I’m fat. Obese, actually.

Yes, it was a startling, and a little unnerving, discovery for me. I had forsaken Booty Night on Monday at Rick’s in order to catch up on some reading and had the television on in the background tuned to a rerun of “Ally McBeal.”

The story line went something like this: Ally was defending a woman who fired the receptionist of her public relations firm because the receptionist had put on weight. She was described as obese, fat and unattractive.

And as I lay on my futon, skimming through my criminal justice text, I couldn’t wait to see this woman. I was expecting to see a 200-and-some pounder who struggled through her daily activities. After all, if she were obese enough to get fired, she must be huge!

Instead I saw a person who looked not unlike me. She wasn’t skinny. But she certainly wasn’t fat. And by no definition of the word (“excessively fat” is how Webster’s defines it) was she obese. She was maybe a little bigger than average, but not unattractive in any way. At best she was 170 pounds, maybe 180.

If she is the new definition of obese, somebody better get me a muumuu, I’m done.

Now, I know the show is fiction, but what bothers me is that by someone’s standards - several people’s, I would have to guess - this actress was deemed large enough to play the “obese” role.

I’m trying to imagine how that casting call went. I see some “Ally McBeal” executive saying, “OK, we need a real beast for this episode. She has to be grotesque. At least 150!”

Granted, anyone standing next to Calista Flockhart and Anne Heche is going to look disproportionately large, but this woman was not obese. According to the National Institutes of Health, 108 million Americans were obese or overweight in 1999. I’m pretty sure this actress was not one of them.

If big thighs and a round face are enough to get one cast as the downtrodden fat girl on a TV series, sign me up. I got your fat girl right here. I could probably make more doing fat girl cameos than as a beginning reporter.

And it’s not just Fox that has me jumping on the fat-girl bandwagon this week. On Sunday, I was watching “60 Minutes” on CBS and there was a commercial for some crappy-looking, made-for-TV movie. The trailer went something like, “Can a size 12 woman find love in a size six town?”

Size 12? Are you kidding me? God, I hope she can because if she can’t I’m absolutely screwed.

Since when is a 180-pound, size 12 woman considered ridiculously big? Unless she’s only 4-foot-2, I don’t see what the problem is.

But then again, I just found out I’m huge. I’m just waiting for someone from the university to come to The State News office and drag me away: “Sorry Miss Sell, you’re too fat to go to school here.” Maybe I and all the other girls with less-than-flat tummies would have to live in the tunnels under the university, so as not to disturb the skinny, beautiful people.

I know in joking about weight I’m opening myself up to public humiliation, and even I’m a little surprised at how all right I am with that. I would even share with everyone how much I weigh. But I don’t know that number offhand, because I haven’t weighed myself in about six years.

Six years ago you would have never found me joking about my weight. I was 16, 5-foot-10 and a chunk. I didn’t really see the humor in it at all. Six years later I still don’t weigh myself - even at the doctor’s office I ask them not to tell me. It’s just easier that way. Why get so wrapped up in a number? I’d rather worry about how I feel and how I see myself.

I used to constantly be in distress about my weight. Now, work, school, my friends and family - those are the things I think about. Not my waistline. I have come to terms with the fact that some fat has found a comfortable home on my body and that the clothes in the Victoria’s Secret catalog will not look the same on me as they do on Tyra Banks.

I do work out three or four times a week. And I enjoy it. I just enjoy margaritas and nachos on the roof of El Azteco a little more.

So the producers of “Ally McBeal” can say 98 pounds is too fat. It doesn’t matter to me. But I have young nieces who I adore and my friends have little sisters I’m fond of. And they’re all gorgeous.

And they should never be told they don’t deserve love or a career because they are too big, or too skinny, or too smart or too