How big is too big to enjoy valentine's Day?

It's a day of dread for the fat girls. My (fat) friend used to say, this day was Ganesh Chaturthi. Because who knew who might mistake us for a couple of rotund elephant Gods on the run and decide to dunk us in the nearest water body.

But really, Valentine's Day is a big one. You vacillate wildly between wanting to be liked/loved for who you are inside and just wanting to be a vacuous sex object whose idea of a dress is a panty that covers her nipples.

What about your awesome jokes? The kitten you rescued last week. The 5,000 page book you devoured and had an opinion on. "Fat girls are smart too!" the insecure, self-doubting little you deep inside wants to shout out. "We want to feel helpless and feminine and in need of protection too! Not like the chick whom no one's going to kidnap because she's too big to carry away in a burlap sack!"

"We're hot too!" You want to say with confidence. Without having to add the appendage, "… despite being a little big…" You want to be OK with a guy going home and telling everyone he got to second base with you without everyone else assuming it was easy. (Because hey! Everyone knows fat girls are so desperate to be wanted, they'll sleep with anyone.) You want desperately to be liked for everything else but your personality and your "good heart" because sometimes it feels good to be an object.

Finally, you're happy to just be asked out so you can stop pretending you're all about the girlfriends. So you can drop them in a hurry. Ditch the sleepover and watching Legends of the Fall for the eighth time plan, and go out with the guy who you have nothing to talk with, but has tremendous brag-value.

The thin girls can be blasé. They can yawn and dismiss the day as nothing but media's way of making you spend money. They can (gasp!) refuse a date or two because really, they've been there and it's not all that. Fat girls have to think about their value systems. Yes, agreed we are being overtly manipulated in to spending money we don't want to. But what if we spend very little money? Don't buy chocolates or eye the diamonds? Thin girls can get away with being anti-establishment. Fat girls who decide to stay home risk being whispered about. "Akchilly she didn't have a date!" Fat girls have a point to prove.

When you grow up, Valentine's Day is not such a big deal. It is not life changing. It is not important when you're looking for a job or saving stories to tell your grandchildren. But the secret deliciousness of knowing that you beat the stereotype. The illicit pleasure of being "not like the other fat girls"! Yes, being asked out on Valentine's Day will not win you a Nobel Prize. But it will clothe you in that ultimate superficial value. The art of being wanted.