[Prudence]

Once again, I must live in some parallel universe. I don't think I've ever read a Vogue or Elle or, saints preserve us, Cosmo. I've never seen my friends read them, either. But I have seen my husband and other men gleefully devouring FHM and Maxim. [I happen to know that my husband prefers larger women, but it does bug me when he brings those magazines home - if for no other reason than it means he's found yet another line of "manmedics" he wants to try and dammit, that stuff's expensive.]

Also, I can't remember the last time my physical appearance was criticized by a woman, but men do it all the time and have since I can remember. I work on a college campus and I can't even count the number of times some frat boy has mooed at me or otherwise insulted me as I waited to cross the street to the parking lot. Guys who are even more obese than I am have no qualms about outright informing me that I'm an embarrassment to the human race. Out loud. In public. Complete strangers. Because they're such skilled penile manipulators that their size is irrelevant -- they're livin' large! And apparently my potential range of skills is limited to lying there and looking pretty and I look like a beached whale so I'm an utter failure and should take up bulimia immediately, if not sooner.

Now, where I *do* get competition from women is in the workplace or at school. Granted, the game was set up by men, but women continue to play by those rules! There's this idea that now women are all liberated and the executive offices get their token woman. And rather than help mentor other women and make a more gender equal workplace, some women who've "made it" act like there's only one slot and it's theirs and they'll keep you on the other side of the glass ceiling by any means necessary, lest you replace them as the token woman.