I Hate Myselfie

by Shane Dawson

  “Let’s get out of here,” my mom said as she wrung the sweat out of her tumbleweed-like hair.

  “To the movies? We kind of already saw Titanic eight times. I don’t think I can handle that kind of emotional distress again.” I had already cried all day because I found out Weight Watchers had changed their point system and it no longer included “free foods.” Nazi assholes.

  “No, let’s go to the beach!” mom squealed. My body froze. The beach was not a happy place for me. There were way too many variables that made it uncomfortable. Everyone was half-naked. Homeless couples kissed each other in the shade. There was bird shit EVERYWHERE. And worst of all my skin would burn instantly. It was like putting a wrapped Ding Dong in the microwave. Wait. Is that reference too fat for the general public? Ok, Ding Dongs have a foil wrapper that makes them flammable when put in microwaves. Sorry for expecting you to know that.

  We packed up our stuff and got in the car. Even though I hated the beach, at least I knew there would be a breeze, and that was better than melting in my shitty apartment. As we got close we started looking at all the cool beach houses and talking about how awesome it would be to live in one someday. We were lesbians planning out our lives together. One day we would have a house on the sand, a big golden retriever, and a “themed room.” You know, like a reading room that looked like a jungle, or a scrapbooking room that had lots of pictures of babies in weird costumes everywhere. Something classy and tasteful.

  We pulled up to the parking lot and found a spot right away. We were always really lucky when it came to that stuff. My mom would say, “God is with us!” and I would always think, “Shouldn’t God be helping all the big-stomached children in Africa instead of helping us get parking spots?” But hey, a spot’s a spot. We got our stuff out of the trunk and lugged it to a nice area on the sand. Right in between a trash can with CUM DUMPSTER spray-painted on it and a family of twenty celebrating somebody’s “cumpleaños.” We lay down on our shared towel and I started rubbing her down with suntan lotion. Not in a creepy way, she just couldn’t reach her back. Also, I have a really soothing touch. It’s one of my many gifts. That and I can tell someone they have a booger hanging out of their nose just by looking at them a certain way.

  We laughed the afternoon away and ate massive amounts of Otter Pops. It was the perfect summer day. And then it was ruined by one dumb visor-wearing bitch with a chest sunburn and spider veins. She walked by with her husband and their ugly dog and said, “I don’t have a problem with lesbians, but I just don’t want to look at them.” My heart sank. I don’t know what hurt more, the fact that she was obviously a homophobe or the fact that she thought I was a woman. Not a little girl. A FULL-BLOWN WOMAN. I was only twelve! Sure, I had a pretty face and some perky breasts, but wasn’t it obvious that I was a CHILD?

  My mom pretended she didn’t hear it and changed the subject. “Hey! You know Oreo is coming out with a new flavor this month. I think it’s Creamsicle!”

  NO, MOM! You can’t make me forget what just happened! Not even if Oreo is coming out with something that sounds REVOLUTIONARY AND FUCKING DELICIOUS. I will not just sit here and ignore what that bitch just said! “Mom . . . Do people really think I’m a girl?”

  My mom’s silence told me everything I needed to know.

  The next year of my life was hell. I was called ma’am everywhere I went. I wouldn’t even set foot in a Sizzler because I was constantly mistaken for a waitress. I tried everything I could to be more manly. I shaved my hairless face, thinking maybe that would speed up the five o’clock shadow process. Instead that just gave me lots of face cuts and a mental scar after I found out it was my mom’s “everything” razor. I tried stuffing my crotch with socks, but that just looked like I had a fat vagina. I asked my older brother for advice and he said: “Just wait it out. One day you’ll wake up and look in the mirror and see a man. I promise.”

  So I waited. Every morning for the next year I would run to the mirror to see if anything had changed. Besides the fact that I was getting taller and fatter, I didn’t notice much difference. But then one night shortly after my thirteenth birthday I took a trip to PetSmart with my mom. As we were checking out, the man at the register handed me our bag and said words I had never heard before. Words I had waited for my whole life. Words that seem stupid to the average person but to me meant everything. He said, “Have a nice night, sir.”

