I Have No Words

i know i promised you the second part of my feminism and BDSM rant, but this image took my breath away. literally. i'm tearing up, looking at this beautiful woman, who's body looks so much like mine. and i don't know how i could have managed to miss the add campaign that produced it. apparently the body shoppe does this kind of thing regularly. next to it's slick shots of it's products. and i don't think i can ever bring myself to spend money at any other body product store again. this is profound, in a way i'm finding hard to express. she looks like i do. fleshy and folded and round and lovely. she is lovely to look at. and i look like her. is this what my beloved sees when he looks at me? i don't think i've ever felt, for all the hard won self love and all the hard won sanity, as though i could be simply beautiful. beautiful despite my size and shape, beautiful within my size and shape, sure. but simply beautiful? i find the words inadequate to express this...

In which I face my fear of doctors

so the big accomplishment for the day..... wait for it..... i went to the doctor. yeah, i know people do it all the time. big deal right? except, it's been 5 or 6 years since i've seen a doctor for anything. unless you count the ones i used to see at work. and i was nervous, cause i'm not a big fan of doctors in the first place, and because i really didn't want to have a convo about my weight when i went in because my ears have been bugging me for a month or so. but it went really well actually.

the nurse took my papers and started heading for the scale, i told her i prefer not to be weighed. heart all a flutter, i expected to have to qualify the statement... but she didn't even break stride. just settled me into the exam room. seeing a new doc means loads of questions, and i have a family history that means i check off a whole lot of boxes. and we talked about it. about my grandfather who is the reason i check a good number of boxes. about my dad's mom. about my genes. and i told her, point blank, my family runs large and i'm ok with it. this is the weight i've been at for three years or so. that i do my best to eat well and get a decent amount of movement. that i want to have myself checked for markers of things to come, but that i wasn't really interested in weight loss. and she took some notes, and agreed i should make an appointment for a physical, and that was it.

and i am so relieved right now. i feel ok making the appointment for the physical because i'm not overly concerned about the conversation we'll have when the lab results come back. i went in feeling crummy and nervous, and left still feeling crummy (dammed ears) but much less nervous. and that's a great feeling.

My Letter to Oprah

so i'm sure many of you have seen this or a similar article about oprah reaching 200 lbs and basically feeling like a failure. kate and the shapely prose family said this amazing thing but i felt the need to write something too. so i did. having a blog is fun...

why does this amazing, succsessful, wealthy woman who has beat sexism and racism to become a very powerful force hate herself and her body? why does she want to make herself dissapear? women aren't supposed to take up too much space, or be too loud, or too smart, or too succesful. or too ethnic. and while she has broken through most of those barriers she still wants to make herself disapear. her weight isn't a "sorce of shame," as she herself said. i'm quite sure she has more than enough willpower.

but she began to "eat what she wanted", and that wasn't good? not good for her to want? why are we still allowing ourselves, as women, to be told that we are not allowed to want, that we have to put the needs of everyone else before our own, that if we want anything at all we're selfish? and serriously, not every fat person is sitting around stuffing their face with junk food. and before you trot out your friend/co-worker/classmate/aunt eillien as your anecdotal evidence please remember that fat people are not all the same. just like not all black people are the same.

the disservice she's providing for the millions of women who hold her up as a role model is her re-enforcement that if you fail at long term weight loss it's your fault. which is a totally false statement. 95% of people who losse weight gain it back. period. and it's not becuase they don't want it enough, it's because our bodies are not designed to do that. she is clinging to the false hope that she, with all her money and support will be able to be part of that narrow margin. and the false statment that the only way to be healthy is to be thin. and the only way for her to be an acceptable person is to weigh a certain amount, that no other accomplishment is worth anything if she weights 200 lbs.

what i would wish for opera, and everyone who reads this blog, is an opportunity to stop hateing herself and her body. i would wish her the chance to learn about health at every size (HAES...google it, serriously) and the growing size acceptance movement. i would wish her self-love based on her accomplishmnets and strength not on the numbers on a scale or in her clothes.

