It was another one of those nights, where I found myself surrounded by Japanese girls, jockin real hard for the affections of (undeserving? This time, not the case, thank God) foreign men and then there's me, sandwiched between self-loathing and feelings of resentment for the behavior of the obnoxious yet attractive Japanese girls. It's not often I look at myself in a mirror and detest what I see but as it happens with most (normal) women, it happens to me and last night, I had to fight the desire to just pick myself up off my chair and leave. That would just be rude, now woudln't it? Especially seeing as how it was for the birthday of a friend. So I stuck it out. Waited patiently for dinner to be over while surrounded by intense unflattering halogen lamps, spotless wall to wall mirrors, and the pervasive laughter of half a dozen pheremonal J-girls.
And I hate myself for being so insecure, for not liking what I look like because in the end, I can't really change that, can I? I have my good days; those days when I can believe the well-meaning but not un-biased compliments of my friends and in the end, it's personality that really matters, right? It's my intelligence, my sense of humor, my fucking magnetic charm that really gets me places, right? Then why do I still wish i was 15 pounds lighter, a cup size bigger, and dress size smaller?
Strangely enough, while looking around the dinner table yesterday, I realized that self-indulgent wallowing was not the only dish on the menu. Underneath the immaculate gravity-defying curls of their bleach-blonde hair and between their heavily mascara-ed bedroom eyes, I wouldn't bet on there being a brain capable of having a conversation beyond the predictably vapid "Oh, foreign men have so much HAIR on their arms! Tee hee, can I touch your arm?" I'm not saying that J-girls are stupid (OK, who am I kidding? Some are that dumb, but to be fair, stupidy is not reserved solely for the Japanese...) but I feel sorry for them because society has forced women like them to spend more time putting makeup on their porcelain faces than nuturing their brains. What I lack in absolute beauty, they lack in the more abstract qualities of character. All things told, I would rather possess the latter than the former.
I guess I'm not so bad off after all, am I? However, that doesn't mean the grand "I'm-going-to-lose-10-pounds by the time I leave Japan" is going to be ignored or put on hold. The plan begins in earnest...uuh, 4 days ago, when I came down with a fortuitous case of the stomach flu and I couldn't eat anything for two days straight. Hey, I'm just trying to see the plus side!
Currently Reading: The Reading Group - Elizabeth Noble
Currently Playing: Scissor Sisters - Filthy/Gorgeous
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