But the words of romance cover model Jimmy Thomas stuck under my skin.
I've always had an issue with my weight. When I was a teen, I was chubby even though I could and did throw around 50-pound hay bales on the farm. I was mocked by classmates and family for my size.
It was bad enough I pretty much stopped eating and was on the edge of full-blown anorexia my freshman year in high school. I got sick around Christmas, damn sick because I wasn't eating. What pulled me back from the edge? The stubborn part of me that decided I wasn't going to die for these mother fuckers.
Forty years later, I see Jimmy Thomas's post on Facebook, and I want to cry. Not for myself, but for the readers and writers and cover artists who've been fat-shamed all their lives by asshats for not fitting into the asshats' preconceived notions of what a person should look like.
But hey, since I don't fit Mr. Thomas's notion of what a person should look like, then he doesn't need to be gracing any of Alter Ego's book covers anymore either. I'm moving the cover re-dos to number #2 on my priority list. And I'm going to put food on some of those damn covers.
Because right now, fifteen-year-old me is flipping off Mr. Thomas with one hand while eating an ice cream cone with the other.