Virtually Walking the Walk

so, i am a gamer geek girl. unabashedly most of the time. and in my geekdom i was playing WoW (that's World of Warcraft.. or Warcrack as we like to say in my house) and chatting with the group i was playing with. in WoW it's very common for several players to group together to accomplish a particularly difficult task, and that's what i was doing. we were waiting for another group member to finish repairing his gear, and during the down time another player said they were going to go get a snack since he was due for lunch but we were about an hour from being done with the task. so, more down time... which usually leads to chatting in game. the three of us left started comparing time zones and where that placed us in the greater world. eventually the first group member came back from getting repairs done to his gear (in game repairs to in game gear, not to be confused with actual equipment) and asked where the second player had gone.

"he's being fat." responded one of the three of us that had been chatting. and my fingers flashed out, seemingly of their own volition.

"that's not a cool thing to say. how do you know he's fat?" and i swear i hit return before i quite knew what was being typed. it just happened. and i waited for this to explode in my face, to have my group tell me to back off and not be so sensitive, to have the player react all insulted... because these were not people i play with regularly. these were people i just happened to find who needed to do the same thing i needed to do. there was no personal context in which my comment might be received. and yet the person on the other end of that comment was surprisingly cool in their response.

"i'm sorry," i'm paraphrasing here, "it just means he's eating here in australia, it's just slang."

and i wanted to have the conversation i could feel was coming, the pointing out how icky it is to associate any kind of eating with being fat. to point out that eating is needful for human life to keep living. that we shouldn't have this kind of association... and yet there were some less than mature members of the group that i just didn't want to deal with, who could have very well turned the potentially awesome conversation into something really ugly. and so i left it. i just told this other player i didn't mean anything personal by it, but that i believed very strongly in size/fat acceptance and felt it was a really mean thing to say. and they kept apologizing.

which totally blew my mind, because i couldn't hear their voice but they seemed really genuine. at least in type, which is all i have to go on in that setting. and it surprised me too that i spoke out like that. it's not something i would have done even a month ago. sure i'll eat cheesecake in retaliation, but opening my mouth to a complete stranger? not so much. until that moment. maybe this is the first few steps of walking the walk... cause i still find it hard to talk about these things with some of the people i'm close to. like my mom. but that's a whole other post.

Me and My Pancreas

so i have a family history of diabetes type 2, and conventional wisdom would tell me i shouldn't drink coke or fruit juice or any other sweet and delicious beverage. or eat carbs. or be fat. but with every study that comes back from heath researchers not in the pockets of drug companies, we see less and less reasons to cling to the conventional wisdom. and now this study by the women's heath initiative. for people unfamiliar i'll be quoting from this article at junkfood science about the study and about the initiative.

"In 1992, the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the largest preventive health study in our history, the Women’s Health Initiative. One part was the WHI Dietary Modification Trial — one of the largest, longest and most expensive randomized, controlled clinical dietary intervention trials in the history of our country."

they were trying to prove that healthy eating was the best way to prevent chronic disease, especially type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and promote weight control.

and here's the fun part for me... they completed this huge study and found NOTHING! i know i'm getting ahead here but, yeah. totally null study, which basically means they found no significant difference between the control group and the study group.

so here's the facts and figures bit:
*$415 million and conducted at 40 medical centers
*48,835 postmenopausal women assessed at baseline (the start of the study), one year and then every three years with clinical follow-ups every 6 months and their medications monitored in a pharmacy database
*more than 19,000 women were in the dietary restricted group while the other group was allowed to eat what they wanted.

in fact, here's the quote from the study:

The WHI dietary intervention group received intensive nutritional and behavioral modification training consisting of 18 group sessions in the first year followed by quarterly sessions throughout the trial. Each participant received an individualized dietary fat gram goal estimating 20% of energy from fat during the intervention and a common dietary goal of 5 or more servings daily of combined vegetables and fruits and 6 or more servings daily of grains. Self-monitoring techniques and group session attendance were emphasized.

and apparently they did really well with the women staying within 5-7% over their recommended fat intake, eating roughly 25% more fruits and veggies than the average american and eating a little over 300 calories less per day than the control group.

now the conventional wisdom tells us that these women should have been very healthy, and if not "healthy" thin at least not overweight or fat. but as i said before, the study found no such thing.

