But probably failing... My sister has pointed out that I am full of shit and so is my post. As usual she cries bullshit and calls me out on hypocrisy. True, I was on my high horse and a bit polemical and self righteous. She says, if I have such a good body image then why did I wear men's shirts and big baggy pants while I was fatter than I am now and then suddenly in past years bust out the miniskirts again? I got a little on the defensive and said that I started wearing butchy body hiding clothes in Chicago when I was working in tech, because no one took you seriously if there was any femminess, and same for Hurlvine when I lived there and worked as a programmer and in tech support; and then when I moved back to SF (and lost my job in the dot com crash) that I got back into frivolity and wearing spangled tights & combat boots. I think that is partly right but I also thought maybe if I talk about the body image negativity I *have* had then it would be more honest.
I thought of the times when I was 14 or so and in my gym class ("drill team B", which I made a D in ) I'd be there in my leotard and we'd all examine our own and each others' bodies in the wall of mirror and would vow not to be fat... ever. Around that time, I remember looking at my Grandma Hemulen's pooched-out belly (4 kids) in her polyester pantsuits and think "Never! That will never be me... that is disgusting. If I ever felt like *that* was happening I would *do something about it*." That moment actually has haunted me for many years. It was the expression of all the disgust that my mom was saying about her own body and then about mine once I hit puberty. I confronted this absolute terror that I would develop the body of an actual mature woman. And I felt total desperation to keep the body of a 14 year old.
I don't think that there was a single turning point where I rejected that thinking, and I agree that it's an ongoing process. I certainly preen myself in front of a mirror and think that a thing "looks good" on me or not which is probably full of "does it make me look fat" style thinking which is exactly what I just railed against and said we shoudl fight. Have you ever been sitting or standing and then realized you have the impulse to suck your stomach in .. and then checked yourself... I mean not for posture or your back but for looking skinnier? What I'm saying is that when I catch myself doing that I feel a little embarrassed because it doesn't line up with my principles.
I don't really know how to go on, but it seemed best to try to answer my sister and my conscience right away and not act all holier than thou.
I want to add though that even when I was almost 200 pounds other women were still telling me they were so jealous I was so little and thin and was so lucky i could eat whatever I wanted and not worry. and they would do it with this sort of hostility; clearly not based on reality; and I would go "but i am 180 pounds and 5'3 which is not skinny" and I think what they were really reacting to was my *lack of self hatred as evidenced by my not talking constantly about dieting and my weight*. (Okay this is defensiveness again... must stop it...)
It is true that when I seemed to go more or less back to pre-pregnancy state of being, I felt a sense of relief that I wouldn't have to worry about it (though, I am claiming not to have worried about it.) So, I hope that is honest enough. To complete the attempt at non hypocrisy I hereby vow to wear miniskirts or whatever, no matter how fat I am if I feel like doing it. Just, not at my techy jobs if I have to crawl under desks and deal with anti-femmy jerks. Also, as usual, i will have zero modesty and will do a nakedjen any time I feel like it.
I don't think i can quite agree with your sister. I think it was an interesting observation - the link between near starvation diets and changes in the psyche/behaviour. I hadn't quite thought of it that way before - a way of keeping women powerless - kind of a similar perversion to foot-binding, or corsets, maybe?
Posted by: high.on.markers | February 12, 2008 at 11:08 PM
yeah, i was gonna try to knock you offa that horse, too.
i'm on a diet, and expect to be, with more or less success, for the rest of my life. you see, i noticed, when i turned 30, that my metabolism slowed down, and i gained 15, then another 15 pounds. i didn't like it, but i accepted it, with a lot of shopping for flattering clothes. i thought about dieting, but settled for going to the gym and getting fitter. did lose some weight here and there, but not that much.
the problem was when i noticed that the extra weight i was carrying around was starting to affect my diabetes. just because i'm a type 1 (autoimmune, unpreventable kind) doesn't mean that i can't also BECOME a type 2 (often obese, sometimes preventable kind). my sensitivity to the insulin i have to buy out of pocket was going down and this was related to my (over)weight.
i went on the south beach diet, with my female doctor's approval, and have yo-yo-ed three times since. dieting is hard, not because my body "wants" to be at a BMI of 27, but because it's so easy to find white rice white bread processed potato products, and so hard to find low glycemic things to eat that my endocrine system can handle.
but if i'm refusing to eat the easy, sleazy fast stuff all around me, choosing not to indulge in most of the dishes at someone's dinner party, always choosing a salady thing at restaurants, then, while i'm being healthy, i'm also DIETING.
and yes, the goal is weight loss. i won't pretend that i don't look forward to being thinner and how i will look then. but looking thinner alone could never get me to diet. it's the combination of health and appearance that perpetrated the magic.
here's the sad thing: diabetics are like canaries in coal mines. the diabetic will die first ... but of something that will eventually kill you too. if an "ordinary" diet is making me insulin resistant in the space of three or four years ... well, you can put off the dieting for longer, but eventually it's gonna catch up to you, too.
our bodies respond to contradictory impulses: if we overfeed, we have a certain amount of health because we're full of nutrients. but if we overfeed on the wrong kind of food, we can also be responding to toxins and bad endocrine triggers. so we're simultaneously getting fat in a good way, and getting fat in a bad way. we do live longer, but for a lot of people, our eating habits are making that quality of life poor.
Posted by: claire | February 14, 2008 at 06:04 PM