  SIR. He called me SIR! I was overwhelmed with emotion. I started crying and grabbed my mother for a hug. He had NO idea what was going on, and I’m sure he thought I had some kind of disorder, but I didn’t care. This was MY MOMENT, and I was TAKING IT! And that night when my mom and I went out for fro yo it wasn’t just because it was our “cheat day.” I really did feel like I “deserved it.” From that day forward I was a man. Not just on the inside but on the outside as well. Thank you, random PetSmart cashier. You changed my life.

  MY LEG TWIN

  ABOUT THE ARTIST

  Jerad Garcia is thirteen years old and has never taken an art class. His love for drawing began when he was little and became stronger during middle school. Follow him on Twitter at @nyanjerbear.

  You know how you walk around the city and stare at everyone’s bodies and compare theirs to your own? No? Just me? Well, it’s a habit I picked up when I was around eleven years old and already fixated on my weight. It probably didn’t help that I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was ten, but that’s beside the point. Walking around school, I would stare at every guy’s body and wonder what he looked like naked. It wasn’t a sexual thing, it was more of an “I wonder if they have that weird fold of fat above their privates too” type of thing.

  I always felt like I had a bizarre body that was a scientific anomaly. I had the face and arms of a thin person but the stomach and legs of someone who bleeds marshmallow fluff and Nutella. It was kind of like I was an actor sitting in my trailer halfway out of my fat suit. They’d taken off the face prosthetics but I still had the bodysuit on.

  My brother was the total opposite. He had the shape and coloring of a carrot. I was never jealous of his red hair, but I would have made a deal with Satan to get a body like his. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to pick up a pair of pants at the store and not have to make adjustments to the waistline with a steak knife and scissors when I got home. And by the way, a 4X shirt isn’t much different from a 3X shirt, so don’t waste your money on the extra X. It’s a scam, and it’s sad that I know that.

  The fixation with my weird body didn’t go away when I lost weight. In fact, it got worse. I still to this day walk around checking out other dudes’ bodies and comparing them to my own. On my first date with a girl she noticed that I was checking out guys in the restaurant and started getting suspicious. That mixed with my haircut, four coatings of high-gloss ChapStick, and skinny jeans with decorative fading didn’t help my case. I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t checking out their packages, I was merely checking out the rest of them and doing their measurements in my head. This didn’t go over well and dinner ended early. But it gave me an excuse to go home and watch an extra hour of My 600-lb Life on my DVR, so it all worked out.

  One day a few years back I was lying in bed contemplating whether or not I should brush my teeth but instead watched twelve hours of children’s television. I have a sick obsession with children’s television. I don’t know if it’s because I enjoy terrible jokes and loud fart sound effects or . . . actually that’s exactly what it is. That explains my humor perfectly. Mystery solved.

  Anyways, I was about eight hours into the season of some terrible Disney show when I noticed one of the guest stars had MY LEGS. They were chubby, wide at the hips, and shaped like a pork chop. I paused my TV and stared at it for a good ten minutes. I had never seen a guy with my legs before. I’d seen plenty of five-months-pregnant women with my legs but never a man. He had a soft middle like me and his body was SO disproportionate that it
made me feel like I had a long-lost twin. I always wondered if that birthmark on my ass was from a twin-separation surgery! Mom always said it was “a kiss from an angel.” THAT LYING CUNT.

  I knew I had a twin and it was my mission to find him. So I did what any sane twenty-three-year-old man would do. I looked him up on IMDb, then found his Twitter, then tweeted him till he followed me so I could direct-message him to set up a time to meet up. Yup. Totally sane.