After eight years, there were no significant differences in the incidences of more than 30 clinically-documented cancers, heart attacks or strokes, or all-cause mortality. The dieters initially lost some weight but rebounded and their body weights, despite 8 years of watching what they ate, were no statistically different from the women who’d been eating whatever they wanted. Both groups ended up at nearly the identical weights they started with, differing a mere 0.7kg, about one pound.

and here's the bit that was of interest to me, what with my family history and all.

According to the WHI researchers, a total of 3,342 new cases of treated diabetes were reported: 7.1% (0.88%/year) in the intervention group and 7.4% (0.91%/year) in the control group during 8.1 years of follow-up. No statistical difference...In the WHI, there was no tenable difference in risk for diabetes among the different BMIs, with odds ratios even slightly higher for women with BMIs<25

so i'm back to looking at what goes into my body as fuel for my cells and fuel for my soul. i'm working on the intuitive eating that HAES recommends. i'm trying not to ignore my body and my hunger ques because i realize more and more that i really don't like how mean and nasty i get when my sugar starts to bottom out. and i'm listening more when my body says "give us red meat" as well as when it says "give us broccoli."

Shhhhh it's not ok

so last night my BF and i were looking at the latest news on the prop 8 opposition and the move toward legal proceedings in the state. and i was ranting at him about how fucked up it was that the prop passed and how the yes vote people lied and why the opposition failed to not only stop this piece of bullshit legislation from passing, but they failed to be inclusive and unifying in the way they did it. i was pacing, and ranting, and it took him aback a bit. he's never seen this political side of me, never seen this radical passionate side of me. oh, to be sure, he's seen me passionate about other things but never politics. and while our views match i am more well read on the subject i'm likely to rant about. and so he tried to calm me, think he'd done something to upset me, when really i was just angry at the situation. angry and swearing, which i rarely do.

and it frightened me for a moment. the idea of him shushing me, not to make me be quiet but to calm me down, was hard for me to process. because i wanted so much to know it had nothing to do with him trying to calm down the hysterical woman who was being unreasonable. i wanted so much for him to not have that seed of patriarchy deep inside him waiting like some cancer to suddenly wage war on our happiness. and while he assured me that no, he was afraid he'd done something to upset me and that i was angry at him, it did make me question the effect of activism.

not that i would give this up for him, but that it would break my heart if we were to fundamentally disagree on this. and i said to him the reason i feel it needful to speak and to give information and statistics is because i genuinely think 80% of people who speak out against gay marriage because it will force their church to do xyz, who back the fat people as unhealthy ideology and participate in fat hatred clothed as concern for the health of others, who are against comprehensive reproductive health are just ignorant or unaware of the spin they've been fed. and i said to him, these people are the kind that have to be talked to, have to be told, because eventually they will listen to bits and pieces and discover new ideas. and once that happens, the number of people who will be able to look at him and think (or worse say) "he's thin, he's good looking, he's smart so why is he fucking a fattie" will go down. if not away.

of course he promised to punch anyone who dared say such a thing in the face. which made me a little melty. but the fact that he hates willfully ignorant bigotry is a huge pat of why i love him.

sexy is as sexy does

so kate and the gang at shapely prose had a post up this past august, which i am only just reading, about attraction and whether or not a person should include efforts at finding fat people attractive as they progress through fat acceptance. the article can be found here.

the things that struck me were two more or less. one being the idea of attraction. we get told, rather often, that attraction is animal and natural and not a social construct. but our concept of beauty and sexual worth is a social construct. i think it's interesting, and i might add admirable, that anyone would be willing to own their social conditioning and allow that they might have missed out on a wonderful relationship or three because they thought someone was too fat. or too thin. or too disabled. or whatever other characteristic they've been enculturated to find non preferential in a mate or potential sex partner. i had never really thought about why i find certain people attractive or why i don't, and i know i'm still working through some of my initial judgement of people based on their outsides. but a really good point was brought up (ok a whole bunch were but this struck me) in the comments about how FA isn't about forcing the world to find fat bodies sexually appealing but rather about according fat people with the respect and dignity due every person regardless of whether you find them sexually appealing or not.

