PILLSBURY DOUGH GIRL

Here I sit, my stomach sore on the inside and painfully sore on the outside. “Why is it more sore outside than inside,” you ask? “Well, because I spent all day getting pinched by women,” I reply.

Today (5/9), my food poisoning finally came up at work as a topic of conversation. I had a longer day, as it was Wednesday, and was feeling quite tired.

“Why are you so tired?” one of my colleagues asked.

“I had food poisoning that was quite bad on Sunday. I’m still really wiped out. I only started eating late yesterday.”

“Food pointing?”

“Shiwu zhongdu” I explained “food poisoning” in Chinese.

To which, all the women in my office squealed with delight as all the men flinched with concern. Granted, I heard the squealing at first and though, I was quite certain it sounded like delight, I wasn’t totally sure what was causing it.

“Surely not my food poisoning,” you say and I would say, “Yes, I thought that too but, unfortunately we would be wrong.”

And how do I know we would be wrong? Because the women in my office all leapt up from their seats and pinched my stomach fat, squealing with delight.

“Lose fat! Lose fat!” They chanted as they all pinched my belly fat hard enough to leave bruises on my already-abused-to-the-hilt stomach.

Really, not since grade school locker room antics has the rhythmic chanting of women standing around me made want to cry. I’m not given to being raw like that (no, public school bitches beat the “raw” out of you pretty well) but being as tired as I am from lack of food and water and being as in pain as I am from trying to recovery, this complete blindsiding knocked me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting sympathy in simply sharing my story but I certainly wasn’t expecting assault.

And then, as I went down to make the obligatory monthly visit to the man-who-thinks-he’s-in-love-with-me, I ran into several more female colleagues who must have just found out about my food poisoning as they proceeded to squeeze my belly fat and squeal with delight about my “lose fat!”


Not to be overly blatant, but I had FOOD POISONING. You know, the potentially life threatening depletion of nutrients, electrolytes and fluids from you body which can send your heart into arrhythmia and give you a heart attack, to name the first of the myriad of issues this less-than-pleasant illness causes. As much fun as organ damage or failure is, I’ll pass, thanks. That whole Karen-Carpenter-look never really did it for me.

The female response? Not the masculine response (which I got on several occasions) of outright anger that it was a “serious illness” and “why didn’t I call [him]?!” because if something had gone wrong no one would know how to help or what to do but rather, “Yay! Christmas and your birthday came together this year; you’ve lost fat!”

And they were so overcome with joy that I’ve got the myriad of bruises to prove it. All day long, women gleeful the way women are about your first menses in those coming-of-age movies would pinch my stomach fat and smile at me with that, “Now you’re a woman” smile as they left their two marks on me.

What. The. Fuck?