On the Subject of Self Image

Thadra Sheridan

I dedicate this column to the waify little bimbo wearing shorty shorts that looked like she’d skinned a disco ball to make them who sat on my patio sneaking sips of her gin and tonic to her teenage companion until I took it away, and she yelled at my back, “I’m sorry you’re old and fat!”

Now this happened a while ago.  I’m not bitter about it or anything.

But I am old, well, my 91-year-old grandmother would slap me for saying it, but it’s true in the sense that I could have given birth to this girl and not been ostracized in high school.  And fat, well, I’ll never grace the cover of Vogue with my lithe figure, and if we’re using Hollywood standards, I’m practically morbidly obese.

That being said….

When I turned 40, I went to the roller derby to celebrate, which I highly recommend to anyone ever.  I went with a rollergirl, which I also recommend, because the rules to that sport are really confusing.  And we were hanging out in the back area, talking to this other rollergirl I know, and I told her my age, and she said, “But you’re really 29, right?”  “No, I’m 40.”  “But you’re going to tell people you’re 29, aren’t you?”  Now, what is the point in that?

I suppose it might be easier to seduce 22-year-old boys, but I feel that is just too close to doing laundry at your parents’ house to date.  And I guess people would label me less of a cougar and husbandless old maid if they thought I was 29.  But if they’re doing that, it’s behind my back, so it doesn’t really effect me anyway.  To be honest, I see no point in hiding your age.  It’s not a crime I have committed.  It is the temporal number I have spent on this earth.  And what it means is that I have had a lot more time to learn stuff than disco girl, so having the word “old” hurled at my back as if it were an insult, well, that’s just weird.

Perhaps once she has lived as long as I have, she will decide that wearing different shades of thick eye shadow on each eye makes her look silly.  Perhaps she will not.  Maybe she’ll start a trend.  Perhaps once she’s 40, she will no longer find it edgy to disrespect independent businesses and risk their liquor licenses, and that verbally abusing their employees when they are trying to do their jobs is not actually cool.  In retrospect, maybe she’ll wish she and her underage companion would have camped outside a liquor store , bribed some guy to buy them hooch, then sat in a park and drank it out of a paper bag.

You can tell by my tone that I am just a wee bit irritated with this girl.  Fair enough.  But in my defense, OLD AND FAT?  Like I’m sitting around all day, thinking, “Dammit!  I’m not 22 any more, and no one mistakes me for a young Twiggy.”  Then I see this diminutive young girl with her jaunty fashion sense,  and I decide to punish her for being all that I can never be by snatching away the hard earned cocktail that she’d paid for in quarters.  Then I go home to die in squalor, unloved and riddled with self hatred.

Yup, she nailed it.  And while I continue to thrive in my rich, creative life backed by 40 years of hard earned knowledge and experience, and while people continue to be willing to have sex with me despite my monumental girth, I can’t help but be haunted by this girl’s prophetic truth.

OK, not really.  But I do use her as an amusing anecdote.  Like that time I was doing a show in San Francisco for like 500 people, and I had this piece about my terrible taste in men.  And when I said the line, “you want a piece of this action?”  Someone in the audience said, “Nope.”  Maybe that guy will get the next column.