which might be the tie in i've been missing for why FA is a feminist movement at it's core. because yeah, i'm still struggling with the feminist thing and i make some progress and then i take a few steps back. i can get behind the fight for reproductive heath rights, ad the fight for equal rights under the law for EVERYONE, and i can begin to get behind the fight to see more women in top executive spots. but i stumble when it comes to looking for sexism in everything i do, see, read, listen to, touch or taste. i have trouble separating myself from my own privilege as a white middle class woman. so maybe i just have to be hit over the head with a clue by four but the idea that the sexual attractiveness of a person, their decorative ability, might be a measure of their worth in the world at large was one i had a hard time wrapping my head around. (M-O-O-N that spells uptake) because on some level i still crave that outside affirmation of my sexual attractiveness. i want men and women to notice me when i feel i look good. i want the vision of me in my head to be reflected in the eyes of people who look at me.

which brings me to part two in which i was reminded just how close i came to passing up the relationship i'm in now. because he's tall and thin, and i mean knee jerk reaction feed the boy a sandwich thin, and i thought i couldn't date a guy that i out weight by 80 lbs or so. my level of attraction was irrelevant because i just knew he wouldn't find me to be attractive. more importantly i was sure that he might find me decent looking with my clothes on, cause i can dress this body pretty damned well thankyouverymuch, but with my clothes off.... a whole other story of soft jiggling flesh would be revealed against the slim muscle of his body and i just knew it would make me seem 10 times fatter and just kill the mood. so i rejected the idea of intimacy with him, and refused to see the reciprocity of attraction until i realized that i was moving out of state and leaving behind someone i was insanely attracted to, and insanely compatible with, because i was hung up on his waist measurement. and when i put it that way i realized how stupid i was being. and thank god i came the my senses, because he is a constant delight and has made the move to another state so much less lonely and frightening and stressful.

so i can add this attraction thing to the growing list of things i think i need to re-evaluate. and i like the concept of working to find something good in the look of every person rather than mindlessly responding to them as a set of physical characteristics. will is suddenly develop a lust for the very large? i don't know. and that's ok.

Fat Tax?

so alabama is going to start forcing people to get health screenings and work with their doctors to improve their health or be charged an additional $25 dollars for their health premiums. WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?

now i'm all for health screenings, and the fact that these are going to be free i'm happy with. but the only people required to get them are the fat people who work for the state. not everyone. just the fatties. because it's not ok for the south to flat out discriminate against black people anymore, so they figure picking on the fat is the next best thing. i mean statistically speaking african americans have a higher percentage of obesity. so, since we all "know" fat people are lazy slobs who have no self control and always eat crap, this just proves that black people are even more like that. it's so stomach turning. gha!!!!!!

and i'm reading through the comments and it's just so messed up. people are saying, yes those fat people should put down the food and get healthy. we should totally tax their fat asses cause they are ruining the country. it's about time the lard asses paid up. don't like it? tough, cause i don't like having to pay more because of you. the whole country should do this.

i mean it's obvious that none of these people have read anything that wasn't directly funded by a diet or drug company. that none of these people have read anything beyond the most superficial news article. and none of them know anything about reality. i really hope the state gets sued by it's overweight workers for being discriminatory and bigoted.

Fatter Than the Moon

so one of my housemates is big into anime and somehow this translates into me watching season one of sailor moon, the japaneese version with subtitles. it's cute, more or less, in that whiney school girl saves the world and her classmates kinda way.

i'm about for or five episodes in, rather enjoying the formula that allows me to know what's coming and thus truly veg, and suddenly usagi (sailor moon) is slumped on the bathroom floor crying her eyes out over having gained weight. now, all of a sudden, i'm leaning forward in my seat waiting to see how this plays out. not really interested in the idea of how the episode would go but in how the show, so obviously aimed at pre-teen girls, would handle the idea of body image and weight loss. i have to say, the show did not disappoint my expectations... which is bad since i was expecting the worst.

