I live in what I’ve heard referred to as an “entertainment district” in a moderately large (US) city. My apartment is in the midst of bars, clubs, restaurants, and coffee shops. I love where I live, though I don’t frequent any of the neighboring bars, clubs, or restaurants (though I do enjoy the coffee shops). I’m not really the rah-rah type of girl. I’m more the stay-in-with-a-book or enjoy-quiet-nights-with-friends sort of girl. I’m a relatively well educated professional. I’m newly thirty. I’m a pretty average girl.

I’m very average. In fact, I’m the exact size that most websites tell me that the Average American Woman is. I’m a size 14. Not thin. Not fat. Just…average.

So why, I ask you, was I walking through my neighborhood last night past a group of cooks that had survived the dinner rush and were now breaking for a smoke before cleaning the kitchen, did one of them “oink” at me? That’s right… I said OINK. Like a pig. Like I was a pig. What the fuck?

Sure. Perhaps I’m paranoid. Perhaps he was looking at someone else. Perhaps he didn’t “oink” at all. Perhaps all of the other cooks were laughing at something or someone else. I can’t be sure. Do I think that I’m being paranoid? Hell no! I think that someone oinked at my average-sized ass.

This “oink” has gotten me thinking. Am I really all that average? Perhaps I’m grotesquely fat and I just hadn’t noticed it. I check the tag in my jeans. Yep. Size 14 (from a regular store, Old Navy). In fact, these are a bit big on me. I prefer smaller size 14s from J. Crew or Gap. Sometimes I can even wear a size 12. But nope, these are size 14. My top? Lemmee check… Size large. From Anthropologie. They don’t have huge clothes there, so I can’t be that big, right?

Perhaps I should look to the handy, though oft-criticized, BMI to decide if I’m grotesquely fat. Shit. My BMI is 28. TWENTY-EIGHT! If the normal BMI is 18.4-24.9, and overweight is a BMI from 25-29.9, I’m closer to obese (which starts at a BMI of 30), than I am to a normal weight! To get my BMI to a healthy, let’s say, 22, I’d have to lose 39 whole pounds.

Ok, that’s a whole lot of work. But C’mon, so I’m slightly overweight (exactly 20 pounds overweight, to be exact), does that really warrant random OINKING when I’m walking through my neighborhood?

This, to me, is the crux of the whole problem, for me. Most American women, me included, have massive body image issues. We’re obsessed with our figures. We’re constantly dieting, failing, and then feeling like failures. We fee unattractive, unworthy of affection, and constantly insecure. But, believe it or not, I can live with that. I don’t expect perfection from myself, nor do I expect it from anyone else in my life. So what do I want?

I want to be treated with respect. I want not to be treated like an overweight farm animal when I’m walking down the street. I want to go to a job interview and not worry that the hiring personnel will offer the job to someone equally (or even less) qualified than I am because they’re “thin.” I want to go to a bar with my girlfriends (when it happens) and not be the one that needs to be “distracted” by a decoy guy while his friends hit on my hot friends. I want to stop being invisible. I want to stop FEELING invisible.

I’ve been thin before. I’ve been very thin. I’ve made myself sick from being too thin. I remember, though, people treating me much differently then, than they do now. Our society worships the young and thin. I wonder, these days, did I imagine it all? Were people really friendlier, or was my perception just different? Perhaps I was merely more naïve, more optimistic.

So here is my experiment. I’m going to lose 40 pounds. I’m going to document my successes and failures here. I’m going to look at how people treat me today, while I’m losing, and when I reach my goal.

“Oink,” my ass.