"It's a robot, and it cleans my business. My lady business."

I have a mind for business, and a bod for sin.

What?! Macrina is the best. I make a point of going there on every visit to Seattle. I would weigh 500 pounds if I lived as close to one as you do.

Good! Seriously, it was making me worry about that place.

I have not met a single person who went to Stuyvesant who wasn't completely insufferable in every way. Someday, I would love to break that streak.

For those of you stuck on what to ask when they turn to you for your own questions, try something like:

"Now, ladies, allow me to explain this bill in a format that might be a little bit easier for you to understand. Imagine the mitten-like Lower Peninsula as the giant hand of the State that will shove your unwanted fetus back up into your uterus, regardless of whether or not it might kill you. Now—and here's the fun…

I'm pretty sure those eyes just burned a hole through my soul. Nightmares.

"I went from enjoying and being all about local produce and meat and food to thinking about calories and grams of carbs and protein intake and sacrificing my passion for food for an attempt at healthier eating."

Right about here.

You've said this in a couple of points in this thread and I just wanted to say: I'm with you. The "otherness" of celebrities and actors makes the whole issue easy to ignore, but it's the shame and jealousy of people that I know that makes it ever-present.

Thank you for this. The insane gender-based shit that gets thrown around in the gay community has always made me angry and sad.

Well, that's the fucked up thing about this whole issue, isn't it? I know that to be essentially true and yet the thought of working out in public makes me anxious as hell. Damn you, panopticism.

I (sort of?) feel your pain on this one. Not the same exact issue, but my boyfriend makes fun of me for dressing up (ie: putting on jeans and a button down) to run downstairs to take the trash out or to get food from the delivery guy because I hate the idea of being anywhere vaguely public without doing some…

Oh, I agree 100%, it just takes an extraordinary amount of psychological effort to get me there. And even then, it's not until I'm secreted away on a bike or a weight rack in the corner of the gym that I stop feeling eyes all over me (sometimes).

Ditto that, but with gay guys. That being said, I've personally noticed my circle of friends and acquaintances shifting more to the bear-y side of things lately. That's obviously been a significant gay subculture that embraces bigger guys, but I wonder if it's expanding (so to speak). Or maybe my friends and I are…

The best part is being so self-conscious about your body that it keeps you away from the gym, where others will see you in unflattering gym clothes. There's a vicious cycle if ever there was one.

I'm a man, and every boss that I've had in my brief working life (5 years) has been a woman. Part of that is because my field tends to be dominated by women, so: my boss is a woman, as is her boss, and her boss, and her boss. (There's a lot of hierarchy.)

Boy, I do not want to be in the room when my Lena Dunham doll meets one of the new black Barbie dolls.