her brother teases her, her father tells her it's healthy for growing girls to be a little chubby, and her mom lets her know that it's true but all the same if she's really worried about it she could go on a diet. the worst part is the talking cat that is part friend and part mentor who draws a picture of a very round usagi and tells her this is what she'll look like in six months time. which of course makes the poor girl freak out, and begin to "diet". i say diet in quotes because her idea is to just stop eating. which her friends at school encourage because, as the token fat one states, thin girls are so much prettier than fat ones.

suddenly the girls all hear about a new gym that just opened up and promises weight loss in just one session, and beautiful thinness in just three. of course it's just a plot by the bad guys to steal the energy of young women, but the girls rush in on the promise of beauty and thinness. or maybe thinness and beauty. either way they're equated one with the other. so the girls slave on stationary bikes, free weights and rowing machines with beefcake instructors egging them on. once the girls have all but exhausted themselves it's off to the "shapely ray" for some relaxation and to help with their goals. so here's the evil plan bit, but the girls come out weighing less and all manner of excited, especially when they get told how much thinner and how much more beautiful they all look.

meanwhile unsagi still hasn't eaten and collapses in from of the video game arcade. she's helped by the young man she currently has a crush on, and he tells her she doesn't need a diet. he likes chubby girls. which gives the poor thing some kind of permission to eat. not that this new found acceptance lasts beyond the first few dumplings because both the cat and the dark haired stranger she keeps running into both confirm that she's just going to get really fat if she doesn't stop eating.

meanwhile the evil gym owner muses with his evil ruler about how stupid these women are. he says something to the effect of these women and young girls are willing to kill themselves just to be thin, how pathetic. this is really the only part in the whole episode where anything is said about how unhealthy and how dangerous this kind of thinking can be. even the idea that men like the "chubby look" gets laughed off as not the norm and besides chubby is sort of ok but fat is never ok. of course in the end sailor moon defeats the bad guys and save her friends and teacher, but the message is very clear.

thin is beautiful. fat is not acceptable. chubby is only ok for some and most men don't like it. there's no mention of health, no mention of how bad it is to starve yourself, no affirmations of any kind. just this push to be thin, and how monstrous it is to toy with a girls dream of being thin.

there's talk in the fat/size acceptance world about the subversive nature of the this thin=beauty myth. but this was anything but subversive. now, i have no idea if this episode aired in the usa and no idea about eating disorders in japan, but i can imagine what this would do to a young woman who has gained weight prior to a growth spurt. or just in general. and i found myself begin that thought process of self evaluation that says my stomach isn't flat enough and my hips are too big. i shouldn't have been surprised but i was, at least a little. but i think the fact that i could recognize the seeds of that kiltered thinking is a sign of progress.

Book Store Feminism

Anyone who knows me know that I love books. I mean I LOVE books. So for me, going to a good book store is akin to heading for Mecca (or other religious city of your choosing). Especially if I can sit with a stack of books and hide on the floor in a corner and read through the first several pages or chapters to decide if this is THE book to buy.

So I'm in the local book store with my boyfriend, enjoying the evening out together, enjoying our trip to Mecca, enjoying the wooden floors and oddly tiered wren of stairs and nooks. And lo, into the Women's studies section I wander. Now, under normal circumstances I shudder at the thought of entering this section of the book store. There isn't enough of me to give over to the anger reading these books tends to generate. I can't put that much of myself into the idea of feminist conspiracy, and men as the ultimate in oppressors and villains. I just can't. Plus I'd rather be a humanist than a feminist.

But here I am looking at a bright little book I could fit into my pocket with a pretty pink daisy and the word CUNT plastered on it in bright yellow letters. And i have to stop, I have to pause and look at this unassuming little book with such a charged word on it. As I reach for it, I notice that it's sitting on the shelf right next to a book on planning your ultimate wedding. I started laughing, couldn't help it. Here I am, surrounded by feminist and post-feminist books on giving up our oppressive self images, on what it is to be a woman in less enlightened places, on how we need to fight the oppressions of men and the double standards of sex. Here I am practically hearing the angry voices of a dozen women and right in the mix is how to have the best wedding.

Hooray for cognitive dissonance.

