Swell Zine: Fat Pants

Maybe it's the running up the subway staircases in Union Square every morning as soon as the train doors open while trying to avoid the crush of equally harried commuters, or the fact that it actually takes less time to walk twenty blocks then it would to take a cab the same distance, but when I moved to New York I promptly lost ten pounds.

Ten pounds may not seem like much, but to a girl trapped in solid size ten jeans since moving to Texas from San Francisco after college, ten pounds was a minor miracle. It was a sign from God that moving to New York in the dead of winter with no friends or suitable warm pajamas was the right decision. The fact that a California girl like me showed up with two scarves and a pair of fingerless gloves at all is testament to the true type A nature of my outwardly scruffy punk-rock persona. I was a rebel who would pick up and move 3,000 miles away to the great unknown to chase dreams...a romantic...an adventurer of the Safari-hat owning kind. But first, I would make a list and get prepared.

Running around the city for the first several weeks, getting lost, getting acquainted and finally, getting irritated enough to pass for a bona fide New Yorker was a serious workout, so I didn't worry too much when the weight dropped off. I just took my newly svelte size six frame to every sample sale in town, rejoicing in the fact that the other bulimics and socialites waiting in line outside the Metropolitan Pavilion for a shot at $20 Cheap Monday jeans were all far too tiny to have more than a passing interest in the racks I was free to peruse. You know that scene in the movie The Devil Wears Prada where Anne Hathaway learns that a size six is fat in Fashion Land? Well, it's only funny 'cause it's true.

In fact, the very truthfulness of this odd discriminatory tendency of fashionable New Yorkers led me to pick up a number of fabulously chubby, plump, bitchy queens as shopping buddies. I mean really, when you walk into a store near Park Avenue that specializes in $500 denim pieces (when your jeans cost more than $200 they are henceforth referred to not as jeans but as "pieces" which distinguishes them as Very Expensive) you don't expect to be told to wait while the overly solicitous and impeccably groomed salesgirl goes to check "in the back" to see if they have your size. "I'm a six, dammit!" I wanted to yell at her. "The same size as the hot blonde in the first Batman movie! A man in a Batsuit could clip me to his fucking belt! Why would you need to hide my size in the back?"

"You got anything for me, sugar?" chirruped my prancing shopping partner. "I'm a big girl too," he sang while shrugging his football player shoulders into one arm of a jacket that looked Very Expensive. The salesgirl winced and gingerly reached out her hand to help him out of the jacket but he sashayed off to the full length mirror, the seams on the jacket straining at his armpits. "This is nice," he purred. Retracting her arm with a look of distaste I could almost hear the running commentary in her head, "You had better buy that because I get paid on commission. I wish you would just leave," she clipped into the back where it took her a full ten seconds to determine that nothing in a size six was in stock and would have to special ordered. "Fuck you," yelled my companion. And deadpan to me, "Let's go get a slice of pizza."

Looking around, everyone in New York was tiny...which lead me to believe that the restaurants and bars that lined every street in a blaring Technicolor light and sound show, causing three-smoker pile-ups every five feet, were clearly just for show. No one in New York actually ate. The ones that did clearly didn't progress as far as digestion with the process. Except for me that is - I ate everywhere.

Every organic martini bar and coffee shop and overpriced "Homestyle" diner had an impossible allure. Sure it was just cheese and salad - appetizers were all I could afford - but this was New York cheese and salad. It tasted like.... Finally. Finally I lived in the city that had captured my heart years ago at age fourteen when, on a ferryboat with Courtney Love barrettes blowing in the wind I had folded my black fingernails into my palms and vowed that Someday I would live in this big amazing city. Someday I too would be part of this exciting metropolis where people had pink hair and cool jobs like Art Director or Fashion Stylist or Hooker.

When I was offered the job of Art Director with a large photo agency in Manhattan, I was already in New York frantically looking for work. I had given myself a week's worth of unemployment paycheck on which to make it work or head back home. My backup option when I got laid off from my mid-range magazine gig was to move to San Francisco and get a job at the Lusty Lady working as a stripper. I was fine with the peepshow part, but the Lusty is a unionized strip club, which eliminates smarmy male managers, stage fees... and tips. Like hell I was gonna get waxed and plucked and dyed and tanned for a lousy thirteen bucks an hour. So, I did what anyone in my position would do. I flew to New York, crashed on the couch of a friend I hadn't seen since college and, panic stricken about the lease I impulsively signed on my fifth day in town, went to every magazine office in the city looking for work.

Most of them did not let me in. I had that hungry, unfashionably lost look that marked me as new and therefore untouchable in the New York City caste system. One office after another came up bust as interns in $800 pumps slammed glass doors in my face, glaring at the smeary fingerprints I left by knocking. "Do you have an appointment?" disdain dripping down Prada and Lanvin as they took in my size six, thrift store jacket.

I made one last call and found myself in the huge Chelsea studio of a photographer from whom I had once bought an image for the cover of my now defunct magazine. James ushered me in, chattering excitedly about the creepy neighbor downstairs who had just been arrested for assaulting yet another of the numerous women he lured to his studio through Craigslist ads.
"Don't ever answer ads on Craigslist," he admonished me while I tried not to look guilty.
"I don't," I lied, smiling too big at a spot just below his eyebrow.

While James made tea I gave myself a tour of the open studio and sifted through his photos of Waitresses Around the World. I thought that they needed a good editor but that they were brilliant. I was having a hard time not grabbing the stack and running for the door, arms full of what I was sure would make amazing wallpaper for my new apartment.