  Two days later I woke up to a new Twitter notification on my phone. HE’D FOLLOWED ME BACK. Score! I tried to think of some small talk that would make it seem like I’d just stumbled across his Twitter and decided to follow him. I didn’t want to tell him the truth because something told me “YOU’RE MY FAT-LEG TWIN!” wouldn’t go over well. After a few small-talk conversations he asked me if I wanted to hang out. My heart stopped. I felt like a twelve-year-old girl getting asked out by my biggest crush. Except I wasn’t sexually interested in him; I was just interested in his pork chop thighs. So I told him that I was pretty busy but I could try and fit it in. I liked playing hard to get with my leg twin. He gave me a time and location and it was on and crackin’. Same time next day, I was going to see my other legs in person! I couldn’t wait! I prayed to God that it would be a thousand degrees so he would show up in shorts. I didn’t know what I would do if his legs were chubby AND hairy like mine. I thought I would actually have a full-on mental breakdown. The feeling of joy would overtake my body and make my fat legs explode.

  The next day I pulled up to the coffee shop where we were going to meet and waited in the car. I got there a little early because I wanted to see him walk in. I wanted to see those legs in motion. I got a text from him saying that he was running a few minutes late. I told him not to worry about it and that I was running late too. Lies. I had been there for almost thirty minutes in anticipation of this epic moment. I started to get nervous. The reality of what was happening hit me. What if he walked up to the coffee shop and his legs were skinny? Would I just take off? It started feeling like a PlentyOfFish date. I was already planning my escape. And as I was planning I looked up out the window and I saw them. They were standing right in front of the coffee shop. Thick, sausaged into tight jeans, and beautiful. They looked even fatter in person, just like mine! I started sweating. This was it, the big moment; I was ready. I hopped out of my car and walked up to him. I was hoping that maybe he would look at my legs and notice that we were leg twins. I even tried to mimic his walk so that he would get some kind of leg déjà vu. Unfortunately he wasn’t as creepy and body obsessed as me, so he didn’t look below my face.

  Leg Twin: Hey, Shane!

  Me: Hey!

  Leg Twin: This is so weird! I’ve been watching you online for a while now!

  Me: I’ve been watching you too!

  Leg Twin: Really? On what?

  Me: Your Disney show!

  Leg Twin: Aren’t you twenty-three?

  Me: Who wants coffee?!

  I walked him into the café and found us a table. As we walked over I stared at him from behind. He didn’t just have my legs, he had my ENTIRE BODY! This was a miracle! We sat down and made small talk. I don’t remember anything we talked about because I was staring at his chest the entire time. I could see his lopsided nipples poking through his exercise shirt and all I could think was, “I wonder if they have black spots around the areolas too?!” I started undressing him in my head and I’m gonna be honest, it got super creepy. Once again, this wasn’t a homoerotic experience, it was more of an unwrapping-gifts-on-Christmas-Eve experience. I just wanted to rip off all his clothes and rub my twin body against his and take a bunch of selfies!

  A waitress walked over and asked for our order. I was hoping to God that he would order the same thing as me just to make this man date even more magical. But what happened was shocking and a sign of things to come.

  Waitress: What would you boys like today?

  Me: I’ll take a side of fries and extra ranch, please! And a Diet Coke with a cherry in it!

  Waitress: How old are you? Ten?

  Leg Twin: And he watches the Disney Channel!

  Waitress: [laughs] He must be the slow brother!

  She thought we were BROTHERS. PERFECT!

  Waitress: And what would you like, baby?

  Leg Twin: Can I just get a grilled chicken breast, no oil, no butter, no sauce?

  Waitress: Of course. Diet Coke too?

  Leg Twin: GOD NO. That stuff will kill you.

  Oh no. This had just taken a turn. We were not brothers. We weren’t even in the same forest of family trees. We probably weren’t even going to be friends. The waitress walked away and I just stared at him in silence for a few moments. I didn’t know what to say. If he ate that healthy how in God’s name did he have my body? He must have just started some new diet to shed the puffiness.

  Me: So. On a diet?

  Leg Twin: No way. I don’t consider it a diet. More of a lifestyle.

  WHO THE FUCK IS THIS? THIS IS NOT MY TWIN.

  Me: Oh . . . so you have always eaten like that?

  Leg Twin: Oh ya, your body is a temple, ya know? Gotta keep it clean!

  Me: Right . . . temple . . .

  Leg Twin: You used to be fat, right?

  Me: Ya. How did you know that?