But this is illistrative of the issue of the beauty myth. Not that we can't be women of power. Not that we can't reclaim words like cunt or bitch or whore. Not that we can't disolve the word slut, or remove the double standard that keeps it on the lips and tongues of teenage girls. But that we are expected to do these things AND plan the perfect wedding. Or, and I noticed this sitting on the same shelf, be "alternative" brides who still want an amazing and perfect day just not like THOSE women. And it's the idea of my kind of women and those kind of women, the idea of us versus them that is so hard for me with feminism.

I have a girlfriend who has the ability to be a stay at home mom. She could choose to be otherwise, but her spouce makes enough to support her and their three kids without it. So she chooses not to work in an office and wear power suits. She chooses to stay home and homeschool the girls, and taxi them to their half dozen extra curriculars. She chooses to be an author and a mother rather than a power broker. But she's been told she is oppressed by her domaniering husband and she should make him get her a stitter so she can get out of the house and be more fulfilled. WTF!?!?!?!? She is one of THOSE women in the eyes of many feminists. And I don't get it.

Why do I have to choose between being a cunt and being a wife or mother. Aren't I supposed to be able to do both?

But then that's part of the oppessive issue too. This idea that I should be both. That I should try and be both. That I somehow need to be super mom and run a business or museum.

I read breifly through a handfull of those books, sitting on the wooden floor of that book store and found something profound. One of the authors wrote that the feminists of the 70s don't think that there are any young women wanting to fan the flames or carry on the torch of modern feminism. And I think there's a reason for that. Gender rolls have been torn appart by the upheavals of the 70s. And they needed to be. But in this ambiguous place where women and men can be anything, so long as they're not traditional, a vacume now exists. And we all know nature abhores a vacume. So we try to fill it, as best we can, with sex and beauty and money and youth. We starve ourselves to be beautiful and mutilate ourselves to be better, and make snide comments about women who don't. We scream about male oppression, without giving men any idea of what to be, and then wonder why young boys grow up to oppress women.

And now I feel as though I need to deffend myself for making these statements, lest I be thought of as one of THOSE women. And I shouldn't have to.

Cheesecake Liberation

Article by Lady Becca for Fashion Sanity
Reprinting here on my own blog

This past weekend I went to an amazing social salon. Every month this group gets together and presents on topics they know, feel passionate about, or are interested in. It’s a varied group in terms of gender, economic background, sexual preferences, and lifestyles and so the topics are equally varied. During a break I ended up getting into a deep conversation with this super hot red head about the fat acceptance movement, the fashion industry, skinny models, fat hate, skinny hate, medical science and self love. I realized a few things:

1. the media half truths are more pervasive than I thought.
2. even “fat chicks” will think of anecdotal evidence that reinforces the media’s half truths.
3. I really dig red heads.
4. I need to do more home work on the subject.

So I did. I sat my cushy ass in front of the computer and stuffed my brain with facts and figures. The more I learned the better I felt about myself, my body and my ability to have this discussion with people. I looked at myself, and what I do and don’t eat. I knew I was ok, but now I see where I’m doing better than ok, and where I could be doing just plain better. I’ve also become more aware of people.

Last night I went to a certain big name home improvement store. No, the other one. Along the way my housemate, boyfriend and I stopped into Trader Joe’s to feed her addiction to dried mango and my addiction to chocolate…and dried mango. I bought a box of cheesecake bites, enrobed in deep dark chocolate and we wandered about the home improvement store eating chocolate covered cheesecake and dried mango while discussion devious plans for a Rube-Goldberg device. And I noticed something…I didn’t care.

A week ago, I would have bought that box, put it in the car and waited until I got home to open it and enjoy those little morsels with my boy and a few Heroes episodes. Instead, I walked proudly, defiantly, through a major chain store nibbling on cheesecake and my boy. I know, for a fact, that several of the older women manning departments and registers looked. I could see the thought as it marched passed on their faces, the thought that I could be so pretty if I would just put down the sweets and get moving.

I wanted to laugh in their 40 something plus, pursed lipped faces and ask if they had any idea how much moving I do? I wanted to lustily grope my boy right there in front of them, and show them just how hot he is for me. I wanted to rub their faces in their own self loathing and ask if they were really happy with swallowing the bullshit fed to women every day about our bodies and how they should look.

Instead, I smiled coquettishly and had another bite. The effect was better.