Fat Guy Fashion: I Have Knuckles!

Finding clothes to be comfortable in is the easy part. The hard part is being comfortable in my own body.

Hey there, honeys!

Somehow I forgot one of you!

What happened was that today, post Amazing Book Deal*, I was finally able to get back to work I had put on hold for months (it would feel fake to use the “back burner” metaphor when I have never cooked anything requiring more than one burner in my life). And that was: sending out assignment letters to the brand new crop of soon-to-be Beauty Editors for AJPT. But as I was writing the notes this morning, I could only find four writers to email, when I know there were five I had been in touch with. So reach out if you are someone I talked to about writing about beauty here but did not contact this weekend. (Or if you’re someone I didn’t talk to but you want to get in on the beauty writing action now, pretend you and I were in touch about it months ago and I will never remember.) Write to me at Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com, please! And note that I am still looking in particular for at least one writer who identifies as male, and others who are just not cis, white, straight females between the ages of 18 and 65. Nothing against you (and me) cis, white, straight (ish for me) females between the ages of 18 and 65, but we’ve got you covered.

Now sit back and enjoy this personal exploration of a specific bodily revelation I've never seen written about in all my years editing. It's by one of my favorite writers and characters and a guy with enough integrity and loyalty in his little finger (now with knuckle!) for the both of us. I love you all! Herewith, Charlie!

Jane

PS We are one shirt away from hitting a major milestone in Sassy T-shirt sales (the total currently has a four at the beginning and some nines after that). So whoever is the purchaser of that next shirt will be notified and can have the option of having my signature on it free of charge (or better yet, you can NOT have my signature on it, assuming you are like me and would rather die). Either way you can't go wrong by ordering one (or more) because it is a great shirt and the money does go to an amazing cause (via Planned Parenthood and Reproductive Rights For All). Look at it here or in the perfunctory button just below this intro on every post, where I again bother you to buy one. Thank you, Sassy folks!

*Your vibes certainly worked! I’m thrilled and can’t wait to announce to you the results of your goodness. Please tell me in the comments about anything you have coming up or are wishing for so I can do the same for you. I’m really good at it, I swear! Just ask all the people who are happily married, have kids or got their dream jobs that I wished for. I utilize stars and whatever is available to get the job done. You’ll see!

Deciding to take this picture at my co-work space was definitely a choice I regret. It turns out that you get a lot of bizarre looks when taking a selfie of your recently discovered knuckles, but it’s likely not even the weirdest thing I did here this week.

By Charlie Connell

I have knuckles now.

I didn’t have a groundbreaking hand transplant surgery, nor did I just make a back-alley deal to acquire a set of brass ones like a goon in a pulpy Raymond Chandler novel. This is far more mundane than that — I just never had them until one day I looked down and there they were.

My mom used to tell me that I had dimples instead of knuckles, which is pretty cute when you’re a precocious 8-year-old, but a little less cute at twenty-something when your drunk friend won’t stop screaming about how you don’t have knuckles.¹ No matter how hard I balled my fist, the knuckles simply were not there. The disappointing reality that my fists resembled pillows far more than instruments of destruction may go a long way to explaining my general pacifism. One may think that since I’ve always had pretty active hands — I’m talking about typing for a living, don’t be a pervert — that they wouldn’t have been chubby, but they always were. Until they weren’t, and it is freaking me out.

When I started losing weight in a serious manner two years ago, I was already well acquainted with the concept of “never losing it where you need to.” Every time I had previously lost weight, it only came from my ass, which, despite the many insults I’ve received commenting on the voluptuousness of said body part, has always been the one non-fat part of my body.² The shedding of any amount of weight greater than an ounce leads to my pants falling down, so I expected that outcome and acted accordingly.

The surprise came when I started to recognize bones, muscles, and veins I hadn’t considered since sophomore year anatomy. I’d always sort of resembled the Michelin Man, meaning I had smooth limbs that looked like tubes. I don’t mean this in an unkind way — who wouldn’t want to resemble the world’s foremost expert in fine dining and high-performance radial tires? There just wasn’t any definition, and all of my interior parts were well camouflaged.

This is one of the weirdest pictures I have with hours of stories behind it, but I think it does a really good job of showcasing my former smoothness. I was just tubes, man. Also, that shirt has seven hidden wolves on it, you’re really missing out by me crossing my arms here. I’m sorry.

I don’t remember when I first noticed the knuckles show up, but once I noticed, I became fixated on them. I’ve spent countless hours staring down and contemplating them; it was like a peyote trip, but without any of the hallucinations or barfing and all of the zoning out.

I know this makes me sound like a complete moron, but I was blissfully unaware of all of the stuff going on inside my body. I knew that I had veins and arteries, and I knew that they were both superhighways for blood, but I didn’t know that I could see the fuckers popping up on my legs. And I certainly didn’t know that the appearance of all these new body parts would immediately lead to new (and completely ungrounded) fears.