  Leg Twin: You made a video about it. And you are always retweeting pictures of food porn. It’s actually sad sometimes. You retweeted a picture of raw cookie dough last night at three a.m.

  Me: Ya, it was a tough day.

  Leg Twin: You should come work out with me some time!

  WORK . . . OUT . . . ? Ok, there was NO way with that soft puffy body this dude worked out. Unless he worked out and then did a keg stand for twelve hours immediately after.

  Me: Ya. Maybe. You go often?

  Leg Twin: Oh ya, every day. There’s nothing I love more than sweating so much that I can wring my shirt out and fill an empty Gatorade bottle with it!

  I had to agree with him on that. Except replace “sweat” with “pee” and replace “Gatorade bottle” with “Diet Coke bottle.” I don’t need that wide a mouth.

  Leg Twin: Oh God. You ever get an itch on your back that you just can’t reach?

  And this was the moment when all my dreams came crashing down. As he reached his arm to scratch his lower back, his shirt lifted up and revealed something that I never saw coming. A MOTHERFUCKING SIX-PACK. This guy wasn’t soft! This guy was hard! Harder than a priest during a baptism! Harder than the dad from 7th Heaven during the “Ruthie rides a horse” episode! How does a body so fit look so soft in clothing? Why does my body look like shit in clothing AND naked? I had so many questions flying through my head that I started seeing stars.

  Leg Twin: I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Be right back!

  As he got up to leave I stared at his legs and realized that he didn’t have chubby legs, he had THICK legs! There’s a HUGE difference! His thighs were thick because they were so RIPPED! He could have crushed a watermelon with those pork chop thighs!

  I instantly started feeling sick to my stomach. I had built this man up in my head to be my clone and instead he was just a better version of me. A better version of me with more credits on his IMDb page.

  Now, I want to be clear: I’m not a fat guy and I don’t think I am, but I definitely am a guy who should lift more weights and not have ranch with every meal. I lost a bunch of weight, but I’ve never been able to get toned. I just don’t have the willpower to hit up the gym every day for two hours, and the idea of cutting candy out of my diet seems impossible. So because of that I just have to live with the fact that I’ll never be able to take my shirt off in public, and I’m OK with that.

  I started contemplating my escape plan. Should I just leave and pretend like I had been taken away by the rapture? Should I leave a note telling him that my family died and I had to go identify
the bodies? I was desperate for a way out of this disaster.

  He walked back to the table and sat down with a satisfied look on his face. I’m sure he had just taken a huge, healthy bowel movement and here I was with IBS and a stomach full of ranch dressing that was sure to come out my ass like I got bukakked at a gang bang. I ended the conversation and told him I had a lot of work to do at home, and I wasn’t lying. I had about four hours of standing in front of the mirror looking at my body in and out of clothes to look forward to. As we left we decided that sometime soon we were going to hang out again, but he didn’t know the truth. I had already gotten what I wanted out of this relationship. I was ready to move on. I saw what he was working with and decided it wasn’t for me. The last thing I needed was another friend who was comfortable taking their shirt off at the beach. So we went our separate ways and never spoke again.

  This entire situation showed me that I shouldn’t be looking for a body twin. I shouldn’t even be looking at myself that much, because nobody really cares about how I look except for me. I have this idea that when I walk around in public everyone is judging me or comparing my body to theirs, when in reality the only people who are doing that are me and maybe a few other mentally unstable people. All that Disney star wanted to do was hang out and possibly start a friendship, but instead I shut him out of my life because I didn’t want to be reminded of how fat I felt around him. Luckily in the last few years I have gotten over the constant need to check out dudes’ physiques, and hopefully one day me and Disney dude will cross paths again and get some oil-free, butter-free, fat-free chicken together. Until then, I will continue to lie on my bed retweeting food porn and watching television shows I’m criminally too old for.

  SHOCKTUBER

  ABOUT THE ARTIST

  Samantha Gleason is a young artist from the suburbs of Philadelphia. She started drawing during her freshman year of high school. Her Instagram page, where she posts all her work, has more than 100,000 followers. The constant support has kept her motivated to draw. Go to samonstage.com to find out more.