I'm a Survivor

I know everyone has those days when they think that losing weight and getting fit is impossible. I hate those days. I really hate those days when I've done everything I'm supposed to do, and it's only my insecurities that make me feel that way. I've never been a skinny girl, and I've harbored an unspoken hatred for those that are ever since I was old enough to consider body image (that is, the most hated year of public education--6th grade).

I rarely go to the gym before 9 p.m. Tonight, for some reason, I decided to go an entire hour early. An hour. 60 minutes of marked standard time. You wouldn't think the spanse of a decent primetime tv show could make that much difference in the use of a college gym that is usually unoccupied. But whereas at 9 p.m., the gym hosts only the few frat boys trying to bulk up their keg stand arms, at 8 p.m., the gym is full of skinny bitches that obviously don't need to be busting their ass at the gym. And no, these are not the girls like me, who have struggled with their weight all of their lives and have gotten it under control. These are not the girls who are struggling to walk up three flights of stairs without getting winded, and these are most certainly not the girls who even think what goes in their mouths (read that last clause as you will...). These are the girls who, by some unfair gift of the universe that apparently worships perky tits, have never and probably will never need to worry about their weight. These are the girls who while on the treadmill, use the mirrored wall to ogle the frat boys bulking up their biceps.

In order to make it through this night, I had to remind myself of the SlackMistress' approach to obnoxious people in the gym--I had to pretend I was going to make it to the bunker protecting me from the zombies before they did. And because I'm approximately double these girls' size (I think my boobs weigh more than their brains combined) I imagined it a race of endurance. And I won. At the end of the race, I'm sweating buckets, I stink like a boy, and my face matches my horrible red mesh shorts bought on sale at a discount store, but I won, dammit, and I get first dibs on the MREs. The skinny bitches on the other hand, are wearing $45 running shorts, t-shirts that are obviously bought for the express purpose of working out, and they're not even breathing hard. One girl was apparently so unphased by her use of the elliptical that she shook her freshly washed hair out of an ouchless ponytail holder. Seriously. She shook it better than a Pantene model. Another particularly skittish group of girls flitted from machine group to machine group, obviously searching for the better angle to view the frat-boys. They giggled. Giggled, I tell you. Who the hell giggles on a step-machine?

Keep faith, Ashley, when the zombies attack, those who giggle and model their hair will be eaten, and those who bust tail on the treadmill will be forced to reproduce with Neruda-quoting bodybuilders.