When my cell phone rang, I explained to the HR rep on the other end of the line that I would be leaving New York in a day. I was out of money and patience. Typical New York vibes were emanating from me as I explained that I could come right now for an interview or not at all. Two interviews in one day later I was hired. I had a real job. With a salary and a 401K. I was an actual grown-up. In New York. Sans black nail polish. Ten pounds lighter. Everything was perfect.

Two weeks after getting on a plane to New York I had a great apartment, a job I didn't hate and roommates that could pass as friends until more permanent arrangements could be made. I also had the worst flu I had ever experienced in my life. One month later I had it again. Then again. Somewhere in the midst of the antibiotics and Theraflu I also developed a condition that can only be described politely as an intestinal problem. After a month of existing on bananas and rice, I finally saw a doctor. Actually, I saw four nurses and one very rude lab technician.

After another month of not eating real food while worrying that I might have developed an intolerance for Lactose that would keep me from my favorite dinners of Lonestar beer and Texas jalapeño queso, I panicked and went to another doctor. After two more weeks of lost blood work and EKG's, I was finally diagnosed with a parasite. A parasite! A tiny and disgusting bug that crawled onto my plate because some waiter did not thoroughly wash his hands for two minutes with soap and hot water after using the bathroom. Welcome to New York.

In addition to a whole host of truly unmentionable symptoms, the most interesting was the rapid weight loss that accompanies an all-carb diet and the presence of a nutrient-sucking bug. Really, perhaps the Manhattan socialites who have their thigh fat sucked out on a regular basis should try my diet. I lost another ten pounds in one month and was down to a pre-high school weight of 122 pounds. A size four. Apparently it's a contagious parasite, so if any socialites wanted to come do very dirty things to me before the next big costume ball or charity event to shrink down from their size two's to a more respectable zero, I considered providing my services for free. I would call it Organic Post-Parasitic Rejuvenation technique. It would be huge in Europe. It's all natural and guaranteed to make you feel lighter than air. If Demi Moore can tell the world that leeches are what keep her gorgeous, maybe she can be my spokesmodel too. We can go on tour. It will be organic and Very Expensive.

The weirdest effect was how previously brusque New Yorkers began to act towards me. I heard somewhere that there is one woman to every two single men in this city. Whatever the reason, feminine competition is fierce. Suddenly, I understood what the cult of skinny was all about in this city. Everyone was nicer to me. People moved over on the subway. Men held doors in a city where no one holds anything unless they get paid to do so. One-hundred and eighteen pounds and dropping. I was sick all of the time and you could count my ribs but I could wear anything right off the hanger. Women nodded approvingly in lunch lines at my bottled water and apple meals. My sister called and Demanded that I EAT A SANDWICH after she saw a photo taken of me on my birthday. I looked like I belonged on a flyer for an aid organization, maybe something for the UN.

I refused to buy jeans smaller than a size four even though they hung off of my jutting hip bones and lamented the loss of my once ample breasts. I was down to an ordinary B cup and wondered how it was that skinny girls ever got laid with so little equipment to work with. There was nothing to shake, stretch, or stick out. My partner reassured me that I was sexy at any size but stopped putting her full weight on me when we had sex. I think she was afraid her six foot muscular frame would crush me.

After much agony over the size of things I finally gained back about five pounds after I started a course of heavy antibiotics. Feeling healthier and hotter than I had in years, I went downtown to SoHo, which is where all the skinny rich girls shop, and found a great denim piece on sale at 60% off. I whipped out my credit card, forgot I had a coupon, and bought a pair of Very Expensive size four jeans.

I love those jeans. They are dark washed Skinny's that bag a little in the knees but hug my ass as if I still had curves. They are the softest denim I have ever felt, with cute skinny-girl detailing on the pockets in pink thread; the kind of cute I never could get away with before. When I run up the stairs in them after I jump off the subway, late for work in my Manhattan Art Director office, I feel eyes on my ass from below. I feel sexy in those jeans. I stand aside for the fat guy who rides the train with me every morning. He's the only one in Manhattan and he's beautiful. He wears Day-Glo hats and giant Member's Only jackets and his clothes always look Very Expensive. Nervously, I asked him where he got his T-shirt. He winked and in the sweetest Texas drawl said, "Back home. They don't make clothes for big girls like me in this city."

After an unfortunate attempt at becoming a painter, Darcy Totten abruptly switched directions while completing a B.A. in studio art at Mills College in Oakland. After graduating with an emphasis on Studio Photography, she moved on to photojournalism with internships at the Washington Post and the Smithsonian Institution's photographic department. While freelancing as a journalist and sneaking in fine art photo shoots whenever the opportunity presented itself, she completed a Master's in Journalism with an emphasis on photography at The University of Texas. After finishing school, she returned to her hometown of Sacramento and began working as an editor. After an award-winning year as the Photo Editor at Prosper Magazine, working with print and web-oriented content, and of course, traditional magazine format and design, she moved to New York where she is currently an Art Director for Corbis. She supplements her creative life as a writer for various websites including who is isabella and dopey cowboy. Darcy's personal work has been shown at Dante Creative Group and 1310 Warehouse Gallery in San Francisco, the Anarchist Art Collective and group shows in New York, as well as in various publications and online sites such as whoisisabella.com, Soundcheck Magazine, Window Magazine, washingtonpost.com, The Natomas Journal, Fresh, The Walrus and Midtown Monthly. Her work is also featured in a book/installation project with writer Joseph Negra which is slated for publication and display later this year.