering what else I had lied about and accusing me of being a "secret Jew." I told her that it was no business of hers who my ancestors slept with, picked up my personal items and walked out. She screamed at me in the hallway until the elevator came saying that "people don't like to surprised with a thing like that" and that I had better admit what I was for my own good or "someone might come after you." I asked her if she would feel more comfortable if I came to work wearing a gold star pinned to my shirt. Then I flipped her off and left the building. And she never paid me for my last week of work.

Shamers Who Just Want to Help. The boss who hated my curly hair because “it always looks so messy and everyone is just going to think you got a perm." She decided to help me because I was single and obviously the reason why I couldn't get a date was because of my hair. Excuse me but it just so happens that I couldn't get a date because I was much too busy being consumed with self-loathing at the time. Pretty easy to do with a boss like you. Every day she would come and just look at me so sadly. "Please see a hairdresser. Really, if you would just take a little time in the morning and blow your hair straight and wear a little makeup...it's not like you're that unattractive. Really, it worked for a friend of mine. She started fixing herself up and now she's engaged." Listen up people - my father is from Greece – where people have curly hair and my mother’s family is Austrian, Russian and Romanian – places where people have curly hair, not to mention all the other nationalities that have DNA containing the possibility of curly hair. So the hair – yeah I’m keeping the curls. And for your information they are bouncin' and behavin' and my husband loves them.

The co-worker who thinks no one else can do his/her job. Let's get this straight people -- you are replaceable. You are not the only person who is capable. You can take a lunch break. The company will not fall apart if you step away from your desk. Loudly bragging about how much you are needed does not convince anyone that it is true and pointing out everyone else's mistakes (real or imagined) does not magically hide your own. You are not making friends and one day someone is going to get back at you. Interrupting people to explain to them that they just don't really understand things, publicly ridiculing other's ideas and making derisive comments about someone else's personal matters, ignoring boundaries for the sake of "helping" someone with your superior insight only makes you the most loathsome person in the office.

How to deal with The Shamers. I remind myself that the only people who constantly point out someone else's "faults" are people who are overwhelmed with their own. These people have such low self-esteem that they never really see you at all. All they see is something that they don't like about themselves. I imagine how hard it must be to wake up every day constantly worried that one day someone will see through their clever facade and see how horrible they really are. they aren't willing to work on themselves and are using other to non-confront their own fears of fitting in. And then I am thankful that I have learned to like myself enough to enjoy people.

Looking at Art Thursday

This is my first in a series of Thursday posts on art.

My apologies for the lack of work you are going to get done while looking at these images of artist Duane Hanson, via the Saatchi Gallery in London. They have an amazing website featuring contemporary artists, seen in their permanent and traveling exhibits. The Saatchi is only more enjoyable in person.

Duane Hanson

Since the early 1970’s Duane Hanson has been making startlingly lifelike sculptures of middle America accomplished through a complex process of casting from live models, recreated in bronze or fiberglass resin.

His sculptures focus on "ordinary" people just moving through their day. People you might not notice walk past you. The people Hanson studied weren't required to be pretty, although some are. They are wearing unfashionable clothes and often a posture of exhaustion. These are people who carry the burden of life on their faces and Hanson shows us a moment of their life with dignity and respect. I find his work much more interesting than life-like wax figures of celebrities.

I had seen an exhibit of Hanson's work when I was a kid and one day while I was walking through galleries at a museum in Richmond, VA, I saw a guy sitting on a bench that looked exactly like one of Hanson's pieces. I actually let out a little yelp when the utterly still "sculpture" stood up and walked out of the room.

I hope you enjoy Duane Hanson's work and I am eager to hear your comments.

My husband agrees with everything I say.

If I say something nice about my body/appearance he will absolutely agree by saying something wonderful and romantic like, "My wife is the hottest piece of ass." And then he'll grab me. See, isn't he charming? Seriously if he was on his deathbed and I was leaning in close to hear his final whispered words -- he would reach up and grab my boobs. He's a romantic, what can I say.

And if I say something that isn't so nice like, "I can't believe I ate so many mini crab cakes and mini quiches and mini spinach pies and crostini with olive tapenade and glasses of champagne at that party. Man what a pig." He will agree with that as well by saying something sweet and supportive like, "yeah I know you really are a pig. No wonder you're so fat. You know it's very simple - calories in...calories out." And then he laughs and laughs.

It has definitely made me more aware of what I say about myself when he's in the room. As I recently said in a comment at Shapely Prose, "it's really very loving. If you like your love with sharp teeth."

Me and Fillyjonk both have a date New Year's Eve

Fillyjonk and I? Oh well..

It is just not possible for me to sit still and listen to Fillyjonk brag about her engagement bliss and read all the engagement stories accompanying her bragging, without doing some bragging of my own. After all I am still a newlywed and enjoying wedded bliss with my own big hunk of manliness! Aren't we cute? And for anyone who wants to know, here are the details of how we met.

In the above picture, I'm wearing the Lane Bryant black velvet dress seen in the sidebar. Usually, I would tell a full figured woman that an empire waist is a complete no-no. Tight right under the boobs and then a lot of fabric falling in a full sweep away from the body does not accentuate but rather makes you look like you are wearing a Muumuu on the set of Maude, but something about this dress works, at least for me. Perhaps because the under-boob gather is wide, perhaps because it's not too full -- whatever the reason it works and I thinks it looks fabby! It skims my hips perfectly and while I do think it shows a bit too much decolletage for the office party, it was just right for the fancy fundraiser we attended last night.

So tell me ladies, what are your holiday plans?

Santa Got Run Over By 18-wheeler, Jogging Home From My House Christmas Eve

Please visit the enormously entertaining discussion at Shapely Prose on the matter of the U.S. Surgeon General declaring that Santa is too fat and must trim down to save our children from the horrors of fat. Oh how I love ya Katie!

My comment on this:

Coming soon to a theater near you!

Santa Claws and his Ninja Reindeer.
A new and improved cybertronic Santa on the busiest night of the year with top level clearance at SAS, Mossad, FBI and MI5.

And wait until you see the action figure! The new “Randy Santy” comes complete with washboard abs, on-board missile control system with lasers,bionic implants (we can’t tell you where but Mrs. Claws has been getting a real workout lately…wink wink nudge nudge) all so he can take on the Axis of Evil while delivering toys to good girls and boys…but not the fat ones. Because fat kills. Everybody knows that.

Shameless Self Promotion

Full Figured Shopping Site Soon to Re-Launch!

I am working full time getting the new and improved This Lush Life: Online Mall for Fuller Figures ready for launch. Gone the purple (well maybe I'll keep just a little), gone the circles. In it's place a much simpler site design making it easier to navigate. There will be more of everything for your shopping pleasure. More full figured fashion and more categories like, Gourmet Food, Home Organization, Shoes and Accessories and Travel. Coming soon. Really. That's what my web-designers say...soon.

As always I will only feature plus size clothing from web sites using plus size models. So you won't find those catalogs that advertise that they sell "Size 14W-Size 44W" exclusively but insist on using size 4 models. Seriously people -- stop shopping there. I will have more to say about this subject soon.

With all the hubbub (is that a real word?) I have fallen behind on my reading. I've been traveling a lot as you know and I've barely perused any blogs, newspapers or magazines for several months while traveling to events to meet you -- my beloveds.

So rather than pretend that I was the first to think of commenting on this or that, today I will be shamelessly culling postings from bloggers that I admire. Those people who take the time to read the news and then comment on their blogs and don't use their own readers as an excuse for being too busy to post. Like I just did.

---

This piece of information was totally stolen from Full Figure Plus posted on November 28, 2007.

Monif C., has been nominated for New York Citysearch: Best Women's Clothing. This is a great opportunity to support plus size women's clothing boutiques in New York City.

My friends living in other parts of the country are so surprised when I tell them that there are only a couple. Monif C., and Lee Lee's Valise. We don't even have a Torrid. Unlike my lucky friend Kate...living it up in Chi Town and shopping at Torrid anytime she wants. Although she longs for Marshall Fields.

And for a bit of bragging (but what else is new?), this past summer Monif let me try on a dress that had been designed specifically for Queen Latifah, which by the way, fit perfectly so 'Tifah sweetie, if you're reading this and you feel like cleaning out your closet...gimme a call ok?

More items from other blogs coming soon!

Emma's Dilemma

Emma is on a very restricted diet.

Savannah College of Art and Design