Delusions of Grande

*Part 2 (Or: He's Not Done YET? Or: Delusions of Grande-er)
So the entirety of the outside world may not consider me as desirable as the inside world of gaining. So what? Didn't I spend enough time worrying about what people thought of me in high school? Clearly not, based on the accidentally-dyed-orange fro and overalls with collared velour shirt look I was rocking back in the day. That's right: rocking. I loved it, even if it put me outside the A Group in high school ("Oh my God! We weren't in the C Group, were we?" "Oh God no; that was, like, all the losers and honor students.") And corny as it is, isn't what we think of ourselves really the most important at the end of the day? As the wise sage RuPaul says, "If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?"

We know the fact we're fat and getting fatter is most attractive indeed, but how do we gauge our own attractiveness when it's so tied to how fat we are and that's a hard thing to gauge? (Note to self: Gage could be a hot name for a six-packer) Most growing boys I talk to (and I'm no exception) have a really hard time telling how big we are/appear to others. For the most part, we tend to see ourselves as smaller than we appear to the general population. Occasionally I come across the starting gainer who has put on 12 pounds and thinks he's suddenly a blimp and get a little chuckle, but I've been there. When it's the first time venturing above your normal weight and it's the biggest you've ever been, it's huge relatively speaking. Then I stop chuckling and apologize for being amused. That could very well be how guys who've put on 150 pounds see someone like me: aw, isn't it cute he thinks he's a big boy now**.

There's just no standard, objective formula to determine how fat someone is. There are so many variables: height, bone heartiness (some people really are big-boned!), fat location location location, softness vs firmness, and Capricorn-ness vs. Piscesness. At least in our happy little family, BMI is fairly widely considered a moo point (ask Joey Tribbiani). Two guys can be similar heights, similar weights, and both carry the bulk of their bulk in their bellies, yet one looks more like the Michelin Man and one can look closer to Violet Beauregarde. So how do we go about determining our own size? Or do we? Perhaps we don't have a set "bigness" and it can ONLY be subjective. My hair, for instance, has been described as blonde (by people with hair darker than mine) and as brown (by people with hair lighter than mine). Is either wrong? No, they're just both right to different people.

So where do we turn? The scale? Pants size? Note regarding pants size: when I hold up my pants to fold or hang, they look pretty darn wide to me, but I have convinced myself they magically shrink to a slightly-above-average width when I actually put them on. I find photographs to be helpful, but even then I tend to see how much bigger I am than I used to be, so they're more for comparison's sake than this. is. how. fat. I. am. now. How about the mirror? Mine obviously lies, showing me a previous version of myself; the mirror and photographs never seem to agree on my size. I tend to turn to other guys. I don't mean to tell me how fat I am. **My personal gainer's paradox is that I want so very much to be told how fat I am (and for the fat-caller to mean it) but then I don't believe I'm as fat as he says I am. Go figure (it out: gratuitous call out of the blog name alert!). No, what I mean is I find it helpful to see my body next to another fatboy's and see where I fall on the fatness spectrum next to him. "Oh, I'm bigger than that?" or "Guess I've got some work to do in Zones 2, 5, and 6B!". In my perfect world, I would locate my exact body double, someone my height who carried the same weight in the same way, so I could look at my own fatness on another person, at 360 degrees. But for lack of a perfect world, I'll have to settle for that oh-so-fun game: Am I bigger than him? Is he bigger than me? His ass is bigger than mine, right? My gut is rounder than his, isn't it? Now that's what I call a Saturday!

For the record, I don't mind not having a particularly accurate body image, as I do find it helps keeps me motivated to keep going. I can't imagine being in much of a rush if I envisioned myself a foot bigger around than I actually am! How about you? How do you determine your own bigaciousness? Or for those who may be closer to the encouraging end of the spectrum, do you determine a gainer's?