![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Years ago, when I was a skinny undergrad and slightly less skinny but still pretty slender masters student, the English dept. rejoiced in the possession of a sort of general factotumoid lady known with consummate vagueness as the "Departmental Assistant". She, um, presumably assisted the Department. Quite how, I'm not sure - up stairs? Over obstacles? To find its own butt with both hands? Anyway, when the revolution came the Departmental Assistants were the first up against the wall, making way for the noxiously pink-clad cleaning forces of Supacare. Our very own departmental assistant was brainwiped, re-educated and transferred to the Library, where to this day she choogles vaguely among the books in a sort of allocatory fashion. I bump into her and say "Hi" about once a month or so.
EVERY TIME I see her she asks if I'm putting on weight. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Without fail. I am beginning to feel like a sort of bloated, blimpish entity whose incremental bulging at the seams is clearly visible to the naked eye. I realise that ideologically speaking my weight has nothing to do with anything, death to the Hollywoodised body image, feministic grrrr, etc etc, but I swear, one of these days the hacked-to-bits body of an erstwhile Departmental Assistant is going to be found in a dark corner of the library, bedewing with gore a carefully-selected section of weighty tomes on something I dislike. Tax law, perhaps. Or African politics.
The worst of it is, the invariable question about my weight is a distinct improvement on the question she used to ask me now and then when she was actually working in the department, which is "Aren't you married yet?" Clearly she is a sort of reductionist, cliche-ridden, somewhat satanic Universal Auntie. Axes, I say. Axes and gore.
EVERY TIME I see her she asks if I'm putting on weight. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Without fail. I am beginning to feel like a sort of bloated, blimpish entity whose incremental bulging at the seams is clearly visible to the naked eye. I realise that ideologically speaking my weight has nothing to do with anything, death to the Hollywoodised body image, feministic grrrr, etc etc, but I swear, one of these days the hacked-to-bits body of an erstwhile Departmental Assistant is going to be found in a dark corner of the library, bedewing with gore a carefully-selected section of weighty tomes on something I dislike. Tax law, perhaps. Or African politics.
The worst of it is, the invariable question about my weight is a distinct improvement on the question she used to ask me now and then when she was actually working in the department, which is "Aren't you married yet?" Clearly she is a sort of reductionist, cliche-ridden, somewhat satanic Universal Auntie. Axes, I say. Axes